Columnist Steve Lopez says that the L.A. officials rushed into the iPad deal without thinking through the problems.
Students broke the security codes to use them for fun.
Many went missing.
Biggest uncertainty: is the content any good?
Who will be held accountable, he asks.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What a ridiculous mess.
The inside story on LA schools’ iPad rollout: “a colossal disaster”
“On Friday I spoke to two LAUSD contractors who have first-hand knowledge of the rollout. They agreed to give an insiders’ view of the controversy on background. There’s an incredible litany of problems here that reads like a primer on what NOT to do with a major deployment of technology in a school district.”
http://digital.hechingerreport.org/content/the-inside-story-on-la-schools-ipad-rollout-a-colossal-disaster_914/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HechingerReport+%28Hechinger+Report%29
John Deasy will be held accountable. Just give it a few months (or weeks).
Linda…he has to be held accountable right now because the Board is due to sign his next 3 year contract. We must all protest and make this Board understand that they work for us, and we want him gone.
We also must keep the pressure on them to do a real search with our input, and not hire any more Eli Broad mandated administrators. This is far from over. It takes the concerted effort of all of us, all of the time, to make progress at LAUSD.
In addition, educators in LAUSD must get active and elect UTLA officers who will not collude with the Board of Ed and with the LAUSD administration. Cooperate and mediate is de riguer, but collusion and slipshod representation should not tolerated by union members. David Garcia jumped into the fray today, and Alex Caputo-Pearl is running, to overtake Fletcher.
I also worry about the new edict that union members can vote online since there are endless hacking scandals such as just appeared today in Bassett. It may be wiser to have mailed ballots that can show the paper trail and have a receipt attached.
Please review my long post about all this only a few days ago.
Long time ago I was teaching in CA and Apple gave every school an Apple Computer. Most schools drank the Kool Aid and were hooked. There were fund raisers to buy more computers and of course to buy the software programs. That Trojan Horse gift has reaped fantastic benefits for Apple. Now they don’t have to give anything away as school districts remain hooked and will spend millions for these tangible items. Of course teacher salaries are over looked as well as libraries and basic classroom needs … but we do have the latest electronic toy.
Many interesting comments/insights in this column. Here’s an intriguing comment about school board oversight:
“Steve Zimmer, a board member, said he isn’t ready to judge the software, but he agreed that he and other district officials may have had their eye on the wrong ball in making a huge financial commitment without more discussion.
There was “a lot of talk about the machine and…very little talk about software,” said Zimmer, who was motivated in part by his conviction that tablets can serve as an equalizer in a district with so many disadvantaged students. He said he put faith in Deasy and the procurement process because “frankly we are not equipped as board members to micromanage.”
I’d have to disagree with him there.
We’re talking about a superintendent who’s in a race to spend $1 billion, counting bringing Wi-Fi to classrooms. And let’s not forget that Deasy was featured as a pitchman in a commercial for iPads, and Deputy Supt. Jaime Aquino (who just resigned in a snit over the tech implementation) once worked for the parent company of Pearson, the firm hired to provide curriculum for the iPads.
So, yeah, do some micromanaging. Hold people accountable. Ask questions.”
Steve Zimmer will be introducing Diane tonight at her gig at Occidental College. I hope lots of teachers and parents attend. Tomorrow night her talk at CSUN sold out days ago. She has a huge support base in LA despite that it is the home base of Eli Broad.
Thanks Joe for the reminders…I posted this too last week…and really too much verbiage from me since Jaime resigned…probably forced to fall on his own petard to save Deasy from disgrace and termination.
Hopefully the LA public is not fooled by all this subterfuge and sweetheart dealing by these Eli Broad-trained guys. I hope the Board of Ed does an entire purge of LAUSD and gets rid of all of the business model Broad Academy clones hired by Deasy in the last three years. Broad nepotism permeates LAUSD…and so sadly even our city leaders.
Deasy must leave NOW.
Finally even the LA Times is seeing the light.
“who was motivated in part by his conviction that tablets can serve as an equalizer in a district with so many disadvantaged students. He said he put faith in Deasy and the procurement process because “frankly we are not equipped as board members to micromanage.”
Ah, ‘conviction’ and ‘faith’. Remember, these are the data-based folks. Just looking at the numbers. Agnostics!
Except he sounds like it’s a religion.
No bid deal, Zimm, it’s just a billion dollars worth of iPads. Nice work by the Board.
No “big deal,” I meant. Arguably “no bid,” too.
Today’s Ed Week has a story about Lewisville HS in Texas. Just for starters, here is the agreement that parents and students have to sign. Compare this to the mess that LAUSD created. If you go on their website, you can view more materials that inform and prepare parents and students and clearly list everyone’s responsibilities. This school does not compare to the demographics of LAUSD. Lewisville has 1/3 white and only 1/3 disadvantage. Just 13% are ELL. Even with that, their policies on sending computers home are incredibly detailed. From what has been reported, some LAUSD schools just gave the iPads to students either without parents and students signing agreements or without signed agreements returned to the school. Should we be trusting the same administrators, including Superintendent Deasy who lead the charge, to fix these problems? When it’s about spending one billion dollars of tax payer money, the answer should be a resounding “NO”.
Click to access 1toX_agreement.pdf
They couldn’t put them in one school first and try them out?
These vendors should be paying THEM to place the products in schools on a trial basis. Instead of politicians selling product for them, they can compete amongst themselves for the business. I’m not begging them to come into schools. If they want in, they should have to earn a place in the new market.
What’s the deal? The parents are responsible for a $600 item that may be lost, stolen, or robbed? Something tells me any reasonable person could see that an iPad is more of an attractive target than a textbook.
Looks like a crass disregard for safety where any prudent school district would not put their students at risk.
As the most recognizable brand in the world, APPLE should be DONATING $1 billion in laptops/ipads/whatevers to the LASUD!!! and NOT collecting PROFIT on them from an IMPOVERISHED school district that is exchanging IPADS for TEACHERS in yet another corporate wealth grab…. I will NEVER buy another apple product — EVER!
So we’re doing math test prep at home with an online program in my district and I watched two 11 year old boys go through it last night-my son and his friend who doesn’t have internet access at home.
The program is supposed to tailor to the child, but it’s dumb. If the boys get an answer wrong they are given more problems to complete the assigned series.
The problem is it doesn’t matter HOW they got it wrong. So if one of them makes an entry error, adds an extra zero in a series of zeroes, he gets 8 additional problems. But if the other makes a profound error, a completely wrong answer, he ALSO gets 8 additional problems.
Would a human being treat the two boys the same? I don’t think so. How is this “customized”? It’s the opposite of “customized”. I guess if they had been working alone they’d never know the thing just has one response to a wrong answer.
I don’t even want to know what we paid for it.
This sounds like Common Core.
I don’t know what it is. We started getting test prep sent home last year. I assume they crammed as much prep as they could into the school day, so had to send it home. Maybe the school is tired of prepping, so decided parents had to share the load. If so, I don’t blame them.
Last year the kids were calling it “papers” because it was narrow strips of paper with problems. “I have to do papers”
They looked like 19th century clerks working thru their stacks of “papers”. Finish one, flip it over, put it on the stack.
Somehow I expected more from “reform” that is described as “game changing” and “transformational” 🙂
What district are you in?
Please everyone, take a few minutes today bombard the LAUSD Bd. of Ed with your insightful and correct opinions.
They need to hear how stupid they look to all of America due to Deasy and Aquino and their huge waste of taxpayer money in a very down economy, all to teach and test for Common Core which has not even been properly field tested.
Today, the LA Times has a front page article showing that our city is the highest in the nation with poverty. Close to 30% of people in LA live at or below the poverty level. Almost 1 in 3 – 4 students, LA’s children, come to school each day ill-housed, ill-fed, ill-rested, and in poor health. As Diane’s great op-ed today reports, poverty is the great divider of who succeeds or fails in America.
LAUSD Board members are Galatzan and Garcia (holdovers who support Deasy), La Motte, Ratliff, Kayser, Zimmer, and Vladovic. Their emails all go to LAUSD.net. which can be found at the LAUSD website. If all of us on this site pepper them, and then send our suggestions to each of our personal email lists and ask them to forward to their lists, exponentially, this Board, now mainly comprised of teachers, might take notice that they are swimming upstream if they do not fire this Superindent and start over.
oops…meant fire the Superintendent…Deasy.
File open records requests for e-mails and contracts. Broad’s Deasy abstained from voting since he holds stock in Apple so he must have received compensation for serving as a behind the scenes Apple-Pearson iPad cheerleader. Deasy is responsible for the misuse of public funds and the related student hacking fiasco. Broad trained chiefs seem to demonstrate a pattern of unethical issues related to cronyism and contracts.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/la-students-outfox-apple-_b_4003489.html
“The purchase of the iPads was approved by the Los Angeles school board by a vote of 6-0 with one school board member abstaining because he owns stock in Apple. District Superintendent John Deasy did not participate in deliberations because he also is an Apple stockholder. School board member Tamar Galatzan declared the decision marks ” an amazing adventure we’re about to embark on . . . Nothing is perfect, but we’ve made the best choice possible.”
It seems insiders could become whistleblowers and file Qui Tam suits. The LA Board may find some of the missing iPads at local pawn shops.
The inside story on LA schools’ iPad rollout: “a colossal disaster”
http://digital.hechingerreport.org/content/the-inside-story-on-la-schools-ipad-rollout-a-colossal-disaster_914/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HechingerReport+%28Hechinger+Report%29
http://4lakidsnews.blogspot.com/2011/01/la-schools-boss-to-be-john-deasy-of.html
LAUSD was probably about five years too early. Dynamic texts will be the future, but we are not there yet.
Gosh..teacheco….I too teach economics, but….
This is not a Technology issue about “dynamic texts”. .You are really missing the point of the many frauds perpetrated in both LA and in California which many of us in this state continue to post here.
This shameful Deasy iPad scandal overlaps the construction bond issue and Prop. 30 issue, wherein taxpayers were dunned for more school funding. Threats to shut down schools, fire every teacher, do away with school buses, and on and on, put the squeeze on us, so that we who pay the freight would cough up the money. And foolishly, we did.
And Deasy and his counterpart, Aquino, both Broad-trained partners taught how to scalp us and turn more of our schools into profit making charters, not only screwed taxpayers with their choices, but also demoralized many LAUSD teachers, parents, and students.. Diane wrote about this today. California has more charters than any other state, and LA has more than any other city…and 15 more are waiting for Bd. of Ed approval.
Guess you have not been carefully reading our many outraged educator and voter/taxpayer posts this last year.
$ 1 Billion dollars of our taxpayer money was handed over to these colluders with big business….leading to the $1000 a student, over 650,000 students in LAUSD, for these over retail iPads withut keyboards nor wireless connection.
Like Deasy’s questionable PhD, his contact with Apple and Pearson are too close for the comfort of just about anyone in my state. He should be fired now.
Why is it not a technology issue? All computers are boxes that run software. The future is clearly a pad device. In five years it would seem like a good purchase, or perhaps a little late. It is just the future is not now. Buying early is not a wise decision.
As I said, teach, you miss the point of the economics and legal issues of buying iPads at higher than retail cost, forgetting to factor in the keyboards and the connections to the internet/wireless for schools and homes, and not having a plan for loss, breakage, theft, nor hacking, of these way overpriced tablets. Now the base cost is around $1,000 per pad, which is a total ripoff of the taxpayers.
I do not argue about technology. It is the public policy issues that are abysmal.
This district fails us all, students and taxpayers, with the Broad push to privatize, and the Broad Superintendent doing as he is told by the corporatists who are determined to take over public education for profit (see the Tilson story Diane posted).
LAUSD has become a vast takeover scheme…and most of America now sees this. We in LA, and in California, have more charters, for profit, than any other state in the union. Broad has a hand in all of it…as does Gates, Murdoch, the Waltons, TFA, plus others.
Deasy who worked for Gates (and he lesser self, Aquino who worked for Pearson), is their puppet. This is what must stop….and maybe the world now sees clearly how this scenario is killing our system of public education for all.
For this fiasco alone, Deasy and his senior staff should be replaced? They made several very bad decisions, let’s make the right one LA Board of Ed, terminate him.
Fear not, Los Angeles and California taxpayers…I assure you that the morons who decided to bilk you out of yet more tax money will be held accountable by LAUSD, just as the morons who were responsible for the Belmont Complex fiasco were held accountable…er…ooops….NEVER MIND.
Chiara’s 6:17 & 6:35 PM comments alone are enough reason that the LAUSD must fire its superintendent. get rid of the i-pads & start over–WITHOUT another Broadie.
Chiara, this is what’s going on ALL over the U.S. in a nutshell–it couldn’t have been better said,
“They looked like 19th century clerks working through their stacks of ‘papers.’ Finish one, flip it over, put it on the stack.” Chilling assessment.
This is it exactly–reformers moving public education back into the 19th century, creating worker bees–drones. Except–with the “technology”–it looks dressed up.
Chiara, however, isn’t fooled, and neither are we. Our children are now working as if “19th century clerks,” but on 21st century expensive–VERY expensive–machines.
The ALEC plan for the 99%.
Just wait for a few days when I am finished with the analysis of the documentation and the power point. Everytime I go through it I find more good stuff which puts them furthur into the trap they laid for themselves. In Feb. they were suppose to cost no more than $200 with a 5 year guarantee. In 2-4 weeks, according to their own timeline, suddenly it became $1,000 with a 3 year guarantee. When they did the pilot runs of the 40 tests 32 were Apple products. That’s a fair test right? Today, at the LAUSD Board, I thought I was with the old corrupt board. The CFO, Megan Reilly, made a statement that the revenue from California to LAUSD was $4.3 billion. I looked in her superintendents June 18,2013 budget and it was $5.3 billion. Oh well, we work for the “Broadfather” and he told us a “Billion here, a Billion there, Whatever, just make sure I get it.” When she first came in she was quoted in the L.A. Daily News stating the revenue to LAUSD from the state and she was only off $2 billion that time. What do you expect from the billionaires. Well, the game is falling on their head.
Want to kill the billionaires and remove them from your schools. Force the public process as we are at LAUSD for the replacement of Deasy, Aquino, Holmquist and such. It is the public’s districts, not the billionaires. They are just another person and maybe citizen, nothing more.
In a few days the bomb is dropping on the iPads with full documentation. You can now see at “Hemlock on the Rocks” the initial fast analysis and some of the insurance documents to see the scam they are running. As soon as released they will be loaded up on “Hemlock on the Rocks.”
Higher standards? Looks like they’ve dispensed with the integrity of getting the right answer in basic addition and subtraction.
Is this STEM education, making up numbers? Looks like the culture that creates an O-ring failure. This is a disgrace to the intellectual integrity of math over literally thousands of years.
TC, couldn’t have said it better. I closely know the reasons for the O-ring failure. To protect the Gipper’s speech that night against the best scientific advice from the top people they launched under the temperature allowances for proper seating of the O-rings. That is why now there are heaters on the O-ring connections between the solid rocket booster sections. If the O-rings are not at a high enough temperature they will not seat properly when the pressure from ignition builds. When they do not seat they burned through and the rest is history just like this one. I come from the aerospace industry. My Dad started at Lockheed working for Kelly Johnson of the “Skunk Works.” Later, one of my first jobs was working on one of the hottest parts of the SR-71 when it was still top secret. We both worked for Kelly Johnson. This kind of foolishness was never allowed in that organization. If you even tried anything like that you were gone and lucky if you still had a job with Lockheed. This is proper ethics. Did you know that Kelly Johnson when he delivered the first U-2 spy planes gave back the government money and 4 extra planes as he did it under budget and under the time allowed. The SR-71 came in on time and on budget and not one thing on it existed before. No one knew the metals, engines, hydraulics, fuel, coatings, stealth and yet on time, on budget. If only that could happen in education at that intellectual level. I really don’t see why it cannot happen. After listening to Diane Ravich last night at Occidental after the LAUSD Board Meeting in which I told them we are dropping the bomb on them on the iPads we went to see Diane at the greeting before she spoke. Steve Zimmer, who teaches at Occidental, MC’d the affair and did a spectacular job. What a difference between being at the board meeting and listening to her with a full house. I videoed a lot of it and will post.
In the aerospace business they steal money in the military side, however, in the civilian and in the research, devolupement and manufacturing it is all reality based and dramatically serious. In fact, Northrup-Grumman, Boeing and JPL are seriously into arts in the schools. They have a large grant for such. They state that without the arts as early as possible their businesses are in jeopardy because the nature of their business demands people who can think outside of the box creatively for the next leap forward in technology including their shop employees as they state that a lot of the ideas come from the shop. That makes sense to me after working at the level I have in that industry and closely following it for all my life up to now.
If education continues to operate as it has and no one gets into the money you lose. No money, no programme!!!
I didn’t know the story about the U-2s. That is an incredible story of technical ingenuity and dedication, coupled with true financial ethics.
Read the Kelly Johnson and Jack Real books. Jack Real was the only person who Howard Hughes would deal with at Lockheed and became Howard Hughes best friend. He tried to save Howard Hughes from the Mormon inner circle and almost did when he got him to England and Hughes started flying again then it all fell apart. What a tragic history and end to one of the brightest people ever. Jack Real was one of my Dad’s bosses at Lockheed along with Kelly Johnson. When Jack Real became head of McDonnell Douglas Helicopters my dad went to work for him and worked until 82 and only stopped as his wife’s dementia got so bad. Boeing considers my Dad an “Icon of Engineering.” He was the guy who figured out how to make them work in flight test. I feel like I sort of do the same thing. Massive data and you must see through the connections to how they inter-react to the problem which is always in the end KISS. This is the answer to the end of the billionaires control and it is the PUBLIC PROCESS as we are demanding at LAUSD to replace Aquino and Deasy next. Nationwide demand the PUBLIC PROCESS.
In the aerospace business people die immediately. In education you give them a slow painful death when you do not take care of business. Ever notice how airplanes are safer, use less fuel and navigation is so tightly controlled so they do not run into each other? Not an accident. Due Diligence is what it is. I used to be the clean up others messes to get inspectors to buy it off guy. It is in my DNA, so to speak.
Looks like the LA Times has exposed a bit of a mess.