No, the computers they're handing out to the kids to do work on need to be locked down. There's no way that a school district would have time and resources to help every kid work through fixing the issues on their computer after they've bollixed something up. And they don't want the kids using a broken computer as an excuse for not being able to do their homework.

What they should add though is a IT admin/hacker elective that would be like shop class. They'd have a bunch of hacker computers that anyone in the class can have root access and would be allowed to try things out.