• eSPARC students are more likelyto use computer for school-related purposes
• eSPARC parents reported stronger computer skills than their control counterparts.

Complete Findings

Intermediate Student Outcomes. Treatment students were more likely than their control counterparts to report using computers for recreational and school-related purposes. They were also more likely to report stronger computer skills than control students. Interestingly, control students exhibited slightly more positive attitudes about computers than treatment students, although it should be noted that nearly all students held very positive views about computers. The SPARC intervention did not, however, affect students’ overall interest or participation in their schoolwork, as reported by both study students and their 5th grade teachers.ii

Student Achievement. As shown in Table E-2, there were no significant differences between treatment and control students in the rescaled grades for any of the four core subject areas. Comparison of overall PSSA scale scores revealed no difference between treatment and control students for both reading and mathematics (Table E-3). In addition, there were no treatment subgroups that scored higher or lower on the PSSA as a result of their participation in SPARC (see Tables 7-27a and 7-27b in Chapter 7). These findings suggest that exposure to the SPARC intervention had no impact on treatment students’ grades or performance on the PSSA.

There are several potential explanations for the lack of impact on student achievement. First, and perhaps most importantly, the SPARC intervention lacked an academic component that directly linked the home computer to any aspect of study participants’ schoolwork. Second, few treatment households took advantage of the voluntary training in basic computer skills that was made available through the SPARC intervention. It is therefore likely that some treatment students lacked the incentive and skills needed to maximize the educational potential of their home computers. Equally importantly, they may have lacked a full appreciation of how the computers could be applied to their schoolwork. As such, their educational use of the SPARC computers appears to have been limited to typing up reports and occasionally using the Internet to look up information about a subject. Third, significant student achievement outcomes were unlikely due to the short period of the intervention. Finally, many have argued that traditional grading and current standardized assessments may not be the best ways to measure the academic growth that occurs as a result of students’ use of learning technologies (Becker and Lovitts 2002; Rockman et al. 2003; Quellmalz and Zalles 2002).

Parent Outcomes Parents of treatment students reported stronger computer skills than their control counterparts. However, the SPARC intervention did not affect any of the three aspects of parental involvement that resulted from the factor analysis. Taken together, these findings suggest that while home access to computers and the Internet led to a significant improvement in treatment parents’ computer skills, it did not compel treatment parents to be more actively involved in most aspects of their children’s education. It is worth noting, however, that the SPARC intervention did result in greater parental involvement for specific interactions that required computer and/or Internet use—e.g., using the Internet to help their child with schoolwork (see Table 8-11 in Chapter 8).

  Factors Affecting the Implementation of the SPARC Intervention and Study Design
  Characteristics of the Study Population
  Findings on the SPARC Intervention
  Impact of SPARC on Students
  Impact of SPARC on Parents