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The millions of stimulus dollars to be spent on modernizing classrooms won't transform learning if students can't participate in the online forums that are reshaping the economy, journalism, government and society. If government has any helpful role to play in making school Web surfing safer, it should fund the development of online safety curricula and research into effective supervision software and strategies. Requiring more filtering would throw more resources at a failed approach. Another emerging and misguided strategy is requiring certain Web sites, such as social networks, to use age verification software; evading these new obstacles won't be much harder than evading filters.

The biggest reduction is $212 million in the Education Department. This could include a $22 million reduction in a program called "Classrooms for the Future,'' which has been supplying computers for high schools across the state. "This is a tough cut for me to make,'' said Mr. Rendell, who created the program three years ago and said educators around the state like it.