Someone got causation and correlation mixed up again!

SMH reports that a visiting US professor reckons that KRudd's computers in homes strategy maybe counter productive.

SMH report here.

The report essentially says that "Yes, kids with computers at home tend to do better at school, that is, there is a CORRELATION between home computers and academic achievement." BUT the more important qualifier is that computers at home do not CAUSE kids to do better academically.

That is, a child might do better academically because their PARENTS are more educated or more well off, and these parents are also likely to have a computer at home. That is, A and B (academic achievement and computers) are caused by C (parents' background). Not B causes A.

Therefore, if you simply introduce B into a house (computers), it may not affect C (parents) who are ultimately the main cause of academic achievement (A).

This is exactly the thing that happened a while back in the US. According to Freakonomics (the book, not the blog), some President promised free books in the homes of every school kid because studies had shown that academic achievers at school tended to have more books at home. What the study didn't show was that the achievement may have been due to the parents' educational background. It was this background which caused both the child's academic achievement, and the number of books in the house.

Surprise, surprise, when the books arrived, nothing happened, because books don't cause academic achievement.

So, will the same thing happen with free or taxpayer subsidised computers in Aussie homes? Professor Vigdor says that in North Carolina, the introduction of computers actually made the results of some school students "significantly worse."

Are we ready for a taxpayer funded education devolution?