Turns out the iPads purchased by LAUSD are way more expensive than what other districts are buying. And they have already been discontinued: obsolete already.
No wonder tech vendors are thrilled with Race to the Top: Ca-Ching !
$$$$$$$$$$
Lots of dough for devices. Not so much for the arts, libraries, small classes.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s not so funny when powerful, wealthy people are stupid, very stupid.
Where’s their evidence? Where’s their critical thinking skills? Money trumps all.
Kid are props. Teachers are abused and they are a disgrace.
LikeLike
I don’t think stupidity played any role in this fiasco. Just pure greed.
LikeLike
When it comes to teaching, learning and child development they know nothing, absolutely nothing. This will implode; it’s only a matter of time.
LikeLike
What is stopping Deasy and LAUSD from renegotiating this contract? Was the contract further evidence of the incompetence of the LAUSD? What outside counsel was involved? Are they liable in any way?
LikeLike
What motivation would Apple have to renegotiate?
I work in real estate law and I could retire tomorrow if I had a dollar for every client who has rushed a deal only to find themselves on the short end of the stick. Of course we always try to amend the lease/contract as best we can, but the winning party usually has little reason to negotiate.
LikeLike
LAUSDeasy what have you done to our children and our tax money?
http://www.examiner.com/article/lausdeasy-what-have-you-done-to-our-children-and-our-tax-money
LikeLike
Yes, Bernie and Stuart….Deasy and his henchmen, and his protectors, Eli Broad and Tony Villaraigosa, should all be liable for manipulating this fraud of the iPad fiasco. And yes, their lawyers were and are very much involved. Primary name is the Manatt lawyer who on this blog site last October, rebuked those of us who have been working all year to address these horrible decisions.
With the phony orchestration of Save Deasy with Daisies Day on Oct. 29, to the Ratliff hearings where Aquino called our protests “NOISE” these arrogant men, who seem to be disciples of Wolf of Wall Street, have cheated the taxpayers and the LAUSD students. To use Construction Bond money to pay for this massive boondoggle means taxpayers will pick up the bill for the interest for decades to come.
Rather than reducing class sizes from over 50 students by hiring back some of the 30,000 teachers whom they fired in California, these plutocrats and their devoted underlings decided to enrich their buddies at Apple and Pearson…not only by buying obselete iPads at top price in the nation, but also by paying for Common Core software that has not yet even been designed.
As with the Wall Street banksters who caused the collapse of the world’s economy, all based on greed, now we have LAUSD not only not making the perps, starting with Deasy, liable, but rather this inept and cowardly BoE hired him back with much fanfare at an increased salary structure. All this after a 91% NO CONFIDENCE vote by teachers he continues to disrespect.
It would seem that Deasy et al have the goal of bankrupting the School District in order to them privatize it. This seems to be the mindset and training given graduates such as Deasy, Aquino, Byrd Bennett, etc., of the Broad Academy.
It is one of the major scandals of 2013 and the lesson to the citizenry is never vote for any school bonds for you will be bilked and your hard earned taxes will be used to enrich the Grand Masters who seem always to be held harmless.
Thank you Howard Blume for your great investigative article today in the LA Times.
Ellen Lubic (aka Woof)
LikeLike
Don’t forget Mayor Garcetti, a strong supporter of Deasy.
http://www.dailynews.com/social-affairs/20131025/la-mayor-eric-garcetti-says-he-supports-lausd-superintendent-john-deasy-questions-school-board
“Speaking at an event in Hollywood, Garcetti said he was ‘disheartened’ to read newspaper stories about Deasy’s possible resignation. ‘He is a friend and (someone) whose work I support,’ Garcetti said.”
LikeLike
California taxpayers need to DEMAND an investigation by the attorney general. Who will start a petition? Where’s George Buzetti?
LikeLike
Thank you, Ellen. I believe they are going to get theirs for this and few scandals will rival the one that LAUSD and it’s secrets. Think f what we do know! Shudder to think what we don’t To be fair the horror goes back before Deasy but his mentor Eli Broad has been MEDDLING in LAschools ( not to mention art, politics, culture, real estate and history)for a very long time. This person is so perverse he seems to get his kicks from undermining human progress. He wants to control the world. As far as I know he has no children. Nature will wash her hands of that sooner than later. Really these people are soulless shameless swine.
LikeLike
Anyone who can’t negotiate a bulk discount on a billion-dollar purchase of 600,000+ devices is grossly incompetent. All LAUSD officials involved in this should be fired immediately.
Likewise, Apple should be publicly shamed for fleecing the public.
What are their names of the Apple executives who negotiated this? What do they, and Tim Cook, have to say for themselves? Apple must be pretty happy to have found a customer willing to buy tens of thousands obsolete tablets at full price.
LikeLike
Again, incompetence is one possibility, but my guess would be that Deasy and the other powers that be at LAUSD got (or will get) something sweet out of the deal. What’s the over/under for how many of them will end up employed by Apple?
LikeLike
Deasy was hired by Apple as the public face of iPad when they rolled it out. This can be found online…and on you Tube.
LikeLike
Good point, I should have said they’re grossly incompetent AT BEST. More likely they are guilty of fraud, accepting kickbacks, gross malfeasance, etc.
And yes, it is very likely that they’ll step through the revolving door and end up employed by Apple or some other edutech vendor.
LikeLike
KPPC says some of them took home free iPads early on. Highly unethical.but consistent with LAUSD operational, Although he recently sold it, Deasy owned stock in Apple. However I believe Apple was lured into this mess. The company is hardly without blame but it appears the scam is about more than money and prizes. What will make Bill Gates happier than Apples tarnished rep? Especially in the education arena? An appointment as king of the world!? Maybe . I believe there has yet to be full accounting on the iPads which could actually cost less because Deasy needed them to be at least $500 each according to one source, to qualify for bond measure expenditures. All I know is the BOE banned wifi as known carcinogen a few years back and was removing the infrastructure as Deasy made this deal. Now he wants to squander $1/2 a billion installing it again and risk children and staff to make this deal. With recent revelations about the city’s dire financial circumstances, it looks like LA will soon be bankrupted too. Is that on purpose? I think so because Eli Broad will benefit from it greatly. Even United Way I’d devoted to his acquisition of obscene wealth while small children sleep in tents on the miles of sidewalk that is now skid row. Appropriately enough, this is not very far from LAUSD HQ down town .
LikeLike
Howdy & Happy New Year,
Reading the article, I’m intrigued by the priorities each school district/group belies by it’s spending. (Also might be good to note LA Unified is kind of dealing w/ its not-great plan: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/nov/12/local/la-me-1113-lausd-20131113)
Bottom line: rolling out a technology w/o a plan for its use is backward. Identifying a specific need & purchasing/finding a technology that meets that need works best, I think. But that would require decisions made at the building or department or (gasp) the classroom level. Unilateral curricular decisions are inefficient and ineffective (as subsequent articles about this iPad rollout in LA seem to indicate). While tablets are a fantastic, flexible, cheap way to consume digital content, I’m disappointed that LA Unified has managed to make the opposite true.
In the small, rural teacher ed program where I teach, I’m happy to report that the fundamental principle of our educational technology course is the purposeful adoption, adaption, and application of technology to fit specific curricular needs. Most of our students already get this because they know it makes little sense to buy everyone a set of screw drivers when classroom A needs a socket set and classroom B needs a hack saw, et cetera… But we work from the position that teachers make the best decisions for their classrooms, which isn’t often/always administratively understood or true.
Putting a textbook on an iPad makes sense. But it doesn’t make sense for every iPad, every class, or every student. When will we stop trying to over-generalize learning and its tools?
Regards,
Nigel Waterton
LikeLike
Very astute and well said.
LikeLike
in my opinion, it is true they did and it is happening across the country…. corporations are using the tools as marketing devices to (a) get into the homes with the devices/apps etc and (b) gather data that they then sell to other marketers — a lot of these data gathered are private and confidential and parents are being tricked into signing up with an electronic signature to have their privacy of their homes invaded. Permitting the student to access the device provides an “electronic signature” which is an “end run” around the parents giving up confidential information. I wrote some additional information about this under previous comments (cf Footsteps2brilliance and my reasons for rejecting their approach that mayors are welcoming; mayor from Revere MA is going to Texas to “schill” for the company; it is unethical what they are doing… and they target the state’s funds for inner cities where the parents are not native English speaking )
LikeLike
Yes, Jean…given that Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, and Joel Klein (with Murdoch’s Amplify) will be in a postiion now to over reach with their inBloom data mining….and with all the potential for advertisers aimed at children on these iPads….the future for using this as an education tool seems bleak.
As an educator of public policy, I suggest to all teachers to construct lessons on the ruse of advertising and teach students not to fall for all the merchandising directed at them…and at us all.
Ellen
LikeLike
I agree! Our young need to understand the propaganda of marketing coming at them for the profits an ignorant populous generates for the already obscenely wealthy few.
LikeLike
I agree with Bernie, what’s stopping LAUSD from terminating or renegotiating this contract. We the public know nothing about alternative routes the district could take. I don’t think the board of education knows and that’s sad. They have a committee that is investigating the ipads and this should be one of their main foci.
LikeLike
I would guess there are few if any termination provisions in the contract, and steep penalties for default.
LikeLike
The contract should be public information. There are at least two bloggers here who could publish the contract which surely has steep penalties for breach of contract.
LikeLike
We’d be able to know more about the planning, support and obligations. Through the freedom of information act we are allowed to request that document, therefore I will request it and keep everyone updated of my success or the lack of it I anticipate. Though there have been requests for stats on teachers’ jail and dismissals, RiFs, displacements to UTLA and LAUSD, neither has been very helpful. This quest may be more fruitful since it is more directly related to te commonwealth.
LikeLike
Citizens nation wide need to be aware of this fiasco to kept it from happening in their own districts. i was aware that the county next to mine is purchasing lap tops and I pads for all of its students. What I did not realize until today when I read another article in the local paper though was that the lap tops and I pads are from Apple. I do not know the cost. i also do not know–but don’t think that this is the case–if there are any “deals” with Pearson involved in this purchase. This same county/school system (Baldwin County) either recently has or will soon be launching a virtual high school.
LikeLike
Questions: KICKBACK(s)? If so, in what form(s)?
LikeLike
Clearly our business minded reformers have now proven what every one of us knows. They know nothing about education and they are also lousy businessmen! Why do we continue to listen to anything they say? It is painfully obvious why they want to circumvent democracy, they cant win at the ballot box if all the facts are known.
LikeLike
They’re only lousy businessmen if they really did get the short end of the stick. I mean, I know LAUSD got the short end of the stick, but I’m not at all convinced that those who negotiated the deal on behalf of LAUSD did. As I mentioned above, at the very least, I’m sure they all have very lucrative positions waiting for them at Apple as soon as they leave “public service”.
LikeLike
Let them get to that new job or retire then. Deasy, Aquino andBroad need to go like yesterday. LA KIDS ncannot afford all this nonsense.
LikeLike
Old Teacher: I agree.
They combine “don’t know anything about education” with “worst business practices.”
But absent this blog and others and activists across the country, the charterites/privatizers will attempt to massage the facts and torture the numbers to make the iPad catastrophe fit their “narrative.”
On the one hand, they will claim that charter schools are NOT like public schools. Why? Because their Centres of EduExcellence make wise decisions regarding finances and resources. So even though the people who authorized the hasty implementation of a poorly conceived and destructive plan are—literally!— charterites/privatizers, the entire blame will mysteriously fall on “other” schools aka public schools. Translation: get your kids out of those “factories of failure” otherwise known as “dropout academies” and “factories of despair” and onto the waiting list of the nearest School of Cagebusting Achievement. You know, those “other” schools that AREN’T public schools.
On the other hand, charter schools ARE public schools. When? Imagine the scene when looking at anything that is spun as positive from the charterite/privatizer mismanagement of LAUSD. For example, the supposed accomplishments of LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy who couldn’t even hit most of his own data points [see link below].* See what happens when you put a person with the right educational philosophy and training and experience in charge of the second-largest school district in the country? Can’t wait for what’s to come! [Ignore everything about iPads…]
LATIMES, 10-28-13, “L.A. schools improved, but Deasy fell short of ambitious goals”:
*[start quote] On the eve of discussions over his future, Los Angeles schools Supt. John Deasy can count on broad support from the civic elite, but by his own yardsticks, his performance fell notably short this year.
Deasy set ambitious and specific targets to measure progress in the nation’s second-largest school system — and in category after category, he failed to hit his marks, even though L.A. Unified maintained a long trend of gradual improvement.
He didn’t reach goals in eight of nine academic categories measured by test scores. He also slipped behind in his targets for boosting the graduation rate and in attendance for students and teachers. He shined, however, in two categories: reducing the number of instructional days lost to suspensions and in the percentage of students who feel safe at school. [end quote]*
Link: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-lausd-deasy-20131029,0,448173.story#axzz2p9vuphya
But not to fret if you are concerned about the moral health of the leading charterites/privatizers. They are as honest as, well, Mark Twain knew the type:
“Honest is the best policy — when there is money in it.”
$tudent $ucce$$ anyone?
😎
LikeLike
This is an IPad debacle out of Texas that has to be read to be believed.
It has everything; the Broad-trained superintendent who is a terrible manager but keeps getting promoted, a completely inexplicable crony hire of a “developer” out of Louisiana, a whole passel of “consultants” and the planned replacement of live science classes with “virtual learning”.
“Fort Bend’s iAchieve program, which launched in early 2012, is the most ambitious iPad program yet in Texas. It combined a huge investment in new equipment and wireless network upgrades with an all-new set of science lessons and 100 simulated experiments built to run on an all-new app. It was all supposed to take about 18 months.
Instead, district administrators canceled the program in early October, after months of problems at every turn. The new wireless coverage was spotty; new lessons didn’t match district standards; interactive tools never got built; and the superintendent took a contract buyout to leave the district years early. The iAchieve program was such a boondoggle that a group of high schoolers—kids the district was buying the iPads for—even tried to kill it. And for the critical job of designing the software to run the new lessons, the district hired an inexperienced two-person company with little relevant experience. ”
http://www.texasobserver.org/run-school-ipad-program/
The funniest part of the whole piece is that a STUDENT group tried to kill it. They knew they were getting robbed 🙂
LikeLike
I agree with Chiara . When the kids are agaist something like free iPads, you know somebody is getting jacked. They are critical thinkers which is the scariest thng Bil Gates and Eli Broad can imagine. Frankly, it is possible that Apple has some culpability here, but that does not change the fact that Deasy under the influence of Pearson and Duncan… Or should I say in cahoots with them ? Either way, he dropped the ball. Or he is pulling off quite a capereither way we are tripping over it. So this article and something I read elsewhere is ready to lay the blame all on Apple’s door. If there is truth in it, and there may well be,–but I don’t believe the media much anymore—then let Apple answer for it. But not as the sole grifters. Because Apple was not in this scam on their lonesome. In fact I think they were lured to this with fall guy tattoed on their industrialized foreheads
This is Broad’s show with Gates and Walton producing. He is a control freak. He wants to wing top notch inFortune 500 billionaires . To him this is like a video game–we are holograms in his world, he has no idea we are living human creatures. If he does, he is indifferent to the pain of others. Some kind of mutant sociopath, Broad is a menace. He should be the one to go to jail because out of them all because he is the biggest threat.
LikeLike
By the way, we have iPads for each students in my school, big distraction.. We don,t need them We need paper supplies, effective teachers , chalkboard and text books. That will work. Very effective and affordable.
LikeLike
So Arne got it wrong when he said textbooks are ” basically obsolete from day one”. How out of character for him.
LikeLike
Thank you, Diane, for posting this. Just to remind your followers, this article deals mostly with devices.
Howard Blume has covered many of the other issues including students breaking through security filters, missing iPads, failure to budget for keyboards and a non-existent plan to hold parents and students liable for lost, stolen or damaged iPads.
Annie Gilbertson, a KPCC reporter, has covered issues relating to huge costs of infrastructure and bandwidth.
In fact, I would ask if anyone can point to any one thing that LAUSD did right. Sadly, the students who are in greatest need of access to technology will find that the iPad plan will continue to drain district resources and is so poorly thought out, that there is virtually no chance that it will result in improved learning opportunities.
LikeLike