Technology

E-schools are far from the only schools to employ new technology. Classrooms today are hives of cables, computers and gadgets such as 3-D printers. Technology is probably the single biggest difference between the classrooms of three decades ago and those of today, said Columbus City Schools Superintendent Dan Good. That has created both promise and problems.

In the 1980s, computers were something that kids got to touch once in a while — maybe. Now, they’re ubiquitous, with some schools providing a laptop or tablet computer for every student. In 1997, few people had cellphones. By 2007, schools were banning students from bringing them to class. By 2017, many students regularly use smartphones in class.

“The access to the World Wide Web has allowed students to download content on demand, and not only content that may be consistent with the perspective that may be in textbooks,” Good said. It is changing the role of educators from supplier of facts to navigator between fact and fiction.

“Thirty years ago it was very much that way, (that) students looked to that sage to provide knowledge and truth,” Good said.

But technology also is allowing education to be customized to individual students based on their abilities, Good said.

“Virtually every student through the course of a day now is using a computer,” Asbury said. “They’re in the classroom. It used to be like you took kids down to a lab.”

Also different today is an emphasis on district school buildings. In its DeRolph school funding decision, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that school facility construction was underfunded, leading to the 1997 creation of the Ohio School Facilities Commission. Over the past 20 years, Ohio has partnered with local taxpayers across the state to construct or renovate hundreds of brand-new district schools.

“We were educating students in buildings that were not really fit for students to be in,” Asbury said. “That’s changed across the state.”