Criticism of Maine's one month old laptop program comes by way of Israel where a similar 1994 program, according to the authors, failed to generate any improvement in test scores. Leaving aside the state of laptop technology in 1994, what seems to be mising from this article is any reference to Israel's significant technological growth over the last decade as dozens of online companies have made a global mark (the one that springs most readily to mind is ICQ, the company that invented instant messaging). Of course, none of the skills and attitudes needed to generate such a boom would be detected in standardized tests. But the result is undeniable. So does the problem lie in the laptop program, or in the way it was evaluated?
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