Apple’s New Classroom Experiment - WSJ

Students worked with Apple iPads in an elementary-school class at in Yuma, Ariz., earlier this year.

Fourth-grade teacher Blanca Rivera wasn’t thrilled when she heard that Apple Inc. would provide each of her 31 students an iPad. She thought the tablet computers were “just for games,” and wondered how they would help students learn.

Eight months into the school year, her students use iPads to create presentations about angles, produce videos about the water cycle, and assemble digital books about fractions. During exams taken on the iPad, Ms. Rivera can monitor their progress and note questions that confuse them. When she notices students daydreaming, she sends short messages to their iPads saying “focus.”

“It really enhances their learning and it motivates them to learn,” said Ms. Rivera of the iPads.

Ms. Rivera’s school, H.L. Suverkrup Elementary, in Yuma, Ariz., is part of an innovative effort by Apple to use technology to help level the playing field between rich and poor students. The experiment, part of an Obama administration initiative, is aimed at overcoming obstacles that have hobbled previous efforts to realize the promise of tablet PCs and other gadgets to make learning more enjoyable and effective.

There are reasons for skepticism. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of wealthy nations, recently said schools investing heavily in technology showed “no noticeable improvement” in test scores. The group said students who use tablets and computers heavily actually tend to underperform those who use them moderately.

University of Michigan professor Elliot Soloway, who studies technology in education, said classroom computers typically don’t boost test scores because schools don’t redesign curricula.

“Schools always make the mistake of buying computers first and then asking what do we do with them,” Mr. Soloway said.

Apple is trying to change that partly through more support for educators. At 114 schools nationwide, including eight in Yuma, it is providing each student with an iPad, teachers with iPads and MacBook computers, and classrooms with Apple TVs. At some schools, Apple also helped build Wi-Fi networks. The company, which committed $100 million to the nationwide effort in 2014, assigns an employee to spend 17 days a year at each school, training teachers and helping prepare lessons. The employees, all former teachers, recommend apps and sometimes demonstrate techniques on teaching with iPads.

Apple is targeting schools with scant technology resources. Yuma is a farming community near the Mexican border with 18% unemployment. Per-pupil spending here is slightly more than half the national average. Nearly all the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

Ms. Rivera, the fourth-grade teacher, said Apple’s liaison at Suverkrup helped allay her skepticism. After each session, she said, “I come back full of ideas and I can’t wait to try something new with the kids.”

An Apple executive sponsors each school, and helps clear roadblocks. In Yuma, that is Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services. Mr. Cue, the son of Cuban immigrants, said he felt a connection to students there because most are Hispanic and don’t speak English at home.

Such extensive support is unusual, said Daniel Owens, a partner at the Learning Accelerator, a nonprofit organization that aims to integrate technology into classrooms, which isn’t involved with the Apple project. “I haven’t seen anything like this,” he said.

Apple has commercial incentives to show its technology works in schools. It has lost ground in education, one of its traditional strengths. Alphabet Inc. ’s Chromebooks accounted for 51% of computer and tablet purchases by U.S. schools in the third quarter of 2015, compared with 24% for Apple products, according to researcher Futuresource Consulting.

Some education efforts involving Apple’s technology have foundered. The Los Angeles Unified School District in August 2014 suspended a $1-billion-plus program to outfit every student with an iPad amid reports of confusion among teachers and of students removing security measures in the devices.

First-grade students at an elementary school in Yuma, Ariz. At eight schools in the city, Apple provides each student with an iPad.

There also was criticism about the procurement process and whether district officials properly considered other options before deciding on iPads running curriculum materials from Pearson PLC. A school district spokesman declined to comment, saying the matter is part of a continuing federal investigation.

Another effort has shown progress. Voters in the Coachella Valley Unified School District in Southern California, where nearly every student qualifies free or reduced-price lunch, approved a $42 million bond measure that supplied iPads to all of its 20,000 students starting in 2013. Apple isn’t funding that effort.

Coachella administrators have adopted some novel techniques. In neighborhoods lacking Internet access, officials parked school buses outfitted with Wi-Fi. Superintendent Darryl Adams credits the iPads with helping to lift the district’s high-school graduation rate to 82% in 2015 from 65% in 2011.

Apple’s effort in Yuma, which began in full last August, has hit hurdles, too. Many students there also lack home Internet connections, making it hard to complete some iPad assignments. Currently, students can’t take the iPads home. The district applied for an AT&T Inc. grant for cellular data to connect teachers and students away from school. Mr. Cue, visiting Yuma earlier this year, told one principal he might be able to help because he “knows someone” at AT&T: CEO Randall Stephenson. The application is pending.

Still, teachers say the iPads give students more control and flexibility. Students can research topics that interest them; teachers can let more advanced students push ahead, and assign extra work to those who are struggling.

Some teachers worry about what will happen after three years when Apple’s grant expires and the district can’t afford to buy new tablets. “That’s been on the front of my mind since the day I wrote the grant proposal,” said Trina Siegfried, who oversees the program.

Mr. Cue said that if the technology proves effective, it will be easier to find continued funding. “You have to solve the problem you have today and not worry about the problem you’re going to have tomorrow,” he said.

Ms. Siegfried says the district will benefit regardless. “If someone came to me and said you can drive this beautiful new car, but it’s only for three years, I’m still going to take that car.”