Howard Blume reports that students in many districts quickly cracked the security code on their shiny new iPads. Now they are using them for Facebook, music, gaming, whatever.
Thanks, citizens of Los Angeles!
Too bad the district can’t afford to repair its buildings or reduce class size or hire arts teachers.
Have fun, kids. Just make sure you don’t lose your new toy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The corporate reformers tend to think the kids are dumb. They tend to think EVERYONE who isn’t a neoliberal investor with a lot of money is dumb.
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I’d call that the “Smartest Guys in the Room Syndrome”.
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The “Best and the Brightest”!
And we know what they led us into in Viet Nam. (and Iraq, Afghanizistan, etc. . . )
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The good news here is that if a kid can break the security code he/she is “college ready!”
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Many of us in California have written about this huge taxpayer rip-off for months. I have repeatedly informed all on this site so many times that my redundancy must have bored you. Sorry about that but we must keep shouting out until this situation at LAUSD is changed.
It was not a mystery that this hacking could happen, it was a foregone conclusion.
Unfortunately LAUSD has a Broad-trained Superintendent, and until 2 weeks ago, a Broad-trained Asst. Supt., who cannot seem to outthink a 10th grade student. They colluded to buy, at taxpayer expense and way over retail cost, over $1 Billion, of the vastly overpriced iPads, but forgot to buy the keyboards, and forgot about how to use wireless in inner city homes that cannot buy food for dinner, much less hook up to the internet.
When you look at the work history of these two men, they are both connected to the firms that sold them the products, either as stockholders, or former employees.
Deasy has a history of this kind of sweetheart deal in that he hired his mentor who gave him his questionable 9 unit PhD, to be a consultant for him, paying him about $375,000, indeed fulfilling the adage of one hand washing the other. And now, here it is again…a similar quid pro quo it would seem. His old boss Bill Gates, is beaming.
Many in LA would like to see true reform in the school district starting with a search for a new Supt. and Asst. Supt. We urge the School Board to no longer be ruled by Eli Broad, but to allow us to form a true citizens committee to partner in this search, vetting, and oversight of how our tax money is spent, this to include parents, teachers, and community members…NO Blue Ribbon appointments to impede these goals.
Today our Governor Jerry Brown did something right. He signed into law a bill to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour to be implemented over the next 3 years. And he said to us, that this raise in wages couples with Prop. 30, whereby he raised $2 Billion from We, the People.
Now he should remove his head from the sand and admit he made a massive mistake with giving LAUSD so much of our tax money for such a grandiose and already failing scheme….all of it in order to force the ‘for-profit developed’ Common Core onto all our public schools before it has been longitudinally field tested as is the standard practice before implementing such a vast program to affect every single public school student in America.
Brown should address Obama/Duncan with these issues and he should lead the charge of governors who see the failure of RttT and CC, and put on the brakes until CC is field tested with no use of the grades to categorize students, teachers, and schools. He immediately should stop the funding within California of any more corporate collusions and boondoggles like the iPads fiasco which is scandalous.
If anyone wants more discussion on this, offline, please contact me at
joiningforces4ed@aol.com
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Over retail cost??
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YEs…true!
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Well said and I think all thinking taxpayers know the truth of this fiasco. I agree that the first step is to send Deasy and his senior staff on its way to mess up another school district. If we keep them they will bleed us dry so that when they do decide to leave, there will be nothing to stay for. We must act now and nix this deal and get control of our district back. Where is the board? Why aren’t they fighting for us?
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Please Paula…read the post today by Hillel Aron at LA School Report on Jaime Aquino and the school board with a link to an LA Daily News article. It makes him sound like a hero who has been battered by the new board members. It continually addresses the two leftovers from the old board, Galatzan, and the pernicious Garcia ,as “reformers” whose voices are not heard now by the other 5, who all are teachers, and who are now the ones who can challenge Deasy, as they did Aquino, on the sweetheart deals they made with the $675 iPads, yes, way over retail, and without having the foresight to order keypads, and to budget setting up wireless internet connections in the homes of the 650,000 LA students.
With the add-ons each iPad would cost over $1,000 for the LAUSD school district of approximately 650,000 students. That is the yearly budget of some small countries. All in the name of testing for Common Core. What a pathetic farce perpetrated on we who are paying all the freight for salaries of these people, and for all their terrible decisions on how to spend our taxpayer money.
Emmy sounds surprised…but we have been writing about this obvious boondoggle for months, as has even the LA Times. Today, Howard Blume has a long article on the student hacking. I advise all LA readers to write letters to the editor of the LA Times, and describe how you feel to have been ‘taken’ as a taxpayer for these shockingly bad decisions made by both Deasy and Aquino and their old toadie Board led by Garcia.
Garcia, a day before the last Board meeting, sent out to the world at large, and email asking for support of Deasy, but even though this eblast came from the LAUSD site on Beaudry, and had her name at the bottom as the sender, she masked her email by signing the names of some parents. Is this the quality of a person who should be on the Board? This woman intends to now run for Congress…is this the ethical behavior we want of a Congressperson?
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Yeah for the kids who cracked the code. LAUSD is nuts for doing this. Whose palms are being greased?
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Yvonne…everyone should write and call Governor Brown today and demand that he withdraw the funding from LAUSD for this iPad boondoggle.
We should all light up the White House switchboard and tell Obama/Duncan that their corporate enrichment plan of CC and RttT is diminishing effective classroom teaching and demoralizing true well-trained educators nationwide.
This California funding could have been used to hire back teachers and reduce the size of classes which are now around 42 – 47 in a dilapidated classroom designed to hold 30 students. All educators know that teachers are needed in a teachable room far more than iPads.
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Any reasonably intelligent person watching today’s LAUSD Ad Hoc Committee meeting on the Common Core Technology Project would have to wonder if anyone at the District really knows what it’s doing.
In response to a variety of questions, Chief Information Officer Ron Chandler repeatedly said “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” Really? This project has been in the works for two years. And when asked about keyboards, new devices when the iPads become obsolete, or a laundry list of other purchases that might be necessary in the future, Chandler and Executive Director of Curriculum Gerardo Loera consistently chanted that those were questions for the district’s procurement division.
We’re spending $1 billion on these iPads and deserve better answers than those two gave at the meeting today. And we deserve a better response to their lack of accountability by our school board members. When you ask a question and it’s sidestepped, you need to stand up and say, “you haven’t answered my question.”
Public commenter Sara Roos suggested that it might be better for the district to spend money on living, breathing teachers than on iPads. After watching the district’s spinning and smoke blowing today, the answer would appear to be yes.
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Parent Sara Roos, with whom I work closely, is the terrific writer of the blog site redqueenia. I recommend her site to all for she captures, as a parent of LAUSD students, the frustration at all the terrible decisions, and seeming lack of oversight, by both the School Board and its employees, and by Deasy and his employees.
The exponential costs for all this inferior administration falls on the taxpayers of California.
Thanks Zorro for this update.
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Isn’t this what Sugata Mitra has been lecturing about on TED. Just give a bunch of kids computers, and they’ll figure out the rest. “Anarchy doesn’t mean out of control, it means out of *their* control.” AH
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Also, the stickiest of sticky questions was completely ignored…..liability. Who is liable if the student uses the iPad to access pornography or other inappropriate sites? Normally, that is the responsibility of the parent if and when they allow their child access to the internet under their supervision in the home. Who is liable if the iPad is stolen or damaged? Who is liable if the child is bullied or the very worst, physically attacked by a thief?
LAUSD had NO answers and simply refused to address these issues. Some of us are looking at the possibility that this iPad fiasco could ultimately bankrupt this school district. But, maybe that’s what Deasy wants. What a huge prize to turn over all this real estate and all the brand new schools to corporations? After all, Arne Duncan did massive damage to the Chicago School System and then wound up as the highest education official in the country. Well, if it worked for Duncan, maybe it will work for Deasy!!!!!
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Deasy is really oblivious about laws and ethics. He is said to be a genius of spin, and it may seem that way but in reality the reporters are frequently updating and revising stories to cover his butt, most notably when Miramonte broke and his criminal indifference, poor leadership ( MES had 4 admin, when small burb ES gets 8, an average the year round school in one of the worst hoods never car close to despite an abundance of predators being outted long before Mr. Berndt was arrested. They belong to Broad, too.
With iPads we have seen insane vacillitating costs, which were sold to the board and the public as a $30 million necessity. I have researched how these devices can be used and have two of my own because so much of my work and life are centered in these technologies. So I am all for them , but I also know that LAUSD is not ready to deal with this complex operation given the issues with wireless Internet , liability ( def. going to be put in contract when students take them home — so how will that homeless kid pay off his when it is stolen by dope fiend or broken by some brawl outside tge mission Mr. deasy?). Make no mistake, a score of unrelenting ipad setbacks will derail learning.
The kids, btw, will always bypass firewalls because they have a billion proxies to turn to after the latest fav is found out by IMC techs.
They can use smart phones to generate an Internet connection for as many as 8 devices with blue tooth. I learned a great deal from students about computers and smart phones.
Like it or not they will find porn, High Times, Facebook, Forever 21 and things that would probably impress you . The critical thinking comes naturally to kids in the hoods– we used to call it street smarts, the billionaire busybodie see this as a threat, and rightfully so, because hood students do not test well ( they actually take the test instead of deferring to the rather troubling methodology affluent whites and Asians rely on: choose 2 worst answers and discard, decide which of remaining two is most right and if not sure, defer to C.
The tests have little bearing on any reality the working poor students confront.
These tests and lessons are poorly written, and Aquino’ s affiliation with trillion air company Pearson Learning which is imposing the scripted lessons and more tests on schools by way of Duncan, a Broadie like Deasy makes it a profound conflict of interest
There is the real crux of this situation as Pearson is already caught up in scandals with CTC and we see more and more problems with the tests, the content and purpose of this allegedly enlightened testing where critical thinking is supposedly explored. Not likely in scantron sheets with a-d to choose from.
So from the start Deasy sold this as a “giveaway” which is illegal because as a public official he cannot commandeer funds to buy presents for kids or bribe their parents.
DEasy’s full blown Pathos visited a homeless child on skid row, a swiftly expanding urban flop not far from LaUSD HQ . The poor ragamuffin is blessed because he can use an iPad ‘s 10 hour charge in his tent–he can do his homework! He can feel good about school.
POVERTY DOES COMPROMISE LEARNING. BUT DEASY IS WITLESS ABOUT THAT DYNAMIC.
However, if you have been there, lived in the hood and /or taught at high need schools in LA you know the iPad will be jacked by thugs , pawned by parents and a crime wave will hit every neighborhood where the tablets are distributed. Had Deasy done the obvious and sensible thing, he would have actually sought teachers’ assistance, wanting to know more about schools than most. We are there and teach every day unlike these obscenely overpaid suits.
I also believe Apple has an office set up in LA now to facilitate the process. I have seen the links and have to wonder if Deasy or Aquino have given teachers these contacts, which are no doubt experts on the tablets.
Teachers consistantly report terrible training sessions as well,with district staff
Thankfully as the eyes and ears of the people, Monica Ratliff–Ratty Tat as I like to call her because she is machine gun brilliant–has been the real hope for teachers and parents.
She plans to repay their faith in kind from what I have seen so far. So Democracy is coming to the USA. Maybe
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Educator…I had heard that the parents had to sign a guarantee for repayment for damage or loss…but do not know if that is fact. Most inner city parents earn in a month what Deasy paid for this soon to be obsolete technology costing taxpayers about $1000 each.
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If they came with guns, no one would take them from them. This could be a teachable moment about the black market. Bullies no longer need to take the lunch money.
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Does anyone know anything about “Universal Screeners for Response to Instruction and Intervention”? On Monday evening Philadelphia’s School Reform Commission passed a resolution to allocate $4,259,115 to Pearson Learning and Renaissance Learning for technical support and staff development for this system. In some research I found this is to be used to evaluate and track preschool and kindergarten children. I haven’t found any evidence that Gates and inBloom are involved, but I can’t imagine they aren’t.
In the speaker part of the meeting before resolutions, a school counselor testified about how the few counselor’s left in Philadelphia have to service eight schools (2 a day) and thousands of students. Most schools do not have counselors. A parent expressed her outrage that parents have been totally shut out and have no say about what is happening to Philadelphia schools.
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They are involved big time. See NY Sunday paper and visit
www, hemlockontherocks.com for more on Gates meddling, LAUSD has lawless class sizes 40- 50 , neglected campuses with. Tainted water pipes, asbestos and vermin that have not seen any care in decades. Thousands of teachers are RiFed and replaced by TFA and new subs instead of credentialed teachers. There are no longer school nurses or psychiatric social workers available, college centers, counselors, music, arts, remediation, libraries, feild trips, and raises ( 7 years without any + copious furloughs and a regular raid of paychecks explained as overpayments from a new payroll program that caused chaos several years back have made our finabpnces precarious . The regular purges of teachers began on 9-15 and will escalate in spring as they have for nearly a decade. The thing that really angers us is how administration, already notoriously corpulent grew a whopping 25 % since 2003! There suits never suffer cuts,ad Deasy frequently whines how he needs committee,massistants, directors, social media experts, investigators, consultants and everything BUT teachers. We are considered less tha scurvy dogs by entrenched corruption and this white chalk crimininal evokes terrible propoganda from the media. Check out HUF Post. It is not so bad now but the headlines were hateful, they still have slide shows of sexual degenerates and to hear some media tell it, teachers are by and large an ugly underbelly of society, sigh…
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At the same time the LAUSD has been wasting $2.2 million per month over the last two years “housing” teachers accused of such egregious acts as passing gas and glaring. Not lying here. Do the math:
$2.2m x 24 months= $52.8 million. Add this to the legal fees that are wasted fighting teacher dismissals – reported at $100,000+ per teacher – and you get a lot of taxpayer money wasted in a district that provides almost nothing in the way of arts education to students.
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Yes Michael…those in ‘teachers jail’ and you forget all the pending lawsuits against them by unfairly fired teachers. We taxpayers are wildly ripped off by this failed administration at LAUSD.
Hope you are all writing angry letters to the editor of the LA Times in response to the Howard Blume article today about hacking of these almost obsolete iPads.
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Sorry Michael…of course you mentioned the lawsuits and the cost to the taxpayers…it is late and I am bleary eyed.
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The district hoarders billions of surpluses runs for lawyers, however, teachers are not really afforded that legal option for the very reasons you site. While teachers can sue for injuries and criminally indifferent antics, few prevail. In one case, a teacher had Gloria Allred as her attorney. The teacher had been sexually harassed by students until. She broke down after admin failed intervene. Allred was actually pattd down upon visiting the BeaudrybBuilding for a depo. she also lost $75,000 when he judge threw out the case because he said teachers have to expect to be harassed. Allred will not touch teachers ‘ cases, nor will many lawyers in LA and elsewhere. With the firing, there is not likely to be much fallout. Teachers are starved out, if they can afford lawyers after years on unpaid status.
Few teachers are getting beyond the OAH where the district is indulged with antics so outside the ideas we have about law it is a forgone conclusion that you should just settle and get on with wha is left of your life.
Not many teachers will be seeing any cash or justice but Inbelieve for may seeing the corruption and crimes convicted will be more than enough to appease them. The old orange ensemble as the culprits arrive to court in chains is worth more than a million to me. I mean that.
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Excellent art teachers are memorable additions to the education process. In many cases, art teachers play monumental roles in the lives of students. Therefore, the question stands: What makes a good art teacher?
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