How Schools Can Finance
Computers for Free
with Proportional Reading
This article describes how schools can use Proportional Reading to finance computers at little or no cost, increase teachers' salaries, and dramatically lower budget costs. Doing this involves realizing the many applications of Proportional Reading for your teaching staff, student body and community. You will see that it is perfectly possible to make this major improvement in education at little or no initial out-of-pocket cost to the school whatsoever.
Getting Full Use
Proportional Reading works for every student in the school. It enables all middle and upper school students to read, organize and review better and with much more enjoyment. In addition, Proportional Reading is vitally important for enabling poor and average readers at all ages and levels to instantly read and comprehend. Finally, all elementary school students and all ESL and bilingual students can benefit greatly from the human voice and text correlation. By using your computers and software to benefit all students with Proportional Reading instead of just a few, the cost per student drops and everyone will support the program.
Once text is scanned and put into ascii format it is available not only for the special needs kids but for every student and teacher in the immediate school and the entire school district both at school and at home. There is no additional labor cost for sharing electronic text once it is prepared. Furthermore, the basic electronic text can be used instantly in many different ways by each student. Therefore, it is easily possible to amortize initial scanning expense over many types of classes, many schools, many years and many individual uses.
Note: Proportional Reading does not eliminate books; it simply enables more people to read and enjoy and succeed with existing books. Proportional Reading is keyed to the actual page numbers of books so students can refer back to the book at any point. The original book is used for all charts, tables, graphs, illustrations and pictures, as well as for optionally following along in the text.
Using Existing Free E-text
A whole library of free material is available right now already in E-text. Over 3,000 classics and works of great literature are available free on the internet already scanned into ascii text. Essentially every great work of literature before 1910 is now available for free in electronic text on the Internet.
In addition, the daily news and many magazines and newspapers including Time Magazine, and the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal (partial edition) are available on the Internet or American Online in E-text.
Thirdly, Grollier's Encyclopedia is available on a CD (33,000 articles and 10,000,000 words) for about $30.00. Any of these works can instantly be read with Proportional Reading either silently or out loud with real human voice without any scanning.
In addition, any text on a web site can be selected for free and read with Proportional Reading either silently or out loud with real human voice.
Increasing Teachers' Salaries
Now let's look more specifically at how teachers make more money with PR. There are four major approaches. The first way is to make the teachers' product (the students) worth more. The second way is to create cost savings which can be redirected into increased teacher salaries. The third way is to make money with the computers and Proportional Reading program after regular school hours. The fourth approach is to make the job of teaching more psychologically rewarding so that the individual costs to teachers of burnout and frustration are greatly reduced.
Ultimately, teachers and administrators are paid in proportion to their value to the community. This comes down to meaning the value of their product, which is educated youngsters. If a teacher can produce a far better product for the same amount of money, then the teacher's value to the community goes up and so will his or her wages. The best way to do this is to make learning so much fun and so enjoyable and so successful that it favorably competes with alternatives like drugs, teenage pregnancy and dropping out or getting involved with the law. By empowering learning disabled students and at-risk students as well as all average and good students, the value of the school product to the community goes up because downstream social costs decrease and students are making a positive contribution to their community in a form which can also be taxed (taxes on wages) for additional community revenue. Savings and enhanced town earnings can go in part to higher teacher salaries. Proportional Reading helps this happen in three ways:
1) During the school day students use computers and Proportional Reading constantly for real one-on-one interactive instruction, not "getting ready" time or "group time" where individual attention is all but absent. The value of this type of computer-student interaction is far more than the value of the temporaries.
2) After students have left, the computers are set to record text being read out loud or read silently onto video tape. Since any Macintosh computer with a small accessory can record screen activity onto any existing VCR, teachers come to school in the morning and pick up video tapes of the text read out loud in real human voice, or read silently, just the way individual students want. These tapes are labeled and put into the school library and lent out to students to watch at home, or at school, on TV, with and without the use of earphones and clickers (for instant repeat). This way literally thousands of hours of individual voice and text instruction are provided each student at no additional cost in teacher time or for equipment.
3) Each day each teacher uploades typed copies of outlines and the e-text version of what is currently being read in the class onto diskettes for students to take home or into the teacher's directory in the school web site or on-line bulletin board. During the afternoon and evening, all students at home download necessary current e-text onto their own home computers for study. Outlines and homework assignments are also online. Graphs, charts, tables, illustrations and pictures are examined in the actual books. All students require a password to get onto the school website. This is not a public access program. Students can e-mail to other students and their teachers. Doing this eliminates all need to make videos and diskettes. It also eliminates all hassle about transferring disks and videos manually to and from students. It also justifies and gets everybody onto the internet.
Making Money by Cutting Expenses
Proportional Reading allows expenses to be drastically cut; these savings can pay for computers and higher wages. Many inclusion programs require hordes of additional staff. These people are paid $100-$150 per day. Since a Power PC Macintosh computer all equipped costs about $2,000.00, one can add a new computer every twenty days for each temporary staff position which one eliminates (1.5 new computers per month per position eliminated). If you eliminate ten such positions this means 15 new computers paid for in full each month, or 135 new computers in the 9 month school year. These computers can sit right in the individual classrooms and be used by the students in inclusion programs either in groups or individually, with or without earphones, to keep up with the other students. Students first grade up easily manage controls by themselves. After the school has as many computers as it wants, on-going savings can go directly into wages.
Making Money with Adult Education
After school, adult beginners and ESL adults from local businesses or the community at large rent time on the computers to develop employee literacy. Either the parent businesses make block grants or individuals pay fifteen dollars a week. Since the average Macintosh Power PC computer can be bought at national retail chains for $60.00 a month, we are talking here about a pay off cost of $15 dollars a week. Since an adult would rent a period of time of let us say 1 1/2 hours a night five days a week for the $15 and/or videos for home use, at least three such people could be scheduled for each computer per afternoon and evening. It is obvious to see that each such computer bought this way would enable two more identical computers to be bought instantly, as well as the original unit paid off. We are talking here about 100% immediate financing. Necessary staff wages could also be financed out of the extra money.
By doing a little math one sees that the next two computers will instantly generate more than enough monthly revenue for four more computers and these four computers will instantly generate enough money for eight computers. You can see that as you serve the adult beginner and ESL population you are not only helping them, but also getting school computers for nothing, and doing so almost instantly and with a healthy margin for error. One staff person should be able to handle 24 adults reading on computers.
Obviously, the local bank could take the place of chain store credit and enable better prices through an Apple Education dealer.
Using The Local Bank for Financing Home Computers
The local bank will finance home computers at very low interest rates, if the risk of bad loans is removed. The way to do this is very simple. The school guarantees to find new users to pick up the monthly lease rental on defaulted units. This is no problem because the new parents assume possession and remaining monthly lease obligations. This program is attractive because new lessees end up getting units for a fraction of the original cost. The parents who are moving or who have defaulted get out clean, and the bank looses no money. Lease buyout is available for $1 at the end of the lease period to whomever is in possession. This approach is ideal for any parent without available retail credit.
Government Financing
Furthermore, the major way the Federal Government finances special education equipment is to allow costs to be deducted in full, directly from gross income, before taxes are figured. This means that the tax savings can more than offset the interest charge you pay a bank. You end up with zero interest financing. Tax savings can also reduce actual principal as well as interest.
Reallocated Family Funds
Quite frankly the difference between not being able to read and being able to read is the difference between making $15,000.00 a year and $45,000.00 a year. This is a $30,000.00 difference each year. Multiplied against a 40 year working career this difference amounts to 1.2 million dollars per individual. Spending $2 a day for two years to buy the computer to make over a million dollars is blatantly doable. This amounts to giving up one pack of cigarettes or one fancy beer each day or doing 3 hours of work at a fast food chain at minimum wage each week. Anybody can do this. Not only can everybody in the family contribute to making this happen, but the computer can address family literacy for the whole family, as well as information and word processing needs for all members of the family. Furthermore, the computer as entertainment can be far less expensive and far more rewarding than movies or trips. Savings here alone can pay the monthly cost for software and equipment.
Scanning Books Efficiently
The best way to scan a lot of text is for one scanner to be dedicated just to scanning the pages. Every 20 pages another file is created. These files are transferred over the computer network, or on special cartridges, to other computers where volunteers zone and OCR the text and spell check the text and then save it in ascii format. Actually, one person can operate two scanners simultaneously without any trouble. Wherever possible, scan two pages of an open book at a time. Volunteers or students on special scholarships can staff and handle a bank of computers processing transferred files, or cartridges can be taken home or sent home with students and processed at home by parent volunteers. Having the text scanned for the teachers and students is the key to making this program work.
Grants and Local Service Organizations
Local Fraternal Organizations and business will be happy to fund an initial program which can grow on its own into a self-sufficient program to help not only students but also the adults in the business community. A ten page paper describing Proportional Reading is available for free. This paper is designed to be directly inserted into a grant proposal.
Special Money for Blind and Deaf Students
Proportional Reading directly helps visually impaired students and deaf students. Large type and hearing text read out loud in real human voice help blind and visually impaired students. Reading by a visual simulation of speech gives deaf students the fluency which they have never heard. Special monies are available for these groups. This special money can fund software and hardware which can be used for everybody.
Saving Money on IEP and Advocacy Legal Battles
The average legal advocacy battle costs a school and involved parents at least $10,000.00. Proportional Reading offers schools and parents an alternative to legal battles and expensive alternative school placements. Savings can be directed into computers and salaries and overhead reduction.
Cutting Costs for Recorded Books
Getting recorded books takes a long time and is very slow. Often the speaking is slurred. Proportional Reading can do a better job instantly and for free. Using already allocated IEP money for required software and hardware, instead of purchasing recorded books, can create tremendous savings as well as student empowerment. Savings alone can finance hardware and software.
Service to Business
With your Proportional Reading software and computers you can make video tapes for individuals to learn to read using the company's own manuals. This way the material can be sent home to be viewed on TV and the sponsoring company gets their message to the employee at the same time the employees are learning to read. This service is worth money to industry.
Companies may also want to present text silently to all employees using this VCR approach, even to good readers. You can do this for local companies for a fee.
Audio tapes for busy executives can also be created during the night wherein requested text material that has been scanned is played on the computer with real human voice and recorded directly onto tape for these executives to listen to in the car. Real money can be generated by these services.
With these many ideas teachers can get state of the art software and computers at little or no expense, teachers' salaries can be raised, and administrative costs can be cut. Most important, all students can benefit individually by thousands of hours of extra help at essentially no cost. Teacher boredom and burnout can be replaced by truly empowering students with high tech lifelong tools and training for immediate success.