The New York Times published a front-page story yesterday about the huge commitment that Baltimore County has made to technology in the classroom.

The story begins slowly, as a conventional account of a district that wants to prepare its students for the new world of technology.

Baltimore County is one of the nation’s most ambitious classroom technology makeovers. In 2014, the district committed more than $200 million for HP laptops, and it is spending millions of dollars on math, science and language software. Its vendors visit classrooms. Some schoolchildren have been featured in tech-company promotional videos.

Tech companies are salivating over the school market, which is supposed to reach $21 billion in spending by 2020.

School leaders have become so central to sales that a few private firms will now, for fees that can climb into the tens of thousands of dollars, arrange meetings for vendors with school officials, on some occasions paying superintendents as consultants. Tech-backed organizations have also flown superintendents to conferences at resorts. And school leaders have evangelized company products to other districts.

These marketing approaches are legal. But there is little rigorous evidence so far to indicate that using computers in class improves educational results. Even so, schools nationwide are convinced enough to have adopted them in hopes of preparing students for the new economy.

But then as we read on, we learn about covert payoffs, payola, lavish expenses, cozy deals between vendors and school officials, and the mysterious resignation of the superintendent who started this expensive initiative. We see a district committed to spending hundreds of millions on technology while some children are in trailers for classrooms, and water fountains are spouting brown water. In other words, basic needs have been neglected to pay for the shiny new machines. One parent, a physician, says that the relationships between school officials and the industry reminds her of Big Pharma and its cultivation of medical professionals.

Then we learn, almost as a throw away line, that the machine that the district settled on, was not the one with the highest evaluation.

The district wanted a device that would work both for youngsters who couldn’t yet type and for high schoolers. In early 2014, it chose a particularly complex machine, an HP laptop that converts to a tablet. That device ranked third out of four devices the district considered, according to the district’s hardware evaluation forms, which The Times obtained. Over all, the HP device scored 27 on a 46-point scale. A Dell device ranked first at 34.

The superintendent appeared in an HP video, promoting the company. The HP product ran Microsoft software, and Microsoft honored the district as a Microsoft Showcase. The district’s tech leader was honored as an “Intel Education Visionary.”

Worse, we learn that the company that makes the machine has discontinued it.

Recently, parents and teachers have reported problems with the HP devices, including batteries falling out and keyboard tiles becoming detached. HP has discontinued the Elitebook Revolve.

An HP spokesman said: “While the Revolve is no longer on the market, it would be factually inaccurate to suggest that’s related to product quality.”

No, of course not.

While the superintendent has resigned, the interim superintendent is as deeply engaged with the tech companies as her predecessor.

Question for Baltimore County residents? Do you know or care where your tax money is going?

The article says:

Baltimore County’s 173 schools span a 600-square-mile horseshoe around the city of Baltimore, which has a separate school system. Like many districts, the school system struggles to keep facilities up-to-date. Some of its 113,000 students attend spacious new schools. Some older schools, though, are overcrowded, requiring trailers as overflow classrooms. In some, tap water runs brown. And, in budget documents, the district said it lacked the “dedicated resources” for students with disabilities.

Parents, what are your priorities? How about prohibiting school officials from consorting with or taking favors of any kind from vendors?

A teacher in Baltimore County public schools described her experience on this blog with the promotion of technology in every classroom. The former superintendent, Dallas Dance, resigned a few months ago, after committing measly $300 million to new technology, and is under criminal investigation.

The frenzied pushing of laptops for every elementary student 1-5 in Baltimore County had some big ripples beyond the obvious. It was also tied to purchasing brand new reading and math curricula. Both were horrible, for various reasons. The reading program package came without sufficient quantities of required resources–I had 6 hard-copies of books that 2 reading groups (with 8 students in each) needed to use simultaneously. There were about 6 different titles of books for each of the 6 units, each with only 6 copies. We were supposed to access the texts on the laptops, rather than use the paperbacks. Super! Except that on any given day, our local server would crash from overload, or the county server would crash due to overload, or the power in our building would go down, or some glitch in the program would keep throwing kids out of the program or eating their work… These issues were in addition to a crazy, difficult-to-access, error-riddled, age-inappropriate, never-piloted (!) county-written curriculum that SORT OF followed the Pearson curriculum. There was no writing curriculum until teacher complaints led them to try to stuff one into the reading curriculum. There were no samples of how the kids’ work product should look. The rubrics were vague. Nobody in the county language arts department could reliably answer any of our questions because it was a revolving door there. Oh, and the head of the department when I left was none other than Verletta White. Prior to that she was an area supe for my part of the county.

And that is just some of how crazy language arts was. There were similar issues with the new math curriculum and Pearson program.

In addition to all of these overnight curriculum, software, and hardware changes there were drastic changes in HOW we were expected to teach, interact with, and assess our students. On top of that, we were saddled with the idiotic, easy-to-abuse Charlotte Danielson evaluation system. Anyone who principals or area supes felt couldn’t hack it was forced out. You know–teachers with many years of experience. Some teachers, like a colleague of mine–who were eligible to retire, but wanted to keep teaching–promptly decided retirement looked great all of a sudden.

Others, like me (21 years in!), were not eligible to retire and had to simply resign. I lost my salary which was half my family income. I lost my health benefits, including those that would have followed me into retirement. My pension is frozen. Getting hired in another district would likely be dicey, as I am sure I would be asked why I resigned after 21 years–at the same school, no less!–instead of asking for a transfer. All districts in Maryland were on a similar track with PARCC, so using curricular and methods changes as a reason would not be helpful. (I am still searching for a job in some other field, but employers are not interested in 50+ year old entry level employees.)

This happened at schools all over the county. The school communities–children, parents, neighbors, and colleagues–lost our teaching expertise; our experience working with diverse learners, colleagues, and stakeholders; and our contribution to the continuity of our schools’ institutional culture. The amount of taxpayers’ money wasted for such a rotten outcome is criminal. The only good outcome was for Pearson and Hewlitt Packard. They are still counting their money.