Freshman English and math classrooms at the Philadelphia High School for Girls are now equipped with an interactive white board and with laptops for each student and teacher. The classroom upgrades at Girls’ High and 12 other local high schools are the first modernizations supported by the state’s new Classrooms for the Future initiative, which aims ultimately to provide laptop computers for all of Pennsylvania’s high school English, math, social studies, and science classrooms. Governor Rendell has proposed increasing funding for the statewide program from $20 million to $90 million in 2007-08.

So reads the caption in the Spring, 2007 edition of the Philadelphia Public School Notebook. The program was also featured in an article from the Associated Press ( Pa. schools say high-school laptop program works so far ) saying that, despite what the New York papers might report on their schools, the Philadephia laptop program is a success. The article profiles a 10 th grade composition class at Red Land High School designing brochures and multimedia slide shows to sell their fiction consumer products.

Source: Philadelphia Public School Notebook