BANGOR (AP) – Maine’s commitment to provide laptop computers to its public school students has earned it a high grade in a nationwide survey of technology in schools.

The Education Research Center’s “Technology Counts 2005” survey gave Maine the No. 2 ranking for access to technology in the classroom. South Dakota was given the top grade, while Wyoming, Kansas and North Dakota rounded out the top five.

Vermont was ranked 31st and New Hampshire 45th in the survey. Maine has one instructional computer for every 2.2 students from kindergarten through the 12th grade, and one Internet-connected computer in the classroom for every 4.1 students. Nationally, there is one instructional computer for every 3.8 students, and one Internet-connected classroom computer for every 8 students, the survey said.

Jeff Mao, coordinator of educational technology for the state Department of Education, said the high ranking is no surprise given the state’s goal of providing laptops to thousands of students as part of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative.

Every seventh- and eighth-grader has been issued a laptop, and roughly a third of the public high schools have issued laptops to their ninth-graders.

“Given the number of laptops we have I would suspect we would rank pretty high,” Mao said.

The Education Research Center, based in Washington, D.C., is the research arm of Education Week newspaper. It has conducted its technology surveys for eight years, but this is the first time it’s ranked the states based on its findings.

Jennifer Park, a senior research associate at the center, said the survey provides a snapshot of where states stand for how they use technology to further education.

In 2004, for instance, 77 percent of teachers used the Internet for instruction, up from 54 percent five years earlier.

The Education Week Research Center found that just Maine, Michigan and New Mexico have state-sponsored student-laptop programs in place, while Massachusetts and the District of Columbia are piloting such programs. Pennsylvania is the only state with a state-sponsored hand-held-computing program.

AP-ES-05-05-05 1318EDT