CA: Teacher Spanked for Tech Generosity
A story from California reminding us that reformsters are not responsible for every single stupid thing that school administrations do.
Chowchilla is a small place, located on the highway between Bakersfield and Modesto, just a little north of Fresno. So, not the lush, money-soaked part of California. This story comes from the Modesto Bee.
Union High School English teacher Kim Kutzner thought she could team up with her husband to help her students out, and the two of them bought a reported almost $80,000 worth of used laptops at auction. The mister refurbished the ninety computers and hooked them into a custom-made classroom network. The classroom network has no internet access; Kutzner talks mostly about using the computers for writing projects.
Chowchilla is not a large place, with a population of around 19,000-- counting the population of the men's and women's prisons in town. Otherwise it is an agricultural town, "completely surrounded by farmland and dairies." Free and reduced lunch school population runs around 67%, but with a graduation rate of 92%. The high school has about 950 students, and over 50% of them are Hispanic. The school has some computer labs, but few classrooms have sets. The school has one computer tech and one IT director (whose education includes Evergreen Valley, San Jose State and University of CURMUDGUCATION: CA: Teacher Spanked for Tech Generosity: