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School Internet Program Audit Shows Fraud and Waste
uid0mako writes "CNN is reporting on the abuses of E-rate. E-rate is a government-sponsored program that provides discounted Internet access and internal connection gear such as wiring, adaptors and servers to underprivileged schools. One of the incidents includes $24 million spent on 74000 wireless network cards that never left the loading dock."
What, fraud and corruption in a government run program paid for by the little guy? I find this so hard to believe!
*note to the sarcasm imparied: my tongue was firmly in cheek.
Who said that they needed to leave the loading dock? Aren't they wireless?
Har.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
24000000 / 74000 = ~$324/NIC
guess they weren't buying Netgear cards at that price... ouch!
... with 74000 wireless network cards? Creating an geomagnetic field disturbance for science class?
Shortly after this program started, one of our local schools wired itself, and oh-so-coincidentally did it in a way that required recarpeting and painting the entire place to repair the "construction damage". All paid for out of the fund of course. I'll bet there are ten times more little scams like this that add up to way more than the big noticable ones.
I have watched the e-Rate program since its inception, and am neck-deep in it now...this sort of thing happens over and over again. It is a multi-billion-dollar boondoggle, typical government program. Schools are forced to hire entire staffs, or outsource, just to fill out the hundreds of pages of paperwork. The end result? Rejection, or perhaps more paperwork. But in any case, all of those billions are funneled to IT giants like Microsoft and IBM, as well as the Telecom companies that are given "preference" for their stone-age T1 technology. Want to put in your own glass fiber between buildings? Not covered by e-Rate, because that would step on the phone company's toes. Better to lease a dozen T1 lines, in their eyes. The whole thing needs to be gamma-irradiated and shot into deep space...and the "Universal Service Fee" that covers it eliminated.
He was talking about a school system in Arizona (I believe) that spent some ridiculous amount on a system from IBM that was so complicated, the school system couldn't maintain it. The best part was how IBM "forsaw" that this would happen, and charged and additional $27M to build a "lavish support center" that the teachers could call for tech support.
What the hell's wrong with these people!?! (Not IBM, I think that part is hilarious)
Nuke Gay Whales for Jesus.
I'll keep this in mind when I get my next phone bill and notice the 30% taxes added on to it. At least half of that is the "Gore Tax", which was put to such great use as we see. Now that almost all American public schools have their intarweb installed, I see no reason to continue this financial rape of the public. This program should be phased out, since it has clearly outlived its usefulness. It's nothing less than irresponsible to suggest that a federal tax be used to pay the monthly internet bills for schools and libraries (neither of which are supposed to be federally controlled to begin with).
Ahh.. i can dream atleast...
Hmmm.
Is not an entierly bad idea, but its not being done properly.
First off, not every kid should have an internet connection. Period. The Internet is not sesame street (which every kid SHOULD have.) In fact, I consider it more like the streets of NYC, at night, in the bad part of town.
Its simply not safe for kids to have un-guided access while at school. Blocking programs are even worse. As such, internet connections should be wide open and subjet to constant teacher review. Perhaps a single lab, with all monitors in view of the proctor would be considered adequate.
The rest of the money here is simply wasted. The current problems with america's education system is epidemic. Youve got underpaid, unmotivated and uneducated teachers, attempting to simply control a group of apathetic and uncaring students, who have little to no motivation and guidance from their gaurdians. The problem cannot be pinned on any single group. Everyone is messing up here, equally.
And as Americas education system continues to collapse the nation will be seriously hurt by this. A nation of unmotivated morons cannot compete with.. well.. india. Nor should we be able to. I dont know if youve looked at the job market in minute detail, but a major part of the problem is that people are too incompetant to do the job.
no
Education bureaucrats waste large amounts of money.
In other news, the sky was reportedly blue this morning and there seems to be a large amount of water west of Oregon.
More late-breaking news as it becomes available. We now return you to your regularly scheduled argument about text editors.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
I just finished high school at a public school. This is not at all uncommon. They spent $50k on a lab for the CCNA students and found the two worst teachers I have ever had to teach it. Both were underqualified and took the same 4 semester course over the space of 2 weeks. Obviously, they passed the class instead of learned the material, and it showed. Of the 18 students who started the first year (myself included), only 3 made it to the next year, Semester 3. Cheating was rampant on tests as the teacher thought his time was better spent ticking out emails and doing lesson plans for his biology classes than enforcing anti cheating measures.
After the 15/18 failure rate, he was replaced the next year. This new teacher was even more awful. He took the course the same way, and used us remaining 3 students to "help him" rebuild the lab. This involved taking old donated computers from the A+ lab and making them seaworthy for the class. Oh, and grabbing some old desks from the woodshop on the other side of the campus and doing chimp work with a drill to make them able to stand. Of the 3 remaining second year students, all of us dropped out. Of his 24 first year students, all of them dropped out as well.
These wastes of money were apparant, we got these expensive routers and bridges and our teachers were unable to answer simple questions about them. Useless, I think the routers ended up being shipped to another school so they could try their hand at the CCNA program.
Oh, and other schools in the district have had the CCNA program for a few years, and are turning out graduates due to good (suprise!) teachers.
Click here for a free picture of an iPod!
from cnn: The cards were purchased in 1999 for about $24 million, including supposed installation charges. The price is with installation charges included.
"The program, run by the FCC and administered by a not-for-profit corporation, is widely credited for helping poor and rural schools get wired, giving students better learning tools." ..
Of all the problems with poor and rural schools, they spend money on this? Technology is a good thing, but when my rural school only had an 800 average SAT score (of the people motivated enough to take it), you have to wonder why resources get wasted like this.
a) 1996 - Gore/Clinton tax *your* phone bill to "put internet on every school"
b) Any school can spend whatever money and get the ERATE fund to reimburse the school
Waste and abuse happens because this tax should not even have existed to begin with. If school districts had to spend their own money, based on *local* taxation, this sort of careless purchasing would not happen.
You vote for politicians who introduce taxes, you bring this upon yourself.
The next pasture is always greener
I think we need to get George Bush more directly involved to find out what's going on here and to ask the really tough questions like, "Is our children learning?"
This is called "Trickle down economics". The Teamsters get the cash, and it trickles down to the rest of us
Never underestimate the bandwidth of 74000 network cards on a truck that has never left the loading dock.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
It's a shame that there appears to be so much abuse of this programme. Sometimes I wonder if these types of programmes are really necessary, though. Mostly out of interest, what kinds of advantages do children actually get out of having computers in schools? By themselves the use of computers certainly doesn't cover the primary topics that schools are usually expected to teach, so presumably there's some expectation that having them there will either hugely benefit children in some other way, or will positively enhance the effects existing teaching.
I guess that in theory children can get used to having them around. To some extent it means that computers would be available for someone who might be able to learn from them extensively if they wouldn't have been able to otherwise. But is anyone out there aware of any actual research that demonstrates that computers in schools results in a verifiable positive return? (Keeping in mind that lots of people who never had computers in school were simply trained in the workplace.)
I don't mean to criticise, but I ask because I see a lot of people and governments claiming that it's a good thing. On the other hand, I haven't actually seen much evidence or that much that might convince me that we're much better off than we were a few years ago, when significantly fewer schools had access to computers.
I also don't mean to imply that maybe schools shouldn't have computers at all --- only that pouring vast amounts of money into actively supporting an infrastructure that deprecates so quickly might not be very effective. If the availability of technology means that most of people will already end up having reasonable computers in their homes within the next decade anyway, then pushing them so much in schools could be quite obsolete.
No, more like a new developement in the story (though anyone who hasn't read the previous story yet should do NOW!)
That took advantage of this program. Our district received a massive government grant (in excess of 20 million? I think). This was of course split up between 5 seperate smaller districts in small towns. Each one of these districts had an elementary, middle school, and high school. In addition there was a Vocation School. This money from the government lead to a massive revamp of IT services in all those schools which included:
-Connecting 5 towns to the Vocation School with redundant fiber lines
-Purchasing top notch routing and server equipment for each of the schools
-purchasing in excess of 200 brand new computers for each building
-and the founding of an Internet Service Provider which server the area as a dial up provider and as the central hub that tied the schools together.
It also led to the vocational school receiving much needed tech upgrades to CS labs and the Photo and Design Mac labs.
When this government money is well spent, it can be a great force for good. But once a unscrupulous contracter gets his hands on those kind of funs, these massive frauds occur.
Despite the fact that there are abuses, and they may be wide spread, I was part of a group of students who wired a dozen or so schools in the town where I went to college. we did the network diagrams, organized the groups, taught people how to do patch panels and the like.
:)
It was in the top three most rewarding experiences in my life, and one of the most valuable for jobs skills. it was a truly unique experience, and I would hate to see this go away because some people can't freaking be honest.
I'd be happy with oversight (lots of stuff needs oversight) but don't remove it. I heard that there was a proposal to just turn it into generic school grants or something, and I think that would be a mistake as well
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Vi is better.
> The US public school system is
> tremendously wasteful.
The worst thing is that even if you homeschool your kids, you still pay taxes to support public schools. So you pay double - once for the homeschool books/supplies/etc and once into the maw of the Dept of Education.
The Army reading list
I sure hope you're being sarcastic and that's not a kneejerk reaction. The problem isn't companies, the problem is SCHOOLS being morons and taking all this "free money" and spending it on multi-million dollar solutions when a $100 switch and a box of cable would fit their needs.
The real problem is that this all paid for through a tax on your phone bill (think: Universal Service Fee, meaning most people never realize how much they pay for it) and the structuring of the program encourages waste. "Buy the biggest and best things that you can so we can get good PR for helping the children!" Meanwhile, anyone who questions the program's merits stands a chance of being labeled "against education" or even a racist, since the program (supposedly) exists to help poorer schools.
A better article on this can be found at the New York Times.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
First, Kids need to read books at school. Google is great.... for the LITERATE. Now, I am programmer/analyst and my charge is to write the code that performs analysis on student test data. The results my programs output are factored into deciding wether or not a particular school/district is "making it" according to the Bush endorsed "No Child Left Behind Act". Billions of dollars of federal money are on the line. I am performing these analyses on my state issued Pentium III with 128 megs of RAM and a 15" monitor. I think this computer cost $3.49 at Comp USA. Some ass just allowed a purchase of 27 Meelion dollars worth of new fangled walkie-talkies and I can't get a flat screen or at least a $5 stick of RAM?
--Always, I mean never..., No I mean always check your references.--
Look - a clear and serious fraud has been commited. People should be livid about this, even more so if this kind of behaviour is the norm. Just because it always happens doesn't make it right, and only pressure and accountability will ever sort the situation out. Shrugging the shoulders and going "so?" is really not all that helpful.
Cheers,
Ian
I think that the never leaving the loading dock issue is the smallest issue here. the price should tell you that actually shipping these cards was probably irrelevant from the beginning.
wonder how much they spent on the access points...
I was a high school student several years ago; most of my family works for public schools and I have heard a lot of great stories about how IT works or does not work for teachers and students. Here is the summary.
As far as I remember, IT was a total disaster in my school. We were able to get computers and get them setup; however there was no qualified support. There was no single person responsible for providing user assistance and doing system administration! When computers crashed, students were not really allowed to repair them, instead our librarians tried to come to the rescue; it took them hours and hours to fix a simple problem. Go figure.
When it came to security of networks and school computers, it was even worse. First of all, every damn computer had some sort of "cop" software installed that prevented access to "bad" sites. As a result, students were not research about breast cancer or human sexuality eventhough the pages came from dot GOV. The best part about it was the fact that students usually knew more than teachers and staff; boy, it was fun seeing old ladies trying to remove a picture of a naked chick from the background.
Then there were students who did not know what to do with computers due to the lack of knowledge. I went to a good school that was required to bus certain number of students from the inner city and other "problematic" areas in order to meet some sort of a standard. Some of these kids knew zero about computers and there was nobody in school who could teach them. At least several computers had to be replaced every year because a frustrated student's actions.
My girlfriend work for public schools in MA. The state of IT in her schools is simply pitiful. They have the oldest technology, and virtually no help. Two guys who are in charge of the system have no interest in making things work. When the schools receive new computers or software, there is not enough training provided; therefore, nobody can use them efficiently!
So what's the point? Well, the point is that you can waste government's money in many ways. Direct stealing is just one of them.
Have you ever bid on a government project in Puerto Rico? We did once. The RFP was so full of irregularities that inidicated the process was corrupt that we complained and the whole thing got shut down. It was clear that the winner of the process had been selected before the search began and they were local and weren't qualified to do the work. This sort of thing happens all over, but the most blatant case I ever saw was in PR.
Lasers Controlled Games!
common sense and (fiscally) conservative I've ever seen on Slashdot so far. Refreshing.
"If you are not liberal when you are 20, you have no heart. If you are not conservative when you are 40, you have no brain." -Winston Churchill
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Anyway, guess, who did she study to become, and is currently becoming? A Washington lobbyist! No kidding...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
tell us something that isnt new with the US public school system.
Thing is, the people who run the school system are not good with managing money. this is proven fact, the dont look into the best priced software, or hardware, or anything.
it's whoever treats them to the best lunch.
How about lets really get real. The reason the cards stayed on the dock is that the school teachers/admin simply didn't know how to use computers in the first place. They were not going to use them, they were going to set them like trophies on their desks.
I have had a running fight with my daughter's teachers for 4 years now that they should send me emails if there are any problems. I have offered to add my address to their email address book and been forbidden. I have been told that writing me would take too much time but a parent teacher conference was ok.
This year I finally had one teacher who actually notified by email. The others NOT! Most teachers classrooms you find that the computer is neatly covered with a dust cover and maybe a potted plant is mounted on the top. (NOT USED EVER!) This spring our school system disposed of several thousand 3 year old computers which were "Out Dated" and replaced them with new ones. The new ones are used jsut as much as the old ones. (Get out your dust blower please!)
How about discussing this in the MEDIA or how the Gore Tax was passed without a Vote of Congress which is a violation of the US Constitution or ...
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
I refuse to assist, and will work to actively bring down, any group which claims some sort of right to my earnings.
That's why I refuse to buy a house. I don't have any kids, and really don't care to pay out to send your kids (not yours, personally) to skool so they can cut class and talk about how teh new hiphob album is teh best(typos intentional).
Well, that, and the fact that with the slow death of IT, I never know when I'll have to pack up and move to get my next job. =\
I'm not refusing to buy - you're either paying it directly or their charging the landlord and he's passing it along in the rent bill - but property taxes are a huge consideration. Good thing I love rural areas.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
Because you've done something for the greater good? And that's the problem, no one wants to do good unless they see a way that they will somehow benefit from it.
And on the note of local funding -- no one wants to fund their local schools anyways, especially in the areas this program is targeted to. You go into a poorer area and say "Hey, we are going to raise taxes to pay for schools!" ...duck because there's gonna be a shitstorm.
You say, "If the local taxpayers don't want to spend the money to maintain the infrastructure, then why should you and I, who don't even benefit?"
The local taxpayers say, "If the taxpayers who actually have kids in the schools don't want to spend the money to maintain the infrastructure, then why should you and I, who don't even benefit?"
And then the people with kids in school say, "I just can't afford it, and besides, isn't everyone supposed to help pay for the schools?"
On a side note, here in Ohio, it was recently ruled unconstitutional to support schools exclusively through property taxes. Problem is, that's the only place districts really have to get money. The state funding system is entirely fucked up. Not only has the state bugeted money to districts, then taken half of the money away halfway through the year, but the entire funding system has been ruled unconstitutional no less than FOUR times! (The CNN page says 3, but that is from 2002.)
I wish that if I was doing something unconstitutional, even after being ruled against four times, I could keep doing it without consequence!
Fuckwit politicians.