Reports on how teachers organize their classrooms when they have more students than microcomputers available to them. Indicates that seatwork is the primary activity of students in a classroom when other students are engaged at the computer. Other findings (based on data from 1,082 microcomputer-using schools) are reported and discussed. (JN)

If computers were used ideally in education, each student would have enough computer time, each computer enough student time, and computer-based activities would be chosen well. The move towards using microcomputers in the schools has less to do with any clear and demonstrable instructional advantage of using them, and more to do with general…

This study addresses the issue of how different school organizational patterns affect the academic learning of students of different backgrounds and abilities. Using data from the Pennsylvania Educational Quality Assessment (EQA) on approximately 8,000 sixth-grade students in elementary and middle schools, the study examines how instructional…