In the article in Sunday’s New York Times magazine about the introduction of Joel Klein/Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify tablet, Klein asserts that those who oppose his views on technology are ideological, not evidence-based.

Klein asserts that we can’t hope to compete with Korea and other nations with high test scores unless we put kids on his tablets.

But here is a contrary view, forwarded to me by Will Fitzhugh of The Concord Review.

It is an excerpt from Amanda Ripley’s new book, The Smartest Kids in the World:

...But the anecdotal evidence suggests that Americans waste an extraordinary 
amount of tax money on high-tech toys for teachers and students, most of which 
have no proven learning value whatsoever....“In most of the highest-performing 
systems, technology is remarkably absent from classrooms.”

ignore shiny objects 

Old-school can be good school. Eric’s high school in Busan, South Korea, had 
austere classrooms with bare-bones computer labs. Out front, kids played soccer 
on a dirt field. From certain angles, the place looked like an American school 
from the 1950s. Most of Kim’s classrooms in Finland looked the same way: rows of 
desks in front of a simple chalkboard or an old-fashioned white board, the kind 
that was not connected to anything but the wall. 

Tom’s school in Poland didn’t even have a cafeteria, let alone a 
state-of-the-art theater, like his public school back home in Pennsylvania. In 
his American school, every classroom had an interactive white board, the kind 
that had become ubiquitous in so many American schools. (In fact, when I visited 
Tom’s American high school in 2012, these boards were already being swapped for 
next-generation replacements.) None of the classrooms in his Polish school had 
interactive white boards. 

Little data exists to compare investments in technology across countries, 
unfortunately. But the anecdotal evidence suggests that Americans waste an 
extraordinary amount of tax money on high-tech toys for teachers and students, 
most of which have no proven learning value whatsoever. As in all other 
industries, computers are most helpful when they save time or money, by helping 
to sort out what kids know and who needs help. Conversely, giving kids 
expensive, individual wireless clickers so that they can vote in class would be 
unthinkable in most countries worldwide. (In most of the world, kids just raise 
their hands and that works out fine.) 

“In most of the highest-performing systems, technology is remarkably absent from 
classrooms,” Andreas Schleicher, the OECD international education guru, told me. 
“I have no explanation why that is the case, but it does seem that those systems 
place their efforts primarily on pedagogical practice rather than digital 
gadgets.” In the survey conducted for this book, seven out of ten international 
and American exchange students agreed that U.S. schools had more technology. Not 
one American student surveyed said there was significantly less technology in 
U.S. schools. The smartest countries prioritize teacher pay and equity 
(channeling more resources to the neediest students). When looking for a 
world-class education, remember that people always matter more than props.

Ripley, Amanda (2013-08-13). The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got 
That Way (pp. 214-215). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.