A letter from a teacher in Los Angeles about the decision to spend $1 billion to buy iPads.
“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.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I wrote this for an Op-Ed piece in the LA TIMES last week. They didn’t publish it. Thank you for the chance to post here:
A DIFFERENT SET OF URGENT PRIORITIES
As the LAUSD School Board meets to lay out its agenda for the next school year, as a mere high school teacher in the trenches, I want to offer a different perspective.
The most common phrase used in the last couple of years by those in power to justify their education reforms was “sense of urgency.” Look how many times it has been used by many superintendents, principals and government officials in regards to the state of education.
Much of the spate of school reforms recently put in place supposedly represent “action” and “urgency.” In LA, these include adopting the Common Core, the heavy reliance on data to drive schools and teacher evaluations and more top-down directives. The students of LA are told that they will do better on the tests and graduate in greater numbers.
Fine. But that seems like a pretty low bar.
Would I send my kids into a system with that highly enticing pitch? And what about Common Core where we are promised the high school kids are going to spend 70% of the time reading nonfiction and only 30% reading literature with less sharing of frivolous untestable opinions. Well, let’s watch the enthusiasm of both teachers and kids spread like wildfire in classrooms all over LA with that edict.
And what about those iPad tablets that every kid is going to get? Superintendent John Deasy assures us that this one budget priority, that supersedes almost everything else, is designed to make sure kids now have access to 21st century internet technology. This expense was procured in the urgent name of narrowing the “achievement gap.” In his mind, this was the SINGLE THING the students of LA needed the most to succeed in life.
Alas, I have rarely heard any of the Education Powers decry the sense of urgency when dealing with our kids’ “enrichment gap.”
What do you remember about your school experiences?
My guess would be the things you did in high school. The trips you went on. The experiences you received that were not necessarily in the classroom. They were everything that enriched your education that later, in turn, went on to be incorporated into your education.
If the enrichment gap was addressed first, the achievement gap would eventually narrow.
If kids had their say about what to spend that money on, would getting an iPad be the top of the list? My guess is that they would want to actually DO something with the money. I mean, actually go out and DO and SEE and EXPERIENCE something.
Our students need to get out and not just virtually. They need to see things for themselves. Do things for themselves. In my crazy education fantasy, the ONE BILLION dollars of public taxpayer money that is going to give the kids iPads with an unknown lifespan and success rate would buy each of those kids busses to DOZENS of field trips. The field trips could be to explore all the wonderful art galleries, music, museums and cultural, anthropological, sociological happenings throughout the neighborhoods that make up this amazing city.
Again, I truly believe that there is no better way to change a kid’s life forever than to take them somewhere new and show them something different. There are students in LAUSD who never go on a single field trip in their entire twelve years with us. They NEVER see anything but their school campuses. I have yet to hear an educator say this has to change.
The exploration of the outside world opens kids up to possibilities that were forever locked up. Kids in Palos Verdes and Beverly Hills will always have parents who have the wherewithal to take kids not only all around LA but exotic corners of the world. The well-to-do have always been able to provide their kids this enrichment. Those iPads are cold and sterile compared to the powerful sensation of actually going out and doing on one’s own.
Over the course of my twenty years with LAUSD, I have taken students on hundreds of trips during school and in the evenings and on weekends simply to give them that exposure. By partnering with various theater and dance companies and galleries and music venues, the students have had amazing experiences to events and “happenings” that even private and privileged high school kids haven’t been privy too. And this makes them feel special. Throw in the yearly trips to tour the cities and colleges of the Bay Area and the trip to New York City and you actually see a sense of urgency develop in the eyes and souls of the kids when they see what is out there, and what is possible for them.
But most of this was through private fundraising efforts. Imagine what ALL teachers could accomplish if there was actually a fund a portion of the size of the iPad expenditure available to take kids out…and liberate them from the classroom.
Meanwhile, we have had our music and art classes decimated and then given a token privately funded “arts incorporation” class to the formerly core classes as if that was an adequate substitute.
Again, straight faced, LAUSD offers this “ketchup is a vegetable” policy: Be grateful you even have that. Kids would actually learn more and want to come to school if they really had meaningful classes that they look forward to. It’s the electives that keep our kids in school and provide them joy and excitement about school. Not a lap computer.
But there is no “sense of urgency” to funding our students to have the meaningful education that actually inspires them and excites them. The money currently being funneled into test prep and material for Common Core go directly to companies and individuals who profit enormously from the business of education.
Precious little gets trickled down to those who need that funding the most.
And the funding that there is does not go to the areas that our kids truly need and that they most desperately cry out for: More interaction with the world and art.
Instead, they are told by the people with power over their lives what they most urgently need.
The iPad program will be a fitting legacy for John Deasy’s reign at LAUSD. A windfall of taxpayer dollars to the Pearson and Common Core testing material “included” loaded on those $700 computers (kids everywhere are saying, “GEE THANKS!!) and Apple reaps the customer loyalty of 650,000 kids.
Kids, my best advice is use that laptop and Google “Get-Me-Out-Of-Here!”
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What would you expect when Gates pays for the writing of the new National Common Core Standards and the person in charge, Coleman, works for Rhee’s Foundation! Then we are lied to and told the fifty governors had people with input or some nonsense like that and the Federal government had nothing to do with any of this and the bribe money to accept all of these lies is not a Federal takeover of the curriculum! There is still land for sale in the Everglades, too! Beachfront locations!
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We’ve started a petition to ask for an investigation “iPaid too much for iPads?” Please sign. http://k12newsnetwork.com/blog/2013/09/06/lausd-ipad-deal-ipaid-too-much/
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Signed it!
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The public needs to understand that the argument is not about getting computer technology into the hands of all children. We have all accepted that computers are no longer considered a luxury. If the iPads were being used to replace textbooks and encourage their use as a vast encyclopedia always at students’ fingertips, then the discussion may have gone in a different direction. But it has been made very clear, at least in LAUSD, that the rush to provide iPads is due to the introduction of the Common Core and related assessments. With no pilot program on the contents and no proof of increasing learning, this is one heck of an expensive experiment. The cost of the iPads is being funded by bonds meant for infrastructure. As the teacher above explains, that bond money is not solving all the problems it was meant to. Now, to make matters worse, more and more of that money will be funneled into questionable technology with a short shelf life.
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Dear LAUSD Teacher,
The so-called Citizens Bond Oversight Committee is a total joke. We have taken since the beginning the waste of over 1/2 of $27 billion which is the largest construction project on the planet. #2 was the Three Gorges Dam in China. That was $25 billion and came in on time and on budget and they had to move cities. In the end it is so dramatic that it is causing earthquakes because of the increased weight in that area and climate change in the area because of the amount of water. Yet LAUSD cannot even build correctly. $1,100/sq.ft. for the Kennedy School. $1.3 billion for Belmont, the toxic school. You can see the stories at fulldisclosure.net. Air conditioners so noisy you cannot hear as they are up to 68 Db. We took to them the leading experts in the world. Can’t listen to them now can we. We revealed the lies about the construction costs with massive spreadsheets. Didn’t care. We are talking about direct disappearance of at least $13,000,000,000. Is that enough? They tried to take my friends house as a result of his exposing this. He was sued by 15 of the largest construction management firms in the world represented by 9 of the larges law firms on the planet. Want to take that one on. I lived it with him. It is not pretty. In fact, the judge assisted with part of the transcript being disappeared. Ever seen that one. This is what it is like if you effect them.
We drive on with even bigger stuff like LCFF and the CORE Federal Waiver Schools. You should see the spreadsheets on these worse of the worse schools. Three of them have not coming to school everyday 17%, LAUSD and d23% and 24%. My kind of accountable school, yours also? Does anyone really care out there especially in the decision making positions for these decisions?
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Not to mention, Apple has underpaid commercial real estate taxes in CA under Prop 13 ($0.30 per square foot!!) and pays no state business tax, plus it shelters much of the tax it owes to the federal government in overseas shell companies. It doesn’t seem to be paying its fair share of public sector upkeep to anyone.
If you want to know how California schools were slowly starved through 35 years of disinvestment, this piece explains: http://k12newsnetwork.com/blog/2013/09/07/apple-sells-ipads-to-lausd-something-does-not-compute/
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I forgot one other important thing. We stopped Measure J which was a tax until 2069 with only one paragraph of controlling language with under $15,000 and under 3 weeks. On top of that causing the about 12 bills in the California Legislature being dropped at the last minute to lower passage from 2/3 to 55%. People are tired of being taxed for people to throw it away. I have not voted for a school bond for a long time as it is wasted. I never pay double or triple money for anything. Before the last $7 billion bond we called the tax assessor for L.A. County. We asked “With property values dropping about 1/3 does that mean that entities such as LAUSD are still limited to selling bonds to 2.5% of the value of the assessed area.” They said “YES.” We then went to the board and stated such and that as such they cannot sell what they have much less the new $7 billion bond. The Board calls up Jim McConnell, head of facilities, to answer. McConnell states that we do not know what we are talking about. Three months after they win the bond the same Jim McConnell comes to the board and states “We cannot sell those bonds including some before the last one as we are on the legal 2.5% limit.” This is what you are dealing with teacher. Or remember the bars on the windows? We discovered that they did not open. We called that “Krispy Fried Kids.” We finally made them change them so they would open. Think about a major earthquake, like the last Northridge one, in which they are in school when it happens. The doors won’t open. The window grills won’t open. The gas lines break and light up. They changed them. But they spent about $1,200 each instead of $250-300 as we priced them, especially in their volumn. This is constant.
This is why I am always talking about the money and where it is allocated and what is spent to reality for it. No money=no education. Steal the money=less for the student. Students=teachers and staff.
We stopped going to the Oversight Committee as it was a waste of time. Take them billions and they laugh and waste billions more. That is what happened with Shiff-Bustamente. We discovered that for 10 years LAUSD budgeted and did not spend $250,000,000/year for a total of $2,500,000,000 of no books and instructional materials and supplies inter-fund transferred somewhere else. We never found that out. But because of the L.A. Times article by Amy Pyle called “In a Book Bind” we got the $1.5 billion Schiff-Bustamente legislation.
This is how it really is when you get down in the slop where it really is to supply you the needed support and materials and such to do a real job of teaching our youth. It is our obligation to supply you teachers with what you need and the freedom and professional devolupement to do that job. Otherwise, we do not want to see that.
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●●smf responds: I am a member of that selfsame bond oversight committee and I voted to approve this iPad for Everyone deal as a pilot at some 30 plus schools. Only that and nothing more.
Notwithstanding grandstanding from he superintendent’s office nothing further has been approved by anyone. The Apple contract purchases iPads for every student ONLY IF AND WHEN the Bond Oversight Committee and Board of Education approves Phases Two and Three. There is is no autopilot.
Your concerns for your students at your school are our concerns. We on the bond committee cannot by law buy your school new library books or arts or choral music programs. Deputy Superintendent Aquino may wax poetic about how the iPads will give your school art and music programs; like all good salespeople he believes it what he’s selling. But I don’t buy that balderdash than any more than you do.
Our kids don’t need arts applications, they need Arts Teachers.
We don’t need music apps or dance apps or drama apps – we need Dance Teachers and Music Teachers and Drama Teachers. We need Teacher Librarians in secondary and Elementary Librarians in in the early grades.
And Health Teachers and Nurses and Counselors.
Digital technology is part of the future but I don’t see the LAUSD All City Marching Band marching in the Rose Parade playing 76 Trombones on their iPads. I don’t envision a team of LAUSD iPads beating all the other teams in the nation at the Academic Decathlon. The law says that construction and modernization bond funds cannot be used to invest in Human Capital – salaries and people. A commitment to that– and humanity itself – is what’s missing from the current thinking at LAUSD HQ.
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Another example of why many people including me think that decisions should be made at the school level about how to spend most of the dollars students generate from the state. There is a growing movement to do this involving some district & charter public schools – see teacher led schools at http://www.edvisions.com
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Reblogged this on Cre8tiveThinkers and commented:
This is so important to share with fellow educators, parents, and politicians. There are children in California who are dealing with hunger, over crowded classrooms and great teachers being laid off because of budget cuts (over 1,800 of them in the past 5-10 years). Yet, there is a $1 billion decision to spend on iPads? What’s wrong with this picture?
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As an instructional technology facilitator, this worries me on several levels. iPads can be a tremendous creative learning tool, but you need a few things first:
1. A robust network infrastructure. We’re talking one router per classroom and the switches and other equipment on th back end to ensure high bandwidth for all connected devices.
2. Support and training for teachers. You can’t just throw the tech to teachers and hope it all works out. They need someone to answer their questions and help them integrate the new technology into their curriculum and instuction
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Actually, LAUSD is also spending a lot to install Wifi in every school classroom. I wonder which budget funds this initiative? Given the track record of past technology rollouts I’m not convinced it will work any better. There’s plenty of useable technology already gathering dust in LAUSD for lack of tech support and training for teachers to use it. Band width is lacking, the system goes down regularly, it’s glitchy, and technology is costly to support, so it isn’t well supported. Pray for a miracle that everything works and never breaks down, or it’s probably money down the drain.
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The important thing here is that Apple can make more money
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Haha, seriously. I’m still outraged here. What a waste of money…
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