“The Cobb County Board of Education has asked Cobb District Attorney Pat Head to investigate the bidding process of its controversial laptop computer program,” Aixa M. Pascal reports for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “At the same time, the board voted Thursday to hire Kessler International, a New York-based firm that does corporate investigations, to conduct an independent audit of the bidding process. School superintendent Joseph Redden said that the two-pronged approach adopted by the board was to ‘eliminate any questions about the process.'”
“The laptop program is in its initial phase, at a cost of $25 million, with about 500 laptops issued to teachers in four high schools. The program eventually would distribute Apple iBooks to all 7,100 teachers and 28,000 students in grades nine through 12, contingent upon the success of the pilot program and subsequent approval of an additional phase in coming years.,” Pascal reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The saga continues.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Cobb County iBook saga: allegations that school leaders pressured employees to pick Apple – July 11, 2005
Lawsuit to halt Cobb County’s 63,000 Apple iBooks for education plan goes to court today – July 08, 2005
Cobb County’s Apple iBooks in schools saga continues with lawsuit – June 04, 2005
Lawsuit filed to stop Cobb County’s Apple iBook program – June 01, 2005
Cobb County school board approves Apple Mac plan; could eventually distribute 63,000 iBooks – April 29, 2005
Henrico school board dumps Apple Macs, picks Dells with Windows – April 29, 2005
Cobb County school officials intend to move forward with Apple iBook program – April 21, 2005
Cobb Commission chief urges delay in Apple iBook program, says issue has become too emotional – April 20, 2005
No conflict of interest in ongoing Cobb County Apple iBook saga – April 19, 2005
More controversy in Atlanta-area school district’s plan to buy Apple iBooks – April 16, 2005
Cobb County Georgia approves first phase of plan that could equip schools with 63,000 Apple iBooks – April 15, 2005
Atlanta-area school district on verge of deal for 31,000 Apple iBooks – April 12, 2005
Cobb teachers voice concerns over using Macs for proposed laptop program – March 29, 2005
Cobb County Georgia meeting discusses plan to equip schools with 63,000 Apple iBooks – February 24, 2005
Report: 90 percent of emails opposed to Georgia’s Apple iBook program – February 10, 2005
65,000 Apple iBooks for Georgia schools one of the largest school laptop programs in the country – February 10, 2005
Georgia school district to propose 63,000 Macs for students and teachers – February 07, 2005
Now you know why it’s called “Cobb County”
be sure that no discussion of costs associated with support, virus software contracts, costs of increased number of IT folks or other real world conciderations will be taken into account.
Cobb County-home of Newt Gingrich
and also the recipient of more federal pork money per capita than any other district in the U.S.
Apparently ol’ love ’em and leave ’em Newt didn’t think cutting federal money appplied to his district. Just everywhere else.
Now here’s a smart idea…
Spend another million or so investigating a process that should have been so open and well documented in the first place so there would be absolutly no question about it being an honest deal … no matter who won the competition.
Dumb. Just plain DUMB.
Apple wins a contract: Full congressional hearing on how that could be.
Dell, HP, … wins a contract: No questions asked, business as usual.
7,000 teachers to 28,000 students? 4 students per teacher?
“Cobb County” would be a great name for an afternoon TV show!
This is a joke!
Sounds like someone got pissed off because they werent Dells.
What a mess – thank god we don’t have this sort of crap in the UK!
“…7,000 teachers to 28,000 students? 4 students per teacher?”
The National Education Association –
We’re doing our best to feather our nest
the bill’s sent to you for whatever we do
we deem it prudent, one teacher/four students,
we’ll continue to grab – you just pick up the tab…
I think an investigation of those opposed is in order to see if their bias is somehow trying to taint the situation at hand.
More than likely there was probably one or two in the mix that didn’t want to go Apple and are now drawing at straws to get the decision changed.
leave it to the south. and you wonder nobody can take the south seriously anymore? i think the gene pool down there is corrupt or something.
“i see a black cloud of ignorance on the horizon – oh, it’s just the south still fighting the war” – anonymous
one of my favorites.
It’s probably more like 500 who are truly teachers and the other 6500 are administrators that call themselves “teachers”…
7000 teachers to 28000 students sounds correct. I don’t know where you come from, but each teacher teaches something different. When I was in high school I had 6 or 7 different classes (english, spanish, math, science, history, art, phys. ed). Do the math and then you are left with 1 teacher for 28 students. Just right.
Re: “leave it to the south. and you wonder nobody can take the south seriously anymore? I think the gene pool down there is corrupt or something.”
Do a little homework. The South has contributed writers, musicians, actors, artists, educators, and others way out of proportion to it’s population.
If the South is so bad, why has it been growing at the expense of the rustbelt for 25-30 years?
webbyswim –
refresh MDN and you’ll see nearly the same story unfolding in Wisconsin – maybe that black cloud of ignorance is your bias…
edgeknight wrote: “7000 teachers to 28000 students sounds correct. I don’t know where you come from, but each teacher teaches something different. When I was in high school I had 6 or 7 different classes (english, spanish, math, science, history, art, phys. ed). Do the math and then you are left with 1 teacher for 28 students. Just right.”
And how many classes a day did your teachers teach? ONE? I want to work there. While you are in English class, your other teachers are teaching 5 other classes. Each class has 1 teacher and 28 students, so the ratio is still off 1:4 (probably closer to 1:5 since teachers usually teach a few less classes per day than students take).
I believe they were planning 63,000 iBooks at one point:
http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/05/04/cobb/index.php
Quevar wrote: “And how many classes a day did your teachers teach? ONE? I want to work there. While you are in English class, your other teachers are teaching 5 other classes. Each class has 1 teacher and 28 students, so the ratio is still off 1:4 (probably closer to 1:5 since teachers usually teach a few less classes per day than students take).”
Your 1:4 ratio is still incorrect. The proper way to gauge success of the teacher:student ratio is the number of students per class. And since 99% of classes are taught by a single teacher, 1:28 is a good number. The concept goes that the fewer students a teacher has to deal with, the better the quality of education because of the one on one interaction and attention to individual student needs. Inner city schools typically have ratios of 1:40 (which is high and bad), while universities have ratios more like 1:15 (which is good). The problem all over the world is the lack of qualified teachers in order to bring the ratios down. When you analyze data, you must make sure the interpretation of the numbers is correct. This seems to be the same problem a lot of financial “analysts” have when looking at Apple. You have to interpret the right numbers in order to make any sense.
edgeknight –
There is no linear realtionship between class size and student performance (there is, however, a nearly linear relationship between the number of teachers and the educational tax burden). Performance is based on a large number of factors, but people assume that all their child needs is a smaller class. I hope we can assume that all of the teachers are working in some way for the child’s benefit? If so, the ratio here is 1:4.
straw man, YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.
As a teacher, I am aware of several studies correlating student performance to class size. For your information, you can Google the following “class size and student performance” and see many reports and research studies linking smaller class sizes to better student performance. The consolidation of schools in large cities has led to an increase in the student/teacher classroom ratio. Although this discussion thread is not pertinent to Apple, I still think that as Apple users we all should do our research before rallying against one point or another. As a mechanism to move us back on topic, if there are 100 Apple desktop computers for 1000 students, the ratio is 1:10. Following edgeknight’s proper logic and my experience, if the 25 desktops are kept in 4 computer labs and typically only 2 classes use the lab a day… then only 200 students have used the computers. Therefore the true ratio is 1:2 considering that only 200 students use the system.
My understanding of the Cobb county program is that every student would receive a laptop. Therefore cutting out the need for computer labs, and bringing the ratio of students to computers down to 1:1. As for the large quantity of laptops compared to students, you’ve got to understand that this is a multi-year agreement where it is expected for new laptops to be required as students progress through school.
Magic word = consider
straw man wrote: “There is no linear realtionship between class size and student performance (there is, however, a nearly linear relationship between the number of teachers and the educational tax burden). Performance is based on a large number of factors, but people assume that all their child needs is a smaller class. I hope we can assume that all of the teachers are working in some way for the child’s benefit? If so, the ratio here is 1:4.”
Actually, the words “linear relationship” is not proper for the comparison you are trying to achieve. The proper word is correlation. But I got your meaning…
On a side note, the music teacher at my school never helped me. Why? Because I didn’t play in the school band. Does that mean that teacher should be working for my benefit? Because if that’s what you are implying, you’re probably advocating eliminating music, art, drama, and the always popular gym class. And while you are at it, let’s cut sports teams since they serve no academic purpose.
teacher for apples:
“…Google the following “class size and student performance” and see many reports and research studies linking smaller class sizes to better student performance…”
I never said there was no link between the two – I said that there was no ‘linear relationship’ (which statistician correctly restated as a direct correlation}. Now google:
student performance and affluence
student performance and parental participation
student performance and regional health statistics
student performance and quality of teaching materials
etc.
statistician:
“You’re probably advocating eliminating music, art, drama…”
If I was advocating these things, I would have said so. I was merely pointing out (correctly) that, as twdldee originally stated, there is one teacher for every four students.
Smaller class size is hyped as the modern panacea for all educational ills, yet it is only a very small component in the overall problem of piss-poor education in America. The taxpayers are understandably concerned.