Mooresville School District's Enviable Progress

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/education/mooresville-school-district-a-laptop-success-story.html?pagewanted=1&ref=us

This article by Alan Schwarz for the New York Times is about the Mooresville School District in Mooresville, North Carolina, and their conversion to digital technology. It describes the successes the district has had through giving each student a laptop, and creating more collaboration between teachers and students. The article uses several different types of appeals in justifying its claims. It uses appeals to logos by citing evidence of higher graduation rates, and higher state test scores. It uses ethos appeals by talking to teachers from the school who enjoy the system, students who have found the system advantageous, and by interviewing other educators who have gone to visit the school district. The article also uses pathos appeals by explaining that the school districts works in part by removing some of the many common emotions felt by students in traditional school models like embarrassment, angst, and others. I believe that the main claim of the article is that digital technology used in the classroom can help students learn, but not for the obvious reasons. The grounds for the argument are the data that the article gives about graduation rates and test scores. The warrant then is the part that explains that many other school districts have incorporated technology in a similar way, but those schools have not found the same success as the Mooresville district. The article also does a great job of discussing potential flaws in the system, but it does not try to refute any of these potential flaws it merely brings up their existence.