A reader wants to know the answer:
“The LA Unified School District is going to spend $1 billion on iPads at a cost of $678 per device, more than the tablets cost in stores. They come with “partially developed” educational software and are being paid for by school construction bonds.
“There are currently over 16,000 repair requests across the District that have yet to receive a response. The Venice High visitor bleachers at its football field have been collapsing for years and are dangerous. Many schools need their air conditioning systems fixed. Ever try to teach literature to 40 kids in a non-air conditioned classroom? I guess it doesn’t matter now because LAUSD and the educational reform movement don’t care much about literature anyway.
“School construction bonds? Exactly which part of a school’s construction is an iPad? This deal reeks of collusion and kickbacks. Three LAUSD Board members own Apple stock. How on earth does the Board accept a deal for these devices that doesn’t include a discount? I mean they’re buying 660,000 units.
“Apple’s Mac Rumors site recommends NOT BUYING this current iPad edition because “updates are coming soon.” The bureaucrats at LAUSD responsible for this deal should go to work at the Pentagon. Maybe when this boondoggle is finished, they can sign a deal with Kohler or American Standard to replace all the toilets in LAUSD schools.
“Why hasn’t anyone on the LA School Board investigated this? Why hasn’t United Teachers of Los Angeles investigated this? Why hasn’t the LA Times or the LA Daily News investigated it?
“If I were still teaching, I’d feel as if I were working in an asylum.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Stunningly stupid.
FLERP: you are too kind. It wouldn’t hurt if you overstated your case sometimes.
🙂
What else could you expect from folks who worship the Holy Edumetrics of high-stakes standardized tests but wouldn’t know a modified Angoff from a bookmark method of choosing test items or what a standard deviation on a bell curve done of test scores looks like or is?
A billion here, a buyout there, an overpriced tablet here, a crushing long-term debt there—apparently Napoleon Bonaparte met their type two centuries ago:
“Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”
🙂
NOW I see why Napoleon was considered by some a great man. My own formulation is: “Never underestimate the power of incompetence.”
Great questions. Who will answer for them?
There are two classic films, Viridiana, and King of Hearts, which depict the inmates taking over the asylum….and coupled with the old films, Greed by Frank Norris, and Wall Street, we see art imitating life.
I have been telling my colleagues on this site that California, as with many other places, is filled with greedy ‘crazies; even in the field of education. It is the ‘might makes right’ situation that we face in our national politics, and it has permeated every part of our lives.
But still the TV ads promise a wonderful season of Dancing with the Stars.
How do we get lazy thinkers, coupled with lazy,devious, and self serving media to face what is happening so fast to American universal free education? Our culture, our society, has been fed this pap for so long that the enemy has indeed become us.
Literature and arts such as these breed subversive thoughts. Besides, David Coleman tells us that these things should be 30% max by the latter years of high school:
“There are two classic films, Viridiana, and King of Hearts, which depict the inmates taking over the asylum….and coupled with the old films, Greed by Frank Norris, and Wall Street, we see art imitating life.”
Here is LAUSD Board Member Steve Zimmer’s email: szimmer@lausd.net.
Ask him why he voted for it. Tell him this is only a small roll-out so far – and to stop it going any further. We want our money to go for teachers, books, etc.
Thanks Kim…I agree that the first order of business for LAUSD is to hire back teachers and make classes a teachable learning environment. Install AC in every classroom, buy enough books for every student, hire back the librarians and open the libraries.
And don’t vote for Jerry Brown again.
He knows it’s a first-phase rollout, and he knows what the next phase is. Below is the presentation that was made to the LAUSD Board before it voted to approve the full plan, including the financing aspect. Zimmer’s not mentioned in any of the stories as dissenting or abstaining, so I assume he was voting with the “yays.”
See page 9: http://laschoolboard.org/sites/default/files/CommonCoreTechTabletPresentation2-12-13regbd.pdf
I’m not well-educated about this, so I may be missing something important, but my kneejerk reaction is that financing technology purchases over 30 years because the district can’t otherwise afford them is the height of financial mismanagement, and that every one of these board members should be tossed out on their ear.
Zimmer wanted to use some of this windfall from Prop. 30 to hire back teachers, but Deasy rudely challenged him on that…as he did also when Zimmer wanted to ask our State House to correct the very flawed Parent Empowerment Act, but again Deasy played politics.
Deasy, with the amorphous PhD, is partnered with Austin of the amorphous law degree. Speaking of birds of a feather…and Deasy worked for Gates. The political and financial incest is telling. And most of the players are in some way in bed with ALEC.
I’m seeing no indication that Zimmerman isn’t a tool or a fool.
Zimmer, that is. The iPad autocorrect strikes again.
Good questions. This is ridiculous.
Does the city have an IG? This is truly stupefying.
How is this not illegal? In Ohio, funds can’t be mixed. Operations are one budget. Maintenance is another.
In California, not only in education do the funds mysteriously get mingled, but it is a common occurrence to misplace mulit millions of taxpayer money. Last year $50 million magically showed up after having been hidden for years, this for maintenance of state parks, but it only appeared after a ballot measure to raise more cash…for maintenance of state parks. And now we can even all carry guns into our state parks but folks still have to bring their own toilet paper.
It is a wonderful state if you can stomach the politics.
And the state, with each governor of either party, keeps trying to get their very dirty hands on the CalPERS retirement funds, the largest pool of retirement funding in the US, and put it in the general fund so it can be used to do with as these legislators choose.
Does anyone wonder at the rapidly bankrupt cities appearing in our Golden State?
Here is a good article about the issue…
L.A. Unified uses ‘construction bonds’ to buy $500 million in iPads
Thanks Cynthia for this link. It is excellent and should be read by all, but particularly those of us in California. Amazing that the Orange County Register can blog us truth, but the LA Times cannot. Glad that at least today Howard Blume did finally bring up the real issues of the iPads.
This should become a class action lawsuit with all California taxpayers suing Brown and his cohorts who created this costly mendacious mess in LAUSD, including the Broad-trained Deasy, and the School Board. But of course that is an action in futility since they are all held harmless to suits and only We the People would be paying for this ourselves.
Clearly these construction bonds of Prop.30, which we will be paying off for many decades, should never have been used to enrich the billionaires who own the tech companies and whose watchword for profit is Planned Obsolescence.
Again I publically apologize to Molly Munger for chastizing her initiative in the LA Times last October. We all should have voted for her Prop. 38 and the money would have been dedicated directly to schools. Thus we would have avoided this massive fraud perpetuated by Jerry Brown and the Broad/Deasy profiteers.
I’ve seen before that you blame this debacle on Jerry Brown, but this is an LAUSD exclusive. Deasy filed for, and got, a waiver on implementing race to the top, which Brown did not want. The school board hired Deasy, not Brown. This is being paid for by a LOCAL bond issue for construction, passed some years ago. Now that enrollment is dropping, the district is not expanding. Instead of putting the money into repairs, it’s buying this ridiculous, obsolete system to support a ridiculous, unexamined testing process. Deasy is putting Prop 30 money into setting up a “support system” for implementing Common Core – more out of classroom positions as class sizes continue to grow. The LAUSD budget is huge, but the reasoning and money behind the I-pad purchase comes locally.
Melissa,
Jerry Brown who strong armed California citizens with threats of losing school buses, and other such necessities, got us to work and to vote to pass Prop. 30 instead of Munger’s Prop. 38. Last winter in his state of the State public address he announced that the greater share of this funding would go to help inner city students. Many middle/upper class voters shouted loudly against this, and many educators thought it was a good idea. Then came the bomb when he announced that major funding, $1 billion, would go to schools to buy pads of some sort to prepare these inner city students for CC testing. This is all on record.
It was thereafter that LAUSD/Deasy and some other districts, 8 all told, got the waiver after going to DC in the Spring and meeting with Arne. Again all on record. There is enough blame and foolish decisions to go around. LAUSD is not a shining light on how to run the second largest and most diverse school district in the nation but Brown, Villaraigosa, Perez, and others are big players in this game.
With Ratiff now joining the other true educators on the Board, the new Prez, and Zimmer, a ray of hope is beamed to us. We have a preponderance of good Board members for the first time in many years. But we must all keep reminding them that they are in charge of Deasy, not the other way around.
And as an added stab in the back, Garcetti chose Melendez for his Education rep…she who cut an amazing pay deal and who is a supporter of charter schools. It is a tough world!
What does Prop 30 or Governor Brown have to do with this? The iPad money is coming from Measures R & Y. This argument takes the real issue out of focus. Still, it would probably come as a surprise to the voters who supported those 30-year construction bonds that they would be used for technological toys with a 3-year shelf life.
Follow the money
And you can bet
It flows in circles
Down the toilet.
sad but true. Look at how many districts all over the country are buying this stuff. As stated in the article the existing malfunctioning technology still hasn’t been fixed. The waste of taxpayer money is staggering.
Yes, Jon…too true. And Melissa forgets that it was Eli Broad, so I keep hearing, who pushed the LAUSD Board into hiring Deasy without a search committee finding any competitive candidates.
Think ALEC all the way around this misadventure!
Such a deal for Deasy! Maybe our next Supt. will be Eli’s pet protégé, Michelle Rhee.
Susan Ohanian is a good reporter on LAUSD and Deasy.
Melendez and Deasy were in the same graduating class for Supts. in 2006 from the Broad Academy. Does anyone doubt that Eli pulls the strings just about everywhere, and certainly has way too much power with LAUSD.
I saw tablets on sale on HSN yesterday for $149.
This $1 billion iPad project is, according to LAUSD Supt. Deasy, forced by the creation of the Common Core Standards and the online tests they will produce.
That’s another shining example of how corporate America is strip mining our education system. Computer manufacturers, testing services, software companies – all of them get to feed from the trough created by the oncoming Common Core Standards.
And on another note, LAUSD Deputy Chief of Instruction Jaime Aquino,is a former muckety muck at Pearson Education, Inc., a player in the educational testing field. Gee, do you think he might have something to do with this?
“strip mining” – that’s perfect. I plan to steal it.
That’s weird, because we’re being told in Utah that we don’t have the ability to do these tests on I-Pads. No app or something.
Yoiks…more new info. Never knew that Jaime with the charming smile was a Pearson huckster. Deasy said to me some months back that Jaime is his stand-in often as Asst. Supt. Things are coming together. Thanks to all here, and special thanks to Zorro, Cynthia, Michelle, and Flerp for opening my eyes wider. I will use all you have taught me today when I give two talks next week at the university on the topic of Parent Revolution and Privatization.
And again, thanks Diane, for making this kind of collegial interchange possible.
This Common Core is sponging $ from districts’ traditional needs:
Common Core training, curriculum development and materials for 15 suburban NY districts was estimated to reach $4,094,820. Much of this to Pearson, likely.
Click to access brief_8_education.pdf
No discount for buying 660,000 soon-to-be-obsolete units??!
My grocery store gives me a discount if I buy two cans of soup!
The school officials who approved those contracts should all lose their jobs and be required to repay their salaries. The Apple negotiators who made that deal should be charged with fraud.
Funny you mention soup. I imagine lots of teachers eat soup–Balanced meal for not much money. (Maybe I shouldn’t tell that secret or there might be a special tax imposed on soup).
The last secret of school teachers to healthful living. . . canned soup.
Let’s hear it for soup.
What is the ipad preloaded with? The amplify is loaded and includes connectivity. A data security nightmare but not even close in cost to the iPad.
http://www.amplify.com/tablet#tablet-specs
Does anyone have iPad specs?
Isn’t Amplify owned by Rupert Murdoch and now headed by Joel Klein?
Oh, my. As quickly as computers are “updated” and software is “outdated” I would say that 30 years is a HUGE mistake because unfortunately the computer companies don’t give you free upgrades on your purchases.
A $5 book needs no updating.
Good point EK…unless it is a Texas text book filled with the views of the Cheneys, Grover Norquist, and Heartland Institute.
EK- while I admire your comment, $5 books don’t exist, at least for testbooks, more like 50-90 bucks each, new.
AMEN!
The county next to mine has had Mac Books for everyone in all of its high schools for a year now, added middle school students this year and just announced that by January 2014 Mac Books will be in all students’ hands down through third grade and all students in K-2 will get I Pads. Interestingly, they just got permission to partner with Troy University to run a Virtual high school; they said their high schools were overcrowded and they didn’t have the money to build right now.
“Virtual high school; they said their high schools were overcrowded and they didn’t have the money to build right now.”
Maybe this is the plan and they don’t feel they need to use building funds for “bricks and mortar” schools” how sad…
Why use school construction bonds for school construction when you can use them for iPads that will be obsolete in three years? That way, voters get what they didn’t pay for, and will pay for them for 25 years.
The LAUSD school board and supt. should have their pictures under “conflict of interest” in the illustrated dictionary of corporate greed. And for any teacher who thinks the iPads will be great for looking at primary sources, taking virtual tours, or doing anything remotely associated with good teaching, think again. The iPads come with Pearson training and scripted, scheduled lessons. Works well with class sizes in the forties and non credentialed teachers. I don’t know if GPS is activated but it seems like another perfect InBloom invasion of privacy. Such a blatent, greedy decision.
Ouch…Michelle, thanks for this info. I have heard that they also have to pay for each student’s home to be adapted to wireless…so the neighbors will know how they are doing…hacking is easy for that. But did not think of this as an InBloom hacking possibility.
It just keeps getting uglier.
My school has been partiipating in an Ipad pilot for two years. We paid over $600 per unit, also. I too question this expense as we mainly use it instead of an Algebra I textbook, but we could have bought twice as many kids a laptop for the same money. Also, now we are running into problems with so many kids being wireless. Guess what? Our infrastructure doesn’t support all this! As for testing on an Ipad, it is already hard for kids to test on a computer. I am typing on my Ipad right now, and I am way slower without a real keyboard. As far as I know, we have not published any data on our pilot program, but the math test scores my principal raved about this spring were not due to Ipads but due to kids we put in a double block for math, meaning they basically had math for two periods instead of one. Sure, they can rewatch a video of the math lesson online at home, but the most gains were made with kids who had more access to a teacher.
I surely hope those iPads don’t have autocorrect. I have frequent errors because my kindle and android change what I type. Can you imagine taking a test on these? Then think about being a child taking a test on one.
Absurd…
If you go to page 10 and 11 you will see the true cost of this game it is $1,962/I-Pad all inclusive with their numbers. This is double presented at the board of education. How do you supply 560,000 students and 33,000 teachers with these for $500 million Howard Blume. Can anyone count. 593,000 X 1,962 = $1,163,466,000. That is a long ways from $500,000,000. Must be stupid math they use. This is what I constantly run into doing fraud work. Lies and more lies when you do the comparative work on their numbers. If they do not add up everyway they are no good. I just used their numbers for the total cost they printed and are on the power point. It is amazing how stupid they are to try to blantly pull this off. I thank the commenter for posting this power point. I had not seen it. Now I have them. Double money once again just like the rest of the school construction program since 1998 and Measure BB. 1/2 of $27 billion is 13.5 billion for free. Not bad for a days work is it. It is all percentages and if you do not do the financial work you cannot win. This only took me 15 minutes and that was to read it and run the numbers and that is all. Anyone can do this 5th grade math if they want to.
4
Hi George…must commend you publically for warning us all about Prop. 30 and construction bonds long ago. And it came to pass….but LAUSD seems ‘too big to fail,’ so they, and Jerry Brown, will continue on with the fraud.
And as to doing the math, try to do it using the CC new math. You will be far into your dotage before you solve it.
We do work in an asylum…
Is anyone well-versed enough to write an on-line petition? I would happily send it out to our school google group and put on FB. This is an outrage. I will be emailing Deasy and Zimmer about this.
Honestly, after 27 years doing this teaching thing and watching the evolution of technology, I can comfortably state that if every computer in our school(PK-6th) was removed it wouldn’t affect student outcomes in any way. Sure, teach them keyboarding, which we used to call typing. Now in middle school introduce technology in a cost efficient manner, whatever that may entail. In high school, full access to whatever is available and not going to break the budget.
At least in California the iPads would have some educational value unlike Detroit where thirteen million dollars a year of scarce property tax money meant as an educational levy for DPS is going to be diverted to paying bondholders of debt being created to build a hockey arena of primary benefit to the billionaire owner of the Detroit Red Wings hockey team (they already have two arenas in Detroit so why not another one.)
“(Governor) Snyder said today that the arena would be “a huge momentum shift” for economic activity in the corridor between Detroit’s downtown and the Midtown district, which has experienced an influx of businesses and residents…
Almost 60 percent of the funds to pay for the arena would come from taxpayers. Bonds would be backed by a combination of about $15 million in annual payments from Detroit’s Downtown Development Authority and $11.5 million from Olympia. Wayne County may also provide support, according to a July 24 memo.
In December, Michigan’s legislature revived the ability of the development authority to take a portion of school-tax revenue generated by property on 615 downtown acres.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-03/detroit-billionaires-get-hockey-arena-as-bankrupt-city-suffers.html
From what I hear, kickbacks is an understatement. Pearson, the “educational software” that was chosen to be loaded on the iPads was never a working model, and chosen anyway. Also, according to a Pearson engineer who was supposedly working on the software, there was no way it could be a working model for at least another 2 years. According, to one “tipsy” Pearson VP at a cocktail party, they had their deal in the bag way before the RFP was even issued. Stinky stuff!
How could the bond oversight committee actually approve this deal when we (a specific school in LAUSD) still have classrooms with chalkboards, desks from the 1950s, an internet infrastructure that constantly lets us down – we can NEVER play video because there is never enough bandwidth, a library with a book collection that has an average copyright date of 1989, only 4 library books per pupil, 10 computers in the library with an average age of 2006, 48 students in a 10th grade English class, 45 students in a biology class, no art classes, no vocal music classes. What we could use instead of ipads is every classroom is a smart classroom, new desks that kids can actually fit into, multiple computer labs, a new, larger, tech friendly library with at least 14 books per pupil, art classes, wood shop, computer labs, the list goes on. What is going to happen is before the entire roll out of ipads, LAUSD is going to realize either by their own admission or a lawsuit that this experiment is not going to work. Also, voters within the boundaries of LAUSD are never going to vote for another bond measure. Therefore, this specific school will not be getting ipads nor new construction, new books, new desktop computers anytime soon.
LA Schools have always lied to the public to get their bonds passed. Each time, they use the same videos of leaky roofs and dilapidated rest rooms, etc. Then they get an blow the money on stuff they don’t need. You mentioned air conditioning repair. Hello! LA Schools really don’t need air conditioning for the few hot days they get during the school year. That was one of the boondoggles of the last major bond issue. Not only was it expensive, but committed to increased on-going operational and maintenance costs. A one-time purchase of iPads is an investment in depreciating technology. Next year they will be back needing replacements due to obsolescence, breakage, and theft. Not to mention that the teachers will not have a clue what to do with them.
The petition is here: please sign it:
http://k12newsnetwork.com/blog/2013/09/06/lausd-ipad-deal-ipaid-too-much/
The sad part is those tablets will be useless junk if they even work in 3-4 years, but the important thing is that Apple has just a little more money to brag about at their next quarterly report. Who needs infrastructure when you can have magical resolutionary tablets from the great Apple.