Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters is a watchdog who scrutinizes every contract that is about to be adopted by the New York City Department of Education. Last year, she stopped a contract from being approved for nearly $700 million, because the vendors had previously cheated the city. This is one she couldn’t stop.
Leonie writes:
Huge Amazon contract as well as others going to sleazy special ed vendors won unanimous approval last night without a single comment or question from PEP members; wow do I miss Patrick Sullivan on the PEP!
Though the article says it may save the DOE money, there is no mention of the huge outlay moving to digital content will require for the purchase of tablets, laptops and e-readers, with all the risk that involves.
Nor was there any discussion last night or in the article of the risk to student privacy or the substantial research showing kids comprehend and retain less when reading from screens than physical books.
The contract will also steer kids and families from buying their own books for independent reading books through Amazon, as each student will have an individual Amazon account set up, which will likely expand Amazon’s dominance of the marketplace even more, a dominance that the company has used ruthlessly in the face of protests from authors and publishing houses.
Just one among many of the breathtaking moments from last night’s PEP.
Amazon Wins $30 Million Contract to Sell E-Books to New York City Schools
Panel at nation’s largest district votes in favor of three-year agreement
By
Greg Bensinger
Amazon.com Inc. won a deal worth about $30 million to provide e-books to New York City, the nation’s largest school district.
The city’s Panel for Educational Policy voted Wednesday in favor of the three-year contract for the Department of Education, which will take effect in the coming school year. They will have the option to extend it for an additional two years, which would be worth an estimated additional $34.5 million.
With the vote, Amazon won the right to sell digital textbooks and other content, though not hardware like Kindles, to New York schools through an internal marketplace site. The school district has about 1.1 million pupils in more than 1,800 schools.
An Amazon spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The New York education department expects to buy about $4.3 million of content from Amazon in the first year of the contract, $8.6 million in the second year and $17.2 million in the third, which the Seattle retailer earning a commission of between 10% and 15%.
The deal is a boost to Amazon as it seeks to establish itself as a player in education. Many technology firms have set their sights on the classroom, viewing it as ripe for modernization and an effective way to establish their brands with potentially lifelong buyers at a young age.
For New York, there may be savings in buying more digital books, as well as the prospect of saving storage space for printed texts. The education department said e-books purchased from Amazon through its marketplace site will be readable on a variety of devices include e-readers, tablets, smartphones and laptops.
Amazon has dipped its toes into education before, including buying startup TenMarks Education, which helps teachers create math curricula. And earlier this year, it rolled out a public-relations campaign focused on changing children’s attitudes toward math.
The company has agreements to operate co-branded websites selling textbooks and other merchandise to a handful of colleges including University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Purdue University, where it is installing package pickup centers.
Write to Greg Bensinger at greg.bensinger@wsj.com
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
phone: 212-529-3539
leonie@classsizematters.org
leoniehaimson@gmail.com
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
How important is it to have all the information regarding the additional costs that will accrue on a $30 million contract?
From a recent article in the LATIMES regarding the rheephorm-inspired [during the John Deasy interregnum] MISIS information system. Title: “The cost of L.A. Unified’s digital student tracking system rises to $189 million.” Going from an excerpt of the beginning to an excerpt of the ending:
[start excerpts]
About two years ago, the Los Angeles Unified School District unveiled its new student records system. The rollout was widely described as disastrous.
Students were assigned to the wrong classes or none at all for weeks, college applicants worried they wouldn’t get accurate transcripts to schools in time and the district identified hundreds of technological problems.
Last week, the school board approved $40.3 million for what the technology division says will be the last of six large chunks of bond money needed to fix the problems. The money will be used to incorporate independent charter schools into the system, allow schools to customize their reports and give parents access.
That brings the district’s total spending on the program to $189 million since 2013.
…
The spending isn’t over yet. It’ll cost the district about $12 million in general fund dollars to maintain the records system every year, from 2018 to 2019 onward, Pappas said. That expenditure would include a vendor to oversee the system, and it’s an estimate based on how much it costs to maintain a different district system, which is about the same size as My Integrated Student Information System.
During last week’s school board meeting, board member Monica Ratliff wondered aloud whether anyone had thought about where that $12 million was going to come from every year.
“It’s problematic in my view because $12 million is a lot of money,” Ratliff said in an interview. She didn’t realize that even after the fixes were completed, the records system would still require spending that much in maintenance every year.
[end excerpts]
Read the entire article for more info. The comments section is quite revealing.
Link: http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-misis-spending-20160414-snap-story.html
Point of clarification: the LATIMES was all in for this John Deasy fiasco—until it wasn’t, as can be seen from the ‘in-hindsight/jump on the bandwagon’ spin in the first paragraph.
To recap: the $189 million is not the end of it. In order to simply maintain this bottomless rheephorm money pit the LAUSD will have to starve public school students, staffs and parents of $12 million more every year that should have gone to genuine teaching and learning.
Leonie Haimson, and others, are right to be concerned about the fiscal smarts and competence of clueless NYC education officials.
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KrazyTA – You state “From a recent article in the LATIMES regarding the rheephorm-inspired [during the John Deasy interregnum] MISIS information system. ”
One needs to know the whole story before condemning LAUSD. It was not Rheeform inspired as you state. Rhee was not even in the picture when LAUSD agreed to the implementation. Here is the reason for LAUSD to create the student record system.
“The district agreed to implement the student information system as a result of a federal class-action lawsuit two decades ago. The suit alleged that LAUSD violated special education students’ rights, in part, by keeping such disorganized records that it sometimes lost track of those students’ needs.
As part of a consent decree still overseen by a court-appointed monitor, the district promised to create a computer database that would track comprehensive information on every student in the district.”
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Small point: the full-blown MISIS catastrophe will forever be known as part of the enduring legacy of the John Deasy reign of error.
He was and is one of the most prominent members of the recent cohort of rheephormsters.
No getting around that—unless one tries to deflect, avoid and adhere to rheephorm’s “Code of Silence.”
It is a given that the chief beneficiaries and enforcers of self-styled “education reform” latch on to problems and solutions and mandates, old and young, in order to ensure $tudent $ucce$$ for them and theirs at any cost to the rest of us.
But the patently critical point of the piece (related to the posting) for which I provided the excerpts: the complete and utter lack on the part of Deasy & Co. of not just fiscally sound and sustainable, but honest, explanations. Again: $12 million@year in [at this point] perpetuity in addition to that $189 million, and that wasn’t made perfectly clear by him and his subordinates?
BTW, given the LATIMES fierce support of John Deasy until he was shown the door and thrown under the bus, this is quite telling, from an editorial of 11-11-2015—
[start]
As a result, Deasy left a legacy of big, bold plans but too few accomplishments. The iPads-for-all policy could reasonably be called a fiasco. The district was lambasted in independent investigations for buying problematic educational software and having little idea of how the new technology would even be used in classrooms. The college-prep graduation requirements had to be rolled back because they were imposed with little planning for how students would pass the necessary classes. Instead of fixing the district’s dysfunctional student scheduling system known as MISIS, he supported a lawsuit blaming the state for it.
Too often, Deasy’s urgency meant that sweeping new policies were dumped in teachers’ laps without the support, explanation and assistance needed to make them work. Teachers’ concerns were too often dismissed as an unwillingness to change.
[end]
Link: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-lausd-superintendent-vision-20151111-story.html
So I think it is fair to say that I gave John Deasy too much credit for the MISIS disaster—it has to be shared, including with its fervid supporters and spin doctors at the LATIMES. Imagine the difference if he had abandoned rheephorm practice and done something, anything, to ameliorate or solve it, or at the very least warned LAUSD that it was going to be sucker punched for $12 million@year till the cash cows come home.
Thanks for allowing me to highlight the obvious main point and sharpen up a very minor one.
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Why do EDU folks always get tech bassackwards? They are very good at designing curriculum around tech.
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SelectPrep: because they are very good at designing $tudent $ucce$$ aka ROI/monetizing children around tech.
It’s a question of values, priorities and making sure they have the wherewithal to afford those “Happy Places” they live in and the schools to which they send THEIR OWN CHILDREN.
Bill Gates. His two children. Lakeside School.
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Also, they start from the end. The end result being the Ka-ching. Then, they work backwards. Kind of like flying the plane while in the air, but not. They are very cunning as well, and perhaps have used mass hypnosis to get the politicians on board for the massacre of public education and the outright thieving of public taxpayer dollars.
Its greed, and all else be damned.
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I’d be interested in learning more about the “sleazy special ed vendors.” What are their qualifications for developing materials for the wide variety of special needs students?
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When Leonie refers to special Ed vendors, she means private contractors who have previously ripped off the board of Ed and provided poor services
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Oh, thanks for clarifying. I am still concerned about experience that anyone might have with products claiming to be geared to students with specific disabilities. As a retired teacher of the deaf, I find it very hard to believe that off the shelf products, no matter the bells and whistles, will provide the individualized interaction that students with special needs require.
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Sheila,
Those vendors will tell you that their product is not an end all be all but is meant to supplement what the teacher does. So at least try it!
And then after your electronic transfer has cleared and you find out that the product is nothing new or better than you’ve used, well, thanks for the cash!
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“The deal is a boost to Amazon as it seeks to establish itself as a player in education. Many technology firms have set their sights on the classroom, viewing it as ripe for modernization and an effective way to establish their brands with potentially lifelong buyers at a young age.”
That’s refreshingly blunt. Good for them for resting the urge to use the meaningless business seminar blather that is used to sell this stuff.
I worry that public schools will lose credibility with the public if they fold to the intense private sector/government leader pressure to buy, buy, buy without a careful review of whether re-allocating funds in this direction is a good investment.
You all have heard “fail forward” by this time, I’m sure. It’s another business slogan. What it means is “make a huge mistake and learn from it”. Public schools should avoid making huge mistakes with public funds. They are not, in fact, private sector companies. They have a duty to be responsible. Pretending public schools are private sector companies doesn’t make it true and if a public school “fails forward” the public will punish the leaders of that public school for making a bad investment, as they should.
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“Though the article says it may save the DOE money, there is no mention of the huge outlay moving to digital content will require for the purchase of tablets, laptops and e-readers, with all the risk that involves.”
We’re re-examining a Chromebook initiative here and stopping adoption in the lower grades. Right now it’s 7-12 and the original plan was to take it down to 3rd. I’m really pleased they’re looking at this critically as an investment because of course in the real world of public school budgeting, buying or investing in one thing means not buying or investing in another.
Only in the imaginary world of ed reform does “plus/and” – everyone gets everything they want- exist. Public school budgets are real, and limited. I’d prefer if they invested more in staff rather than buy devices for 3rd graders.
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I continue to believe it is wrong for the US Department of Education to promote specific ed tech product on their website:
http://tech.ed.gov/netp/learning/
Why is this permitted? It’s obvious they’re pushing ed tech and “online learning” into public schools with ZERO evidence that it’s a good investment for public schools, which is bad enough. Promoting specific products by using the authority of that department to lend legitimacy should be illegal.
Does anyone oversee these people? Is there some reason they’re permitted to push product in a government entity?
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Chiara is absolutely correct. The USDE website link that she provided recommends specific products. This is product placement advertising with your tax dollars and mine, and with a noteworthy push into territory dealing with character education and so-called “social- emotional skills sets.” The USDE marketing of tech has been going on for a long time, but it accelerated in the late 1980’s, entering the policy landscape big time thanks to the efforts of the CEO of IBM and successes of personal computers.
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