Howard Blume reports in this morning’s Los Angeles Times that the school district’s $500 million purchase of iPads did not include the keyboards that will be necessary when the students use them to take standardized tests. The district has also committed to spend another $500 million to install wireless Internet in every school. The iPads were purchased for testing students on the new Common Core.
Blume writes:
The project is funded by voter-approved school construction bonds, which typically are paid off by taxpayers over about 25 years.
Students at two elementary schools received the iPads last week in the first rollout. All students are supposed to have tablets by December 2014.
As of now, the iPad project does not include wireless keyboards, in part because the tablet computers have touch screens.
But that setup might not satisfy the needs of older students writing term papers, for example. And if typing on them proves more difficult, that could frustrate or hinder students as they take new online tests. The device’s touch screen could even obscure portions of a test item that would be visible in its entirety on a full screen.
For some time, the district has planned to use the devices for testing based on new English and math learning standards, called the Common Core, that were adopted by California and 44 other states.
There are rumors in the tech industry that Apple will soon release a new generation of iPads, which raises the question of whether they are dumping the soon-to-be-obsolete version on LA students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Apple could promote the new release as “designed especially for CCSS.” A real cash cow.
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I thought iPads had touchscreen keyboards.
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Why would you finance technology over 25 years when the average shelf life of most tech gadgets is 3 years? Talk about paying on a dead horse.
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The touch screens are too small and, as the article states, may hide sections of the test since the keyboard takes up from about one third to a half of the screen.
And…will the iPads have enough storage for high school term papers and assignments? Is the district going to store all work done on student iPads and if so, where?
So many questions and too few answers!!!!!
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This is a total betrayal of the voters in California. I did not vote to pass Prop 30 for the money to be used like this.
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Here is another sham. http://www.azcentral.com//community/peoria/articles/20130821funding-diverted-online-schools.html?source=nletter-
This state is unbelievable! Other states are beginning to figure it out but not Arizona.
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Bait and Switch…oldest scam in the book! Guess Gates and his buddies do practice the oldest profession in the world!
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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.
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Zorro reflects what most educators in LA and around the state are saying. It is a massive boondoggle with taxpayer money. I have been writing about all this for the past few months on this site, but the LA Times seems to have just awakened to how we are being scammed. Instead of reporting factual truth, they chose to show smiling children playing with the new iPads. They are part of the problem, not of the solution.
Many of my teacher friends in LAUSD who work with the younger children cannot even fathom how these children will learn to use the keyboard, and if they can become adept enough to gain this skill, if they can type fast enough to do Common Core time-limited tests. Part of the failure in NY may have been due to this. Certainly the Special Ed and ELL students will suffer as they try to adapt to this imposed plan.
Now that many of us have learned not to trust Obama/Duncan edicts, we in California have learned not to trust Jerry Brown, and in LA, we definitely have learned not to trust the head school administrator nor the school board.
Prop. 30 raised a windfall of $2 Billion for construction. It has been near or over 100 degrees in LA this past week, and the heat is continuing as many children returned to school last week and are now suffering along with their teachers in classrooms with no air conditioning and inside temperature near triple digits. Inner city students who live in abject poverty also come to school tired and unfed. How does this failing infrastructure help learning?
Is the Great American Public School System?
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Don’t hold your collective breath: there is sure to be a ‘you Luddites don’t realize the wondrous benefits of technology’ posting coming to a blog near you.
Ain’t $tudent $ucce$$ grand?
🙂
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Is there any evidence that giving kids laptops or iPads increases achievement at all?
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None that I know of.
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Ponderosa…who cares about evaluation for outcomes when profits are soaring as with iPads, Common Core, Charters, date mining, and all the new free market investment opportunities that public ed in America offers?
Students, children, whom we used to think of as the future, are now only seen as by-products of capitalism. The goal is to mold them into an underpaid and uncomplaining, compliant work force, and manipulated voters of tomorrow.
And these huge profits can be skimmed off the backs of what is left of taxpayers. Hooray for the oligarchs!
Anyone who does not see how the economic system is rigged to redistribute all wealth upward, from poor to rich, is just not paying attention.
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I am sick to death of Pearson’s representatives claiming that my kids won’t pass “the test” if we don’t teach Language Arts using their technology workout.
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I have managed until now to keep an even temperament despite my profound dismay about what has been happening to students, teachers, families, and schools with education reform. But more than a billion dollars for technology to take tests that are inherently biased and give less than useful information is the last straw. The reformers disdain the judgment of informed and experienced educational professionals. Reasoning with them has not accomplished anything, despite the claim of the CCSS that the goal of ELA is reasoned argument from evidence. They wouldn’t recognize evidence if it sat on them. I am apoplectic! Can the state of CA sue to get the money back, since it was obviously spent fraudulently?
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This is obvously a sweetheart deal for corporations and will use a lot of funds that are not always available. No one asked the teachers for their input so these are the sorry decisions we allow our online educated superintendent and complicit board of education to make. I think we should try to nix this deal but the powers that be love it.
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Zorro is correct. What part of school construction are I-Pads? In school construction this would be considered only at new construction: other. Other is what it takes to fill up a school to start after construction like desks, books, computers, gym equipment and such. This expenditure is legal only at new construction as they replace books. In the school construction allowable is a section that says that school construction bonds can only be used for equipment that will last at least 10 years. I-Pads might last 3-4 years in a school environment. I-Pads do not pass the legal smell test. WiFi does as it lasts more than 10 years. The last deal was for $1,000/each when all was said and done. I was in the board room when they approved this without knowing any details at all. Stupid and bought and sold. Howard Blume will not tell you this as he will lose his job and never work as a reporter again if he does.
School construction bonds are for long term,30 years, capital improvements. I-Pads are not that. Now what else no one is talking about is the replacement of these as they die and go away. In 2011-12 LAUSD had 667,251 enrollment and 564,537 ADA. So, first, how many do you buy? This is a difference of 103,000 or $103 million. If you buy for the enrollment it is $668 million, for the ADA is $564 million. Where does Blume get his numbers from? Nothing I have seen if they are $1,000 each as was voted at the board.
Then who is going to pay for the replacements at $150-200 million/year. Books and I-Pads are supposed to be general fund issues and are illegal under the law to be bought with school construction bond funds or salaries for those in the education not facilities side of the district. Deasy has said he is going to get a tax passed. Really!!!!! Did he watch what happened to Measure J for $90 billion with a 1/2 cent sales tax until 2069 with one paragraph of language in it. We beat it with under $15,000 and in less than 3 weeks and when the state put up over 10 new pieces of legislation to lower to 55% bond passage the public became so mad the legislature shut them all down in the end.
Deasy, you are not going to get another penny of tax for this. Pay out of the general fund. At present LAUSD has about $2,000 more/student than the average district in the state and is above the national average at over $11,000/student. We will shut this district down from robbing the public again.
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Your schools are being run by idiots and frauds. As another comment noted, the devices will be useless and outdated in a few years and the poor CA taxpayer will still be paying off the “loan” in 2038! The CA school system is surely the blind leading the blind. Try five cent pencils and yellow pads.
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