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LA Schools Seeking Refund Over Botched iPad Plan
SternisheFan sends news that Los Angeles Unified School District is asking Apple for a refund of the district's effort to equip students with iPads. The project was budgeted at around $1.3 billion to equip its 650,000 students, though only about 120,000 iPads have been purchased so far. After the program went bad, the FBI launched an investigation into their procurement practices. The iPads weren't standalone education devices — they were supposed to work in conjunction with another device carrying curriculum from a company named Pearson. But the district now says the combined tech didn't meet their needs, and they want their money back. Lawyers for the local Board of Education are looking into litigation options. They've also notified Apple and Pearson they won't pay for any new products or services.
They wasted the money fruitlessly and want a mulligan. No. Give someone in procurement a pink slip and eat some humble pie. Own your mistakes.
The iPads weren't standalone education devices â" they were supposed to work in conjunction with another device carrying curriculum from a company named Pearson. But the district now says the combined tech didn't meet their needs, and they want their money back.
So... They didn't test the iPad / content combo to establish usability / feasibility / usefulness prior to dropping all this cash?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
We realized spending 1.3 billion on toys for kids was a bad idea. We're going to makeup excuses why we should get our money back.
These people had no idea what they were getting into and obviously just wanted to have their students carrying tablets around so they'd look like Starfleet Academy. In addition to the corruption that went on, this project was doomed from the start. I doubt they were able to express any clear requirements to the vendors they were working with and probably didn't have any actual plan for how the technology would be leveraged in the classroom. I've seen it a dozen times in schools with inept management. Those who can, do. Those who can't....
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Back that train up to the point where they initially picked iPads over Rockchip, Google Nexus, Avatar, Dell Venue, anything from ASUS, the Samsung note series, and about 5 other solid competitors. All of those were cheaper, sufficiently fast, cheaper, more durable, cheaper, more serviceable, and CHEAPER. That's how you know the entire project was crooked and completely derailed from the System Development Life Cycle process.
Whether the guy in charge was a criminal-level Apple fanboy bordering on mental illness or getting some sort of crooked kickback is still being determined in court but if they want a refund, look to the guy who fucked up the whole project in the first place. The vendors certainly won't give you anything. They'll just blame him.
The exec who signed off on it should get the pink slip. Not the person in procurement.
If you don't understand the plan, don't sign off on it.
So wait, you fucked up, and now you want us to pay for it?
No, see, here's what happened: School decides they want product X which works with product Y. Product X sucks; product Y is not defective. School has legitimate claim about product X not delivering; product Y is your fault, and you don't go back to the supplier and make them eat the cost.
The school may have a claim against Pearson, since they delivered shoddy, half-ass work. The school has no claims against Apple, since Apple supplied a device not designed to do what the school wanted, and the school intended to extend it with Pearson's product.
There's a real lesson about bad project management and buyer's remorse here; and, looking back, they're ignoring old and proven lessons about not trying to fix education with unrelated technology. The only technology that belongs in education is education: education methods are a technology, and they are the technology for education.
Until you have an education methodology that shows good, scientific basis and utilizes your fancy toys, you're just throwing toys into education. For example: Japan uses a mathematics curriculum teaching students to use complementary number computation techniques, driven by the exemplary platform of a machine called a Soroban; a Soroban would be a ridiculous toy to bring into the classroom if you were not teaching using these computation techniques and trying to leverage the visual and mechanical aspect of learning by soroban (I've done some self-teaching without the soroban, and learned the same techniques; there are, however, scientific reasons to bring a soroban to the table). If they're just doing workbook activities BUT ON AN IPADZ!!!! and not doing anything known to improve education when an iPad is involved, the iPad is a fucking toy not appropriate in education.
It's worth noting there's a school of educational research suggesting that introducing young children to high technology is actively bad, and that high technology should be taught outright after age 10-12 rather than used as a platform to deliver old teaching methods. Small children need most to learn socialization; they need to interact with other children, and not isolate themselves to curriculum. I have my own educational theory which extends this: small children need most to learn techniques of utilizing the brain effectively, set in an environment of free socialization, so as to develop their social behaviors while also giving them tools to rapidly and effectively learn curriculum. In all of these advanced schools of thought, and in mine, you see that pattern: humans need to learn human behavior first, then learn high technology as a tool; wrapping books in fancy electronics won't suddenly make education better.
This is like the 90s when everyone's answer to everything related to computer security was "ENCRYPTION!" Now everyone's answer to every education problem is "COMPUTERS!"
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So... They didn't test the iPad / content combo to establish usability / feasibility / usefulness prior to dropping all this cash?
Correct. As it says in the LA Times article, "The district selected Pearson based only on samples of curriculum — nothing more was available."
They were actually unhappy with Pearson.
The article makes this very clear. It wouldn't matter if the Pearson Curriculum were on an iPad or an Android device, they'd still be unhappy with it. The attachment of Apple to the story is a means of click-baiting it. Pretty clear in the quotes from their attorney:
L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines “made the decision that he wanted to put them on notice, Pearson in particular, that he’s dissatisfied with their product,” said David Holmquist, general counsel for the nation’s second-largest school system. He said millions of dollars could be at stake.
In a letter sent Monday to Apple, Holmquist wrote that it “will not accept or compensate Apple for new deliveries of [Pearson] curriculum.” Nor does the district want to pay for further services related to the Pearson product.
Pretty ringing condemnation of Pearson's products by the school district; note that the Pearson products might not eve be at fault, given that the complaint was that it didn't help with the standardized testing scores.
I am saddened and feel I want to kick something. From the summary: -
"...But the district now says the combined tech didn't meet their needs , and they want their money back..."
Emphasis mine.
Is it just me who sees something wrong here? So, no feasibility study was done? Who approves these things? It was very evident that this whole thing wouldn't work. Look, we hire lots of foreigners in this country, who do so well not because they were using these educational gimmicks wherever they came from, but because most of them put pen to paper and wrote something.
Heck, our students can't even write [English] well despite it being their first language! Then there is the damage done by the so called Common Core. What is wrong with these United States? You know what? When it comes to the way we teach, I am not surprised the products of our educational system go on to make such shortsighted decisions. God save us.
I work in education, and the idea that you'll just roll out a new tech to hundreds of thousand of kids is just asinine. Start small, work the bugs out, then go big. Especially if you're deploying tablets, trying to manage them is like herding cats. Apple's made some progress in that area, but they're still a huge PIA to manage. I hope there's a serious, ie external, investigation into who drove this fiasco. While incompetence on this scale isn't unimaginable, I suspect shenanigans. Follow the money.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Summary didn't mention this but Pearson is a huge global education player. Just a few of their brands: Addison–Wesley, BBC Active, Bug Club, eCollege, Fronter, Longman, MyEnglishLab, Penguin Readers, Prentice Hall, Poptropica and Financial Times Press. So I don't see how LA Unified is going to avoid them.
As for this not meeting their needs... Reading the article LA Unified seems completely clueless. The contract was $768 / iPAD (I assume this includes warranty) + $200 / content & software license for 3 years. They according to the article are demanding that Apple fix the application, Apple didn't create the application nor does it own the content. They bought 43,261 iPads with the Pearson curriculum and 77,175 without. AFAICT Apple delivered their part. Their problem is the Pearson curriculum.
I can get that they don't like the app, but at this cost they can just write an app. The whole thing sounds like they don't know how to buy or deploy technology when it comes to a custom solution. Which is potentially understandable for a small district but inexcusable for a $1.3b contract.
This school district was sold swamp land in Nevada... Anyone who works in the education IT industry (I do: And part of that is supporting iPad deployments in education every day) knew there was no way in hell this was going to work. Apple has done a terrible, awful, horrible job of enabling iPads to work in an education environment. They are a complete nightmare to configure, deploy and maintain. If you are going to put these things in a school, just use them for internet browsing and use real computers for everything else. It isn't that they are bad devices for individual users, it's just that the integrate horribly with existing networks. One of the most difficult things is simply accessing data on the network / computer accounts. For example, Apple *still* doesn't support users logging in to their network directories (other than using the incredibly-confusing-for-the-ipad-users and also incredibly buggy WEBDAV functions) and simply opening and saving files to those locations. Upshot? Pages doesn't get used, Keynote doesn't get used... Blah blah blah. It's just a nightmare. Great, wonderful, single-user devices. Horrible, awful devices in terms of multiple-users and network integration.
Can we pull up the previous Slashdot story on this (when they were just starting)? While most folks agreeded that it would fail, it may be useful to recognize those folks that were vehement supporters for this and ridicule them mercilessly. Here's the original article: http://news.slashdot.org/story... Looking through that link, I'm challenged to find even a single supporter.
My school district has about 5000 students give or take and currently issues iPads to all middle and high school students. The students use their Ipads for virtually all assignments and this is achieved through an app called notability, this works in conjunction with another app called iTunes U which organizes assignments and courses. This program seems to be successful when deployed on a small scale as seen in my school district. However, successfully enacting this program on a scale the size of L.A could prove extremely difficult to say the least.
Pearson was Apple's subcontractor. Apple was supposed to get $780 out of every ipad (yep, you heard right, retail+ price) and Pearson $200. I haven't seen the contract, but if the various news sources is correct, it is Apple who is basically making the offer by bundling software of their choice...
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Yes, but I think in this case it was just plain stupidity. Possibly criminally stupid stupidity. The board is also to blame for abdicating their responsibility to get information from independent sources not just from the "board packet".
Only I can judge you.