Promethean Boards: Good Choice or Bad Choice?

As we all know, two years ago Montgomery County Public Schools purchased over $13 million dollars worth of Promethean Boards without proper purchasing authority or an appropriation by our County Fiscal Authority. Our Board of Education never took a vote, and there is no evidence of a signed contract.

That was a choice by our school administration. Just as it was a concurrent, albiet unstated, choice to have just one computer for every 3.8 students in our schools. Here's a little known fact: only 4 of Maryland's 24 school systems have a worse student : computer ratio than MCPS (source of data is the MCPS Master Plan).

Now we are left to ponder the possibility that if MCPS had invested the same $13 million of Promethean resources into student computers, our ratio could have been 2.2 students per computer, tied for best in the state.

Perhaps without realizing it, our school system administration made the choice that fancy electronic whiteboards were a higher priority than student access to computers.

Moreover, Montgomery County Public Schools spent $5000 per Promethean Board. While those boards do more than a computer projector, 95% of what they are used for is simple projection of the computer display on a screen. Was that a good investment considering a computer projector could have been purchased for under $700?

In other words: that same $13M could not only have allowed for a computer on one out of every 2.5 students' desks, and it could have simultaenously put a computer projector in every classroom.

So we are left to consider the question: will all these Promethean Boards, still not in every classroom, do more to raise student achievement then putting a projector in every classroom and increasing the number of computers available for student use by 50%?

Bob Astrove