First grader Hailie Koski looks to her teacher Susie Richardson before starting her next letter in cursive class. Cursive writing is disappearing from school curriculums. But at the James Irwin Charter School in Colorado Springs , they embrace cursive starting in kindergarten. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post)

Twenty-three second-graders file into Virginia Edwards' technology classroom at Grant Ranch School, take a seat at their iMacs, pull on headphones and launch a program whose graphics and audio prompts teach them crucial keyboarding skills.

Gradually, the staccato tapping of their fingers will supplant the graceful curves of what once stood as an academic rite of passage: cursive handwriting.

In an increasingly paperless world, and with ever-greater student-performance demands in core subjects, state standards have gone silent