The Impact of Home Internet Access on Test Scores
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The Impact of Home Internet Access on Test Scores By Steve Macho

Chapter 1:  Introduction
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“Public school children who had access to home computers used them on an average of three to four days a week. Over 85% of young children with home computers used them for educational purposes” (Rathbun et al., 2003, p. 12). “Some may believe that inexpensive computing devices will provide ubiquitous access for all students, at home and in school”(Kafai et al., 2002, p. 65). With more computers placed in homes, should we expect students to perform better in school? It appears that it is not quite that simple.

we recognized (as previous researchers did) that computers alone are not the central factor in making educational computing at home and its connection to school work. Any effort needs to consider not only activities and resources in schools but also families and their available resources both at home and in their communities (Kafai et al., 2002, p. 65).

Some research has indicated that there is an association between the availability of a computer and Internet access in the home and student performance. As stated in The Information Society article by Attewell and Battle of City University of New York, Home Computers and School Performance (1999), “We find that having a home computer is associated with higher test scores in mathematics and reading” (p. 1). Sweeping statements such as home computers are being associated with higher test scores may be true, but the depth of that truth may be an issue. The particular issue with this reasoning is the danger of putting forth conclusions based upon a spurious association.

Milo Schield, Professor at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, has published numerous articles on the topic of critically considering the use of statistics and the appropriate inferences that can be made from their application. Schield provides the following definition of a spurious association:

To understand a spurious association, one must understand Simpson’s Paradox. A spurious association is both true and false —but in different ways. It is true given what one has (or has not) taken into account (controlled for). It is ‘false’or at least accidental because it does not persist after one takes into account (controls for) a more important confounding factor (Schield, 1999, p. 5).