Despite shrinking budgets and the slowed economy, American public schools have managed to increase their hardware inventory with roughly the same spending as last year, according to a new study from research firm Market Data Retrieval (MDR). The company cited declining technology costs as a key reason for the expansion.

"Technology in Education 2002," the latest installment in MDR's annual series of reports on the state of technology in the nation's schools, provides information on the use of laptops, wireless networks, and digital video disc (DVD) drives, as well as instructional computers by brand of choice, internet connectivity, handheld devices, and distance education programs.

The report, which is expected to be released next week, paints a fairly rosy picture of school technology use overall. Newer technologies—such as laptops, handhelds, and wireless internet connections—are making inroads into schools, and schools appear to be stepping up their professional development efforts to enhance teachers' technological abilities.

But only 40 percent of school computers have high-end processors, defined as Pentium II or higher, Power Macintosh, or iMac. The remaining 60 percent of machines are slower. What's worse, students in schools with higher percentages of minority students still don't enjoy the same access to computers as their peers in more affluent schools.

One encouraging finding is the presence of newer technologies in schools. Forty percent of schools reported using laptop computers, 30 percent have DVD drives installed on at least some computers, 15 percent have wireless networks, and 7 percent provide handheld computers to teachers. High schools are more likely to own laptops than middle or elementary schools, according to the report.

"The old observation that 'change in schools takes 30 years' is no longer true, and particularly not with eLearning—a still-gathering revolution that has been accomplished in a third that time," said Dale Mann, managing director of consulting firm Interactive Inc.

Computers and technology continue to penetrate into the classroom, the study says. More than half (54 percent) of the installed base of school computers are found in classrooms, and 90 percent of schools reported having internet access in at least some classrooms.

The ratio of students per instructional computer has improved from 7 to 1 in 1997 to slightly less than 4 to 1 in 2002. However, this ratio still counts some older computers that cannot support the needs of today's multimedia-rich computing environment. Multimedia computers make up only 62 percent of the installed base of instructional-use computers in schools, according to the report.

On average, almost six students share every internet-connected computer and six students share every multimedia computer.

Overall, U.S. public schools reported having 12.7 million instructional computers in 2002, up 12 percent from 11.3 million in 2001. Of those machines, 58 percent are PCs, 35 percent are Macintosh, and 7 percent are Apple IIs.