L.A. School District Cancels iPad Pearson Curriculum, Asks Apple for Refund

[MacRumors]

Following the end of the $1.3 billion education initiative that would have seen all students in the Los Angeles school district outfitted with an iPad, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has notified Apple that it will no longer be using or paying for the Pearson Education curriculum that was meant to accompany the iPads.

In a letter sent to Apple and shared in part by the Los Angeles Times, the LAUSD asked for a refund and said it has no plans to "accept or compensate Apple for new deliveries of [Pearson Education] curriculum."

When the school district entered into a contract with Apple, it paid approximately $768 per iPad, which included approximately $200 towards a three-year license for math and English curriculum from Pearson that was meant to replace many textbooks and other learning tools. The materials went largely unused by the district due to technical problems and the quality of the software.

"As you are aware, LAUSD is extremely dissatisfied with the work of Pearson," according to an April 13 letter signed by general counsel David Holmquist. "While Apple and Pearson promised a state-of-the-art technological solution ... they have yet to deliver it."

Despite demands to fix the problem, the letter said that "the vast majority of our students are still unable to access the Pearson curriculum on iPads."

The letter asks for a meeting with Apple to discuss the dissolution of the district's deal with Pearson and a refund for the licenses that it was not able to use, letting it recoup some of the cost that it paid for the failed iPad initiative.

Apple and the Los Angeles Unified School District first entered into a $30 million agreement in 2013, which saw 35,000 iPads being distributed to 47 schools as part of a pilot program. The deal was meant to expand to a $1.3 billion initiative to provide all 640,000 students in the district with iPads, but it began falling apart soon after iPads were distributed to students.

Apple's contract with the LAUSD has since been under scrutiny from the FBI, under accusations that former L.A. superintendent John Deasy may have modified the bidding process for the initiative to favor Apple and Pearson due to ties with executives at Pearson.

Article Link: L.A. School District Cancels iPad Pearson Curriculum, Asks Apple for Refund

 

[ZacNicholson]

That was an awful deal for LASD

 

[chrono1081]

This is interesting, I wonder what was wrong with the eBooks? I loved the demo one and the eBooks I bought were fantastic.

 

[mainstreetmark]

I used pen and paper and i turned out just good.

 

[newdeal]

This is interesting, I wonder what was wrong with the eBooks? I loved the demo one and the eBooks I bought were fantastic.

Most likely the problem was strictly that the school board is broke and someone in charge wrote a cheque that his @ss couldn't cash

 

[iJandro]

Coming from someone who has parents as educators, that's an unfortunate blow to the overall objective for the iPad. It really did have some potential if it were orchestrated correctly...

 

[macbeta]

Sad.

In theory this program should have been a hit. Poor software and technical support are to blame. Apple need to focus more in this area if they want a program like this to succeed. Education has taken a back seat to gold watches and bling.

 

[SHNXX]

Public schools, I want my tax money back.

 

[dannyyankou]

I used pen and paper and i turned out just good.

That's nothing, I have great great ancestors that carved into stone and they ended up just fine.

 

[Asuriyan]

As anyone who has taken a college course can tell you, textbook publication is a business full of slimeballs. Apple entering into an agreement alongside them was a mistake.

 

[DakotaGuy]

Even though I teach in a modern classroom where every student has a laptop and I have a SmartBoard I still use textbooks for quite a bit of my instruction. Why? Because they are faster and just work.

 

[ctdonath]

That's a half-billion dollars of iPads. Wonder how reluctant will be to refund it. They're quick to refund individual tablets, but when you're talking 9 digits...

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That's nothing, I have great great ancestors that carved into stone and they ended up just fine.

They ended up dead. But we learned on paper, and here we still are!

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Most likely the problem was strictly that the school board is broke and someone in charge wrote a cheque that his @ss couldn't cash

He never expected his @$$ would be the one cashing it. Easy to write checks when they'll be paid by complete strangers under threat of imprisonment at gunpoint.

 

[sdf]

In theory this program should have been a hit. Poor software and technical support are to blame. Apple need to focus more in this area if they want a program like this to succeed. Education has taken a back seat to gold watches and bling.

The blame is placed on Pearson. And you shouldn't disbelieve it.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

To anyone who ever asks me to recommend a book to teach them a subject (particularly a subject known by millions around the world), I always recommend: find a good website. This is why the internet exists. Books are expensive. They get worn. They become dated. Plenty of quality material is available at no charge in the form of websites like Wikipedia. If you need more depth than Wikipedia goes into, there are doubtlessly websites that go into the depth you're looking for.

IE, if you need a resource for teaching yourself a programming language, Learn <language> the Hard Way is a great collection of websites available for free.

Teacher can't find what they need online? They should collaborate with others to fix that shortcoming.

 

[nutjob]

Can't be good being associated with a $1 billion fairlure. Another black eye for Cook.

 

[kiyonepbs]

As anyone who has taken a college course can tell you, textbook publication is a business full of slimeballs. Apple entering into an agreement alongside them was a mistake.

The amount I pay for textbooks every year add up to more than a cost of an iPad anyway.

 

[horsebattery]

There's a lot of information missing from this article and many of the comments here are wildly off point about the LASD story. I suggest giving this a read, for anyone who wants to actually understand the situation:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/08/27/343549939/the-l-a-school-ipad-scandal-what-you-need-to-know

 

[sshambles]

I used pen and paper and i turned out just good.

Haha good one. English grammar jokes are funny when dun proply.

Unless schools have up-to-date technical servers and wide-ranging WIFI (doesn't even need to be state-of-the-art) then anything like this is doomed for failure. Trying to use technology in the classroom that are ill-equipped for such things, does not work.

As an educator myself, using my own iPads in the classroom only works in minimal amounts and only because they are not the state-issued ones that deny access to things. I put what I want on them, being G-rated content etc. and apps, and don't have to be denied by approval of what I purchase.

They can be used well, for specific purposes, but I'm very much doubting that they could be used by elementary or secondary students well, in a school environment without a LOT of technical support.

It sounds like it falls down to Pearson for things not working, although it's problems sound interesting. I would imagine that textbooks on iPads could be downloaded prior very easily and only needed doing so once (?) or as long as the bandwidth held up, there shouldn't have been a problem.

 

[thevofl]

As a Math Instructor, I can say that a lot of what I have seen publishers pushing as "interactive" and "user-friendly" is neither. They just want to rush to get something out ahead of the other publishers.

I chuckled when I read that Pearson did not have their on-line stuff together. Typical.

 

[michaelmccain]

I am a math teacher that uses MyMathLab which is a Pearson product. I have owned every iPad... and see tremendous potential for its use in the classroom. Apple makes a great product... but there is no publishing company... including Pearson... that is able to utilize the iPad effectively. The software has to work seamlessly so the user can learn without the software getting in the way. I think it was far too early for Apple to invest in Pearson technology like this. They put their name on the line... and I don't think that was smart. The idea is great... but Pearsons products are not at a level that can be effective on the iPad. Pearson books and the MyMathLab learning environment are not optimized for the iPad. In fact, I found far too many glitches and hangups trying to use their product on the iPad. And he design is terrible. I was asked to test MyMathLab on the iPad. I gave up over a few months because the user experience was horrible and there were far too many bugs. I cannot ask my students to use it if even I can't use it effectually. I think apple Ibooks authoring has more potential then Pearsons ibooks. As far as the learning platform... MyMathlab has far too many problems to be used effectively on the iPad.

 

[Doctor Q]

The long and winding road

This was superintendent John Deasy's pet project, intended to equalize educational access to technology in the classroom, for all students across the second-largest school district in the U.S. Some of these students are from families that have no computers at home and Dr. Deasy referred to it as a civil rights issue. The funding came from the technology portion of a bond fund.

From the start, there were two sources of problems. One source was the group of people, including some on the school board, who objected to Dr. Deasy's plan, goals, funding allocation, or one-device-fits-all approach. The other source was the series of technical hardware and software glitches, which got lots of publicity but were gradually being solved. The Pearson software (from another company, not by Apple) was to be bundled into the purchase but delivered later, and it seemed very likely from the start that it wouldn't meet expectations.

When Dr. Deasy was forced out of his position, the plan had no champions and dissolved under its own weight. The schools that got iPads initially will keep them, but other schools have to wait to see what's next.

Students still deserve hands-on technology. It's hard to imagine a future where the best jobs won't involve technology skills they ought to be exposed to from elementary school on up. I expect that the school district will go back to its haphazard approach of allocating funding to some schools much more than others. This will leave students with unequal access to technology, but there's also a positive side: with different schools trying different approaches with various hardware and software, starting in different years, we'll have a way to compare results and learn what works best for which grades.

 

[nagromme]

Pearson and the school district are the parties at fault, but I'm sure Apple will be cooperative in helping them out of the mess. What would it benefit Apple or anyone not to be?

 

[TraceyS/FL]

My daughter did Connections Academy (Pearson owned) here in FL last year for 3rd grade. To say I was shocked they would be the ones providing such cool things to LAUSD was an understatement. They can't even give their virtual school students more than PDFs of some books. It was dismal - and an amazing opportunity for them to try some cool things out. Opportunity blown.

There is so much that can happen in this area - that is totally not happening in the big publisher area. A shame.

 

[Loucifer]

Doing the right thing

Irrespectively of the (undoubted, in my view) usefulness of digitising educational material, I think Apple should do the right thing and pay back the 30 million.
As a gesture, it would be costly, but it would go some way toward cleaning up the tarnished image this affair has tainted Apple with.
I don't want to apportion blame to either party, but it is a joint venture, and Apple should distance themselves from it by doing the right thing.

 

[Poisonivy326]

I'm a teacher and this has happened to me:

1. My smartboard bulb died and never got replaced -- school never bothered to call the repairmen and also ran out of money

2. School internet crapped out multiple times in one day. Later found out it was because someone in the front office was streaming Netflix too much and overburdened the wifi.

3. Ipads the schools gave us were ordered returned because (this is true) teachers started fighting over who got an Ipad 2 and who got an Ipad 4.

You live and learn. Nowadays if I want students to do something web-based I use the chromebook cart. Cheap, easy, and I can monitor as they have to put the chromebooks on the desk and I can walk around and make sure they're actually doing their work.