Welcome to Cyberschool is a book about two highly charged and often emotional discussions in today's society. One concerns the optimism and promise surrounding information technologies of computers and the internet; the other involves the growing pessimism and despair about the nation's schools. These narratives of technological optimism and educational pessimism converge with increasing frequency, as school groups, community leaders, and political rivals battle each other over the best way to wire the nation's schools, computerize every classroom, and "leave no child behind." Welcome to Cyberschool is the first book-length analysis of this confluence of technology and education in the information age.