Annie Gilbertson of KPCC in Los Angeles reports that internal emails show that district officials met and emailed Apple and Pearson a year before the bidding process for new technology and software began.
“Emails obtained by KPCC show Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy personally began meeting with Pearson and Apple to discuss the eventual purchase of their products starting nearly a year before the contract went out to public bid.
“Detailed in dozens of emails, the early private talks included everything from prices – about $160 million over five years – to tech support.
“On behalf of those involved in Pearson Common Core System of Courses, I want you to know how much we are looking forward to our partnership with LAUSD,” Pearson staffer Sherry King wrote the head of curriculum for L.A. Unified at the time, Jaime Aquino, in November 2013. “We have begun to work closely with your leadership to help make the transition to the common core smooth for everyone.”
“Emails show Deasy met with CEO of Pearson in May 2012 and later told her it led him to have “excited” conversations with his staff upon his return.”
Deasy also met with Apple officials in 2012.
School officials declined to comment.
“Michael Josephson, of the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Los Angeles, said it’s possible Pearson was the best choice and school officials didn’t mean to play to favorites – but it doesn’t look good.
“You absolutely don’t want a situation where contracts are being steered to favorites,” he said. “It invites kickbacks. It invites skimming. It invites bribery. That’s totally unacceptable.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Welcome to the Greatest Show on Earth—The Los Angeles Unified School District http://www.examiner.com/article/welcome-to-the-greatest-show-on-earth-the-los-angeles-unified-school-district
LA loonified. Many schools have decided to go charter to escape the madness. There are about 13 independent conversion charters and 51 affiliated charters in the district… All schools that used to be traditional schools. I Rheely do believe this May be Deasey’s plan.
Don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Your first point seems to praise charters, although you criticize them at the end??!!
My point is that Deasy is running the district so poorly that teachers are voting to leave the district. It is yet another way to undermine public education. I am not praising charter schools.
Gotta see the show:
“School officials declined to comment.”
My favorite line.
Tick tock tick tock…
It’s no longer a matter for LAUSD’s Board of Ed.
Send it to the grand jury.
YES…
Need to each you about follow up plan. Are you in town? Please write me poste haste at
joiningforces4ed@aol.com
Will give you some info not yet published.
Ellen
This messge to contact me is for Geronimo.
Sorry…it is late and I am tired…meant need to reach you now.
“[I]t doesn’t look good.”
Sounds like the definition of “understatement.”
😎
Again, there are no surprises here. Sadly, not one board member would stand up and demand a full investigation. The evidence was so clear, it could hit you in the face. Connect these emails and Howard Blume’s article that was posted here earlier today, and you have a very neat package. Not only did Deasy and his posse cozy up to Pearson and Apple well before the bidding process, but they manipulated it to make sure these two were the winners.
Now, add to this the MiSiS computer data system that created horrific chaos during the first two weeks of school even though district officials were informed two years ago it wasn’t working, and you see a picture of a leader who cares NOT for children, but for power and money. Eventually, as has happened in many other states, these same leaders become victims of their own blind ambition.
…..board voted 4-2 to reappoint architect Stuart Magruder to the Bond Oversight…..
Well well well. Magruder was right after all.
Meanwhile, did you see what is taking place in Chile over education?
http://rt.com/news/182008-student-protest-chile-santiago/
Looks like it’s boiling over.
It’s really, really difficult to get public education back once it’s privatized, huh? Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
“President Michelle Bachelet has promised to make reforms under the center-left government to the privatized education system in Chile, stagnating since the departure of Pinochet, and often criticized for being of poor quality and benefiting the rich.”
Meanwhile, in the US, here’s the official pundit announcement that public schools are no longer fashionable among influential Democrats:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/08/proxy-fight-for-the-democratic-party-future.html?mid=twitter_nymag
Another wonderful example of Paul Vallas’ “I go in, fix the system, move on to something else” activism in public education.
Translation from rheeformish: I get out of town before they catch up to me.
Friday evening, 6:30 pm … And I am listening to a message from Deasy trying to convince me that the raise is a done deal, and that it is really 8.6 percent (It’s 2, and then 2 more and 2 more IF they have the money.) which they won’t, because they will spend it on tests or iPads or …
I get a cheerful call from the district almost every Friday about this time… Does he not get how intrusive this is?
Deasy will look good in orange, it is the new black still. Soon the reformers will not be able to meet at their swanky conferences in luxurious resorts, that will be a parole violation. May the light of day and the wheels of justice meet and move in tandem.
A few of us have been writing about this potential Deasy mis or malfeasance here for over 1 1/2 years. It is no new news…but now the mainstream media has finally opened it up.
Instead of deflecting the attention of our readers here with comments about Chile, it would really be helpful if all who post comments take a few minutes to write the LA Times and KPCC with your thoughts and hopefully outrage, at how taxpayers, children and parents, and the LAUSD community are being ‘jobbed’ by one more Broad Academy trained CEO who takes his game plan from their business model.
That would really make a difference if teachers and supporters of public schools nationwide were to make al voices heard…and let LA know that you have the backs of our teachers and public schools.
As Geronimo says, this is probably a case for the Grand Jury.
>“Emails show Deasy met with CEO of Pearson in May 2012 and later told her it led him to have “excited” conversations with his staff upon his return.”
This is scandal. John Deasy pushing up the Daisy…. Never-mind.
Yep, kickbacks. skimming , bribery. Come on in. You’re all invited.
Two words only: Deasy jail.
I’d invert the two words to get a command: Jail Deasy!
Right now there is a major competition going on between the STAAR states which are aligned with Apple products and Pearson ( for example California, Texas and North Carolina school districts are purchasing iPads and using the Pearson grade book called “Powerschool” and a different value-added model ) and the PARCC/ AIR states which are aligned with Microsoft products and HP tablets. In Florida, AIR controls both our value-added model and now our new “Florida Standards”(in name only, still Common Core) assessments. If you had a separate testing company controlling the value added rankings, that would not be very efficient and would create a gap in the secrecy of the tests and rankings. It’s all one big money/power grab for our public schools. There is room for a partnership between public schools and private enterprise, but Apple and Microsoft should be donating products, not forcing schools to take money out of their budgets to purchase them and then branding their students, teachers and parents with their products .
We have Power School in Newark.
Which tests will you be using in New Jersey?
Jersey is PARCC, so that makes me think both PARCC and STAAR are aligned with Pearson. Florida used to be PARCC but they never produced anything and then AIR sued because it was not an open bidding process. So I take back what I said about PARCC.
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware and commented:
Common core corruption all over the place. Corporations and greed abound. Way to show children how to get ready for college, by selling them out to the highest bidder. All about the $$$$!
This is NOT intended to defend LAUSD because I do not know the extent to which they wrote their bids to proscribe other offers… but… as a Superintendent who was interested in integrating technology into the schools my staff and I often met with software and hardware vendors to gain a better understanding of their products and to gain a better understanding of what was possible… When we chose to specify Apple operating systems over DOS (an unpopular decision in an IBM town) it was because we determined that there was more application software available… when we explored data warehousing we met with a vendor who was connected with a college professor I knew and learned a great deal about what was feasible at that time and what we could incorporate into a bid specification… A prudent administrative team will take a lot of time deliberating on what kind of hardware and software they need for a school system before committing resources. It’s POSSIBLE that LAUSD administrators were doing due diligence in convening extended meetings with Apple and Pearson… and those letters from Pearson are unsurprising and, from my perspective, unpersuasive “evidence” of collusion. Education salespersons use the same approach and same language as every good salesperson: they want to strike up a personal relationship with the purchaser and enter into a “partnership”… Have you looked at buying a car lately? You’ll get the same kind of email from a car salesman.
When you or I purchase a car for personal use, we’re totally independent agents, accountable to no one, and answerable to no larger organization or government entity, or bound by any rules and regulations during the process of deciding which car to buy. Therefore, there’s nothing proscribing you or I from contacting any salesperson or representative of a car manufacturer, and then meeting and discussing the quality of the purchase.
That’s most certainly not the case here. Deasy and the other LAUSD folks who engaged in what you call “due diligence” were barred from doing so based on open bidding restrictions.
Study after study has shown that actions undertaken by Deasy and others—actions that favor one competitor over another—do not advance competition, and they lead to very bad economic consequences for consumers and taxpayers.
In effect, Deasy removed “competition” and thus, created an “opportunity cost”, which is ultimately borne by taxpayers. It is also blatant favoritism between government and one potential provider. In effect, Deasy and others chose the “winner” of a a sham “open bidding process”, before that process had even begun. Consequently, it left the taxpayers on the hook to cover the costs because, at it turned out, we paid MORE and got LESS.
What ever happened to LAUSD’s mission in preserving the public interest?
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx As a onetime purchasing agent for an engineering co, my perspective is that such meetings do & must occur between purchasers and all available vendors during the spec-writing phase. The goal is not to narrow specs to the vendor with the mostest. It’s to figure out how to write a savvy bid package that allows bidders to offer creative and competitive bids. In the example you cite, another bidder could have offered such a swell alternative that you’d have to re-examine your priorities in light of price. The deliberation of the prudent admin team before committing resources is taken after bids are in, not before specs are written.
Spanish and French,
I have not read about meetings with other potential bidders, only Apple and Pearson. The emails refer to the “partnership” between LAUSD and those companies. It may be that this is the way it works I the private sector, but I don’t think the public sector works things out in advance, before the public bidding begins. But I may be wrong.
Wgersen, are you aware that Jaime Aquino, who headed the team making the purchase, previously worked for Pearson? In a public sector job, appearances matter. So far as I know, the LA purchasing team did not meet with other potential bidders.
…and Aquino’s new employer New Teachers Center has a services/consultant contract pending before the LAUSD board next Tuesday. He’s been gone from LAUSD less than a year. One must be careful to avoid the revolving door hitting one in the butt.
see: Jaime Aquino joins New Teacher Center as executive vice president of strategy and innovation as organization embarks on ambitious growth plan http://bit.ly/1tDVeFy
I read your posts in reverse order and learned that later… and if they didn’t meet with other vendors it could be more than a matter of appearances… I just know from experience that in most cases these complex multi-million dollar decisions involving technology are subject to questioning and, in some cases, those asking questions are disappointed bidders…
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The lesson I take from this and other revelations of ed-reformy misuse of public funds hitting the papers is that it takes the law a year or two to start catching up to the fraudsters. By then they’ve banked the dough. Jail the public ‘servants’, and dole out fines so punitive that even Apple & Pearson will feel the bite.
I agree. The operating mode of this DeAsy administrTion has been quick,shocking action before anyone can recover and react. Your basic shock doctrine. There’s obvious collusion and malfeasance here and needs to be addressed. If the DA refuses to indict this person, definitely get the Grand Jury.
I think Diane raises the most salient point…Were other vendors contacted, or was the “research” limited to the two firms who eventually ended up with the contract?
For me, the really sad part is that this kind of shenanigans has become so commonplace that it is accepted by the general public. How long can this happen until we join the innumerable caravan of previous nations that rose to their zenith and then fell apart because of their inner rottenness?
LAUSD continues to steal from children and taxpayers with barely a slap on the wrist.
Looks like the tablets my district purchased are faulty when it comes to connecting to Wii-Fi which defeats the entire purpose of the tablets and the district spending millions on wi-fi infrastructure. Though I may be in favor of bringing new technology to the classroom, I am not in favor of the government corruption and ineptitude that comes with it. You can read more about it here http://kafkateach.wordpress.com/2014/08/24/byod-seriously-bring-your-own-device-2/