James Surowiecki made the case last month in the New Yorker that the president's plan to spend money on research and development, infrastructure, and education in these glass-half-empty economic times makes sense. Such investments, he wrote, can create more value than they cost, and it's smart to make them now, when interest rates are low and labor and resources are ready and waiting. In other words, bring on the ?Sputnik moment.? And New York City's Department of Education is following Surowiecki's advice; it plans to spend, just next year, some $542 million on technology?this as it eliminates thousands of teaching jobs. City officials note that the technology expenditure is part of the capital budget, moneys from which cannot be used for operating costs and, thus, cannot be used to rescue educators from impending layoffs.
Fine. The more pertinent question is whether $542 million for K-12 tech upgrades is a wise investment. History?advises skepticism. For one, New York has a fraught?past when it comes to?technological improvements. The New York Times points out that CityTime, New York City's project to develop an automated payroll system that would crack down on public employees who claim false hours, has been ?dogged by delays and enormous cost overruns? of hundreds of millions of dollars. Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the whole thing ?a disaster,? and prosecutors now allege that certain CityTime consultants engaged in an $80 million fraud scheme that, supremely ironically, included submitting false time sheets. There's also the fact that the $542 million expense comes just two years after New York's Department of Education finished up (and ?declared victory,? says the Times) its Five Year Capital Plan, which cost over $13 billion, including hundreds of millions for ?technology enhancements.?
And for what? Computers and iPads and ultra-high-speed internet and ?interactive white boards? are nifty, sure, but are billions of dollars of gadgets and gizmos necessary for memorizing multiplication tables and learning the name of the man who autographed the Magna Carta? It's not about just investing in capital. It's about investing smartly.
?Liam Julian, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow