I work for a Gold Microsoft partner company that provides technology solutions to school districts and can tell you that I have been doing tons of meetings with my Surface since it came out and every district I have talked to says this is an outstanding way to go as a student device.
My opinion is the same. Now that they have patched this a few times the responsiveness is very good and in my opinion equal to my iPad 3, which by the way is now collecting dust. Giving a student a real keyboard and mouse as well as Word and Excel in a small and light device gives them a "real" laptop replacement, as well as an entertainment device. Honestly the only real negatives I have right now are the mail client is not enterprise ready (meaning it needs some additional features) and the inability to sync Skydrive files to the device ( which is baffling to me). Otherwise they really got this device right.