Apple iPad refund for LA Schools poor planning? Ping!
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It looks like the disaster there was “Pearson” ... and I picked that up from some other accounts. I would say Pearson’s business is done for ... now ... but Apple will keep right on expanding with their iPads, with a better partner in the future!
And of course, pinging Swordmaker for the Apple list ... :-) ...
Well, there you have it. Low income kids need an iPad because wealthy kids have them. Its a Civil Right. Is it wise to give out that much expensive technology in an unproven program to kids who likely will lose, sell or damage it? For a curriculum that is unproven? Details, details. Its a Civil Right and that's all that matters.
If they were just taught the the 3Rs they would be better off than their wealthier peers.
Also liked the part about the online materials from Pearson not being adaptable to those not proficient in English. In L.A.? LOL - that's every student isn't it?
Education should be limited to books, pen, and paper.
We have still not I.proved upon the model used in 1970.
Pearson, not Apple, to blame for failed L.A. schools technology program
Though the Los Angeles Unified School District’s demand for a multi-million dollar refund from Apple has grabbed headlines, the failure of the $1.3 billion program to create a new digital curriculum for Los Angles students appears to lie primarily with educational publishing company Pearson.
In addition to threatening litigation against Apple and Pearson — the two primary contractors on the project — the district has also asked for refunds from Chinese PC manufacturer Lenovo and California computer distributor Arey Jones, according to the Los Angeles Times. Pearson’s unusable software was cited in those requests as well.
In March, project director Bernadette Lucas told LAUSD staff in an internal memorandum that just 2 of 69 schools use Pearson’s materials regularly, thanks to technical or other issues. The balance “have given up on attempting regular use of the app,” she wrote.
Under the terms of Apple’s contract with the district, the company was responsible for provisioning one iPad per student with a number of apps, including Pearson’s digital curriculum, on board. Pearson acted as a subcontractor for Apple, and was slated to deliver the new curriculum in three phases.
According to a Pearson scope-of-work document attached to the project, the curriculum was to be a “unique digital design created expressly to make use of the Apple iPad.”
Critically — and despite being listed in workflow documents as a prerequisite — Pearson’s software was not ready prior to the start of the project. District administrators were only provided with samples.
This means that in effect, the district bought iPads to run software that did not yet exist.
“I believe that it is time for Pearson to either deliver on its promises immediately or provide us with a refund so that we can purchase curriculum that actually works for our students,” board member Monica Ratliff said.
These fools spent millions to outfit every kid with a their own portable storefront to the Apple store. The homos that run apple must have been laughing.
If Apple got paid for it, then subcontracted it to Pearson, then it's on Apple.
Similar things happen in government and business all the time... People think that a new technology or a new system will fix their broken processes. It never works. New systems are great when the process already works. But a failing process will just fail faster and more catastrophically.
Waste of money. Should have gone with the much much cheaper and effective Chromebook route most schools are now leaning towards.
Disclaimer - I have several years of educational testing in my background. In the past, I have actually worked on the CalSTAR state test assessment. LAUSD is an incredible beast of a district, with over 500k students. When I worked on it, the entire state had almost 5 millions kids being tested.
Back in the late 80’s I was amazed at how long it took to create test items. After an item is written it went thru extensive ‘field testing’. High level overview - each item is categorized as to what it measures, how well it measures it’s intended content, and how difficult it is. While that is going on (or sometimes before), the item is sent to educational specialists of different kinds to look at the item for any bias - racial, gender, socio-economic are among the factors checked. One things that I remember is sending the items to a professor at some Alaskan college to make sure that it wasn’t biased against any groups represented in that area. Extensive, and expensive.
I saw on another thread this morning that colleges are also dealing with testing in the digital age. Because of the cost, a lot of testing is still done on paper. Many schools don’t have either the hardware (iPads, PCs, etc) or maybe the network capacity to effectively (and timely) measure their students thru technology-based solutions.
When I took these tests, it was filling in a dot on an answer form. Now the items are much more complicated than that - simple multiple choice items are being replaced with all the capabilities the technology like iPads can offer...Should the items be a simple touch like multiple choice, or drag/drop multiple steps, or based on some game play...it is a lot more complex than it used to be...
Then you have to consider experience gaps. Some kids have access to technology from a young age and have grown up on computers - at school and at home. That is deemed completely unfair to kids in poorer districts, kids that don’t have the experience with the technology that places like California wants to use to do their testing and/or education supplementation.
You also have things like systemic cheating - see Atlanta in the news this past week.
It is an interesting field, and as long as the government has money, there will be people out there trying to collect...remember...it is for the children...
An Amazon Kindle for $50 bucks.
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There is a lot of things to consider with writing s test.