A recent—and controversial—study from the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based National Bureau of Economic Research casts a critical eye on the eRate, the $2.25 billion federal program that provides telecommunications discounts to schools and libraries.

Looking at data from California schools, the study concludes the eRate was successful at connecting that state's schools to the internet, accelerating the process by as many as four years. But the program has done nothing to improve the test scores of schoolchildren so far, researchers say.

Supporters of the eRate say that's too broad a leap to make. They argue that it is unfair to judge the success of the program yet based on its impact on academic achievement, given that schools are only now beginning to reap the benefits of classroom internet access.

Besides, they say, the eRate was intended only to provide the infrastructure necessary for schools to take advantage of the internet, and it's up to schools themselves to supply the training and support needed to make the web an effective teaching tool. Criticizing the eRate for not raising test scores is like saying expenditures on textbooks and chalkboards were wrong because students aren't learning, they say.

While the two University of Chicago researchers who authored the study acknowledge that test scores are dependent on a number of factors beyond the mere existence of internet access in schools, they say they are surprised so few data have been collected on such a costly government program to ensure that it has tangible benefits.

For the report, titled "The Impact of Internet Subsidies in Public Schools," the researchers analyzed the number of internet connections in California's schools from 1996 to 2000.

During that period, the eRate provided California schools with nearly $937 million in internet access subsidies. By the 2000-01 fiscal year, two-thirds of the state's classrooms were connected to the web.

"Overall, by the final year of the sample, there were about 66 percent more internet classrooms than there would have been without the subsidy," the study found.

After finding that the eRate had improved internet access—especially in poor schools—the researchers checked to see whether student achievement on the state test also had improved. But increased access to the web apparently hasn't translate into better academic results, based on scores for the state-mandated Stanford Achievement Test, they say.

"The increase in internet connections has had no measurable impact on any measure of student achievement," the study concluded, though it acknowledged, "It is possible that it is too early to evaluate long-term investments in information technology, or that the gains took place in areas other than test scores (better researched papers, for example)."

In an interview with eSchool News, Austan Goolsbee, the economics professor who co-authored the study along with colleague Jonathan Guryan, said the shortage of data available about the eRate and its impact on educational outcomes left him wondering what the technology was being used for in schools.