L.A. School Superintendent Folds on Laptops-For-Kids Program

In an announcement yesterday reported on by Ars Technica, [Los Angeles school superintendent] Ramon C. Cortines said that the city can't afford to buy a computer for every student. The statement comes after intense controversy over a $1.3 billion initiative launched by Cortines' predecessor, former superintendent John Deasy, in which every student was supposed to be given an iPad loaded with content from educational publisher Pearson. (That controversy is worth reading about, and sparked an FBI investigation as well.)

Comments

iPad too fucking expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy a Pi for every kid. Education is what the Pi is for.

Apple was the cheap option for schools 35 years ago, not now. Now they only sell trendy shit to snobs.

Re: iPad too fucking expensive

[guruevi]

The problem wasn't the iPads - with edu discounts those things are cheap. The problem was the fact they went with Pearson - the mother of all rip-off scams. I think in this instance the 'software' came at a $1000+/student/school year price tag or something like that. They are the same people that cause a standardized test to come in at $1200.

Re: iPad too fucking expensive

[Zontar The Mindless]

As an author and editor who has had the dubious pleasure of dealing with Pearson on more than one occasion, I hereby verify that they suck.

Pearson: No profit left behind

[theodp]

No profit left behind: Across the country, Pearson sold the Los Angeles Unified School District an online curriculum that it described as revolutionary - but that had not yet been completed, much less tested across a large district, before the LAUSD agreed to spend an estimated $135 million on it. Teachers dislike the Pearson lessons and rarely use them, an independent evaluation found.

Just throwing computers at kids isn't a good idea

[ErichTheRed]

I have 2 kids, one who is ready to hit kindergarten next year. From my extremely limited parenting experience, it seems to me that just putting computers in the classroom or in students' hands isn't going to fix long standing education problems. This (in my opinion) goes double for locked down tablets like the iPad.

I'm actually not pushing computers, tablets or other electronic stuff too much on the kids. There are so many fundamentals to work on (reading, numbers, vocabulary, learning to act like a normal human) that electronics can't solve or make worse. They watch movies, watch a little too much YouTube for my taste, and play a couple of educational games. The older one knows a little about navigating around the computer, and of course every kid knows how to use an iPad/iPhone. Ask me in 14 years whether I screwed them up too badly, but it's working out pretty well just reading to them. playing with them, answering all of the 29 million 4 year old questions they have, etc.

Computers can't fix the real problems -- crappy parents, crappy home situations, low pay and low respect for teachers, etc. Every kid should be computer literate...not just phones and tablets, but able to use an office suite, look stuff up, etc. If they express an interest in coding or IT, great -- but the fundamentals of logic and scientific reasoning should take precedence. It's no reason to dump a computer or tablet into a kid's hands without a good curriculum to back it up. And from the article, it sounds like Pearson just sold the LA school district a bunch of slideware.