“Los Angeles school district officials have allowed a group of high schools to choose from among six different laptop computers for their students — a marked contrast to last year’s decision to give every pupil an iPad,” Howard Blume reports for The Los Angeles Times. “Contracts that will come under final review by the Board of Education on Tuesday would authorize the purchase of one of six devices for each of the 27 high schools at a cost not to exceed $40 million.”
“In the fall, administrators, teachers and students at those schools will test the laptops to determine whether they should be used going forward,” Blume reports. “What they learn will affect the future of an ongoing effort to provide computers for all students in the nation’s second-largest school system.”
“A year ago… the school board, with little discussion, authorized a $30-million contract with Apple that was expected to expand to at least $500 million. An additional $500 million was earmarked for upgrading Internet connections,” Blume reports. “The rollout of the iPads last fall at 47 schools, however, was beset by challenges, controversy and some mistakes. Students immediately deleted security filters so they could freely browse the Internet. The district recalled the devices at several schools and some students never saw them again. Distribution of the devices quickly fell behind schedule… Districtwide distribution of the iPads is on hold, although some schools still are scheduled to receive them in the fall.”
“The laptop options impressed Carolyn McKnight, the principal at East Los Angeles Performing Arts Magnet, one of five schools at the Torres complex. Two chose the Lenovo Yoga Touch, two the Microsoft Surface Pro 2 and the last, a Dell Latitude E7240,” Blume reports. “A few other campuses chose Chromebooks.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Idiots. God only knows what other idiocy is going on in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
And, why aren’t MacBook Air notebooks among the choices? What a hideous list of crap! Surface Pro 2? Seriously?
In the hands of competent educators and IT staff, Apple’s iPad is unmatched in terms of portability and effectiveness. By the way, those Apple employees who were responsible for failing to properly guide these schools through this major, very public iPad rollout should be pink-slipped with gusto over this clusterfsck. Adios, you blew it, big time. Healthcare.gov had a smoother rollout. That said, if there is a signed contract with Apple, The company should
sue the everliving shit out oftake appropriate legal action against the Los Angeles Unified School District for every single penny they are owed.Is your kid in the obviously incompetent LA School District? If so, move.
Related articles:
The details about the huge 640,000 iPad rollout in Los Angeles schools – July 26, 2013
Los Angeles schools $30 million iPad deal; LAUSD board voted unanimously for Apple because iPad rated the best – June 21, 2013
Apple stands to make ‘hundreds of millions’ in Los Angeles school deal – June 19, 2013
LA Unified School District awards Apple $30-million contract for iPads as Microsoft whines – June 19, 2013
Apple to offer 10-pack education pricing for ‘iPad mini’ – October 22, 2012
Apple sees schools increasing tablet dominance with iPad in class as ‘iPad mini’ looms – October 22, 2012
Some Aussie schools require all students to own Apple iPads – October 12, 2012
Analyst expects September launch of Apple’s ‘iPad mini’ to boost education sales – June 5, 2012
Illinois elementary school buys 650 iPads for students, 70 MacBook Airs for teachers – June 26, 2012
San Diego Unified School District buys 26,000 Apple iPads; one of the largest K-12 iPad deployments in U.S. – June 26, 2012
Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, California to get 1,800 Apple iPads (with video) – March 4, 2012
Apple offering discounted iPad 10-packs for education – March 22, 2010
Madison, Wisconsin schools buy 1,400 Apple iPads – using Microsoft’s money – January 28, 2012
Colorado school goes all-Apple; iPads in classrooms spur student engagement to new heights – January 24, 2012
Student math scores jump 20% with Apple iPad; transforms classroom education – January 20, 2012
Apple reinvents textbooks with iBooks 2 for iPad – January 19, 2012
Schools expect iPads to outnumber personal computers in next five years – October 31, 2011
OSU study finds Apple’s powerful iPad decreases expenses, increases productivity – May 3, 2011
Top 50 Apple iPad rollouts in enterprise and education – June 14, 2011
Growing number of U.S. schools embrace Apple’s revolutionary iPad as learning tool – January 4, 2011
Rising generation of iKids slipping Apple iPads instead of books into school backpacks – December 14, 2010
Steve Jobs met Obama to talk education, energy, job creation – October 22, 2010
Apple’s revolutionary iPad dramatically helps Illinois autistic students – October 15, 2010
University of Leeds gives medical students textbooks on Apple iPhones – September 29, 2010
N.J. schools explore using Apple iPads as teaching devices – September 22, 2010
Students in four California school districts trade textbooks for Apple iPads – September 09, 2010
Scottish school becomes first ‘iSchool’ where Apple’s revolutionary iPad replaces pencil and paper – August 31, 2010
Back to school personal computer sales slow except for Apple’s Mac – August 11, 2010
Incoming UC Irvine medical students to receive Apple iPads – August 06, 2010
New Hampshire school giving Apple iPads to incoming freshmen – June 15, 2010
iPad takes off as flight school teaching tool – May 12, 2010
California’s Monte Vista Christian School first to use Apple iPads in classroom – April 21, 2010
Seton Hill University to give new Apple MacBooks and iPads to every full-time student in fall 2010 – March 30, 2010
Kodiak Alaska school district to bid on upgrading to Apple MacBooks, iPads – March 24, 2010
Apple offering discounted iPad 10-packs for education – March 22, 2010
KeyBookshop has over 18,000 educational e-books ready and waiting for Apple’s iPad – March 16, 2010
Tupelo, Mississippi schools get 5,000 Apple MacBooks – October 29, 2009
Greater Atlanta Christian Schools to equip 1,200 students with new Apple MacBooks – October 29, 2009
Maine expands Apple MacBook program to high schools; 71,000 MacBook order is largest of its kind – June 30, 2009
Wow clusterfsck is right
Then there is the OPPOSITE method of seeing what works!
If you want to see what the most successful students pick for a “computer” as an indication of what works best, then go to the schools with the top ratings. Look and see what the students are using.
Just one example from Orange County is Corona del Mar High School, in the top 1% of high schools in the nation.
Which computers will you RARELY see on campus?
This is sad, although it does highlight an issue that Apple has in the educational and enterprise markets. IT unfamiliarity with proper deployment techniques is hindering adoption of their devices. I believe these crappy laptops are stifling innovative thinking by our youngsters. This failure by Apple to step in and resolve deployment issues will affect other districts looking to do the same thing, and not in Apple’s favor.
I think there are two main factors at work: the first was the inability of whoever was in charge of the deployment of iPads to get it right the first time out. The second is called “being paid under the table.” Someone, probably IT, who believes in PC’s and despises Apple, got this new deal rammed through the system. Smells to guilty to me. Just my two cents.
It could simply be a problem with the costs involved supporting one system over the other vs the security and maintenance (HW and SW) concerns they have. California as a State still has fiscal problems and has to be careful in how they spend their funds. Who knows it could have been someone that was Apple crazed ramming the iPad deal through.
I know it’s sort of in vogue to dump on the Apple people involved, so I’m going to stick up for them even though I wasn’t involved in this effort. First off, look at the budget: $30M for Apple, $500M for upgrading Internet infrastructure. Anyone who doesn’t see the problem right there is clearly not going to understand how Apple was a victim here along with the educational side of LAUSD. Bringing 1 wireless device per student onto a network that needed that much infrastructure upgrade is not only a project management nightmare, given the time constraints, but a surefire success-killer if it wasn’t set up to anticipate what all those kids were going to do with those iPads. Second, and this really does matter, you can’t go into a deployment of that scale with “experience” — LAUSD is the second largest district in the country, so to have had “experience” they would have had to have successfully done a similar project in New York City.
So, please, take a chill pill, think about how many people (read “agendas”) were involved and keep an eye out for how things progress from here, both with the iPads and with the other attempts. And factor in that those infrastructure upgrades are getting done (benefitting all platforms).
Do you know that Apple was at fault here? It may have been the school board and the staff. Do we know how hard Apple worked to try to resolve these issues?
Obviously, the Apple employees didn’t work hard enough. It’s not that difficult. The pooch was screwed here. Steve Jobs abhorred incompetency. He only wanted “A” players. Cook seems like he will settle for “B” and “C” players.
…or maybe “G” players. 😉
Given the results, Apple most certainly blew it, too.
The IT staff clearly didn’t lock down the iPads properly. All the required web filtering and app locks built in to iOS and cannot be simply turned off or deleted by students. The IT staff either used sub-standard third party filters, gave them all the same passwords, or made some other incompetent mistake.
With a sale that big Apple should have insisted on doing some serious consulting with this rollout.
Apple can’t “insist” on anything. Ultimately, the customer can do whatever they want. They often do. It’s not uncommon for big customers to think they know best, ignore input from consultants and vendors, and do things their own way. When they fail, sometimes they lay the blame back on the vendors and consultants anyway.
Why do you “insist” on being such an idiot.
Next time somebody “insists” on paying the dinner bill are you going to tell them “you can’t insist”.
You obviously have no experience in this business, but don’t let that stop you from making useless comments.
Yeah, you’re probably right. They may well have asked to do deeper consulting and were turned away.
So now the LA School District has doubled down on stupid. Some strings are not worth keeping unbroken.
Yes my granddaughter was promised a new iPad last fall but it never happened. I was supposing the whole process was usurped by the entitled class of IT doofuses. Unimaginatively choosing from PC’s (booor-ing!) just upped the support cost 10X. Educators aren’t exactly known for their tech smarts.
Being a former educator, I unfortunately agree with you. I am an exception, but there are very few of us.
The worse part is the administration, who give educators a bad name. Almost universally. Certainly in LA. (While there are exceptions there, too, I still generally agree with the concept of: Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, become administrators.) Then lets not even talk about the board, who doesn’t even have to have an education of any sort. Boy, do they ever let that show sometimes!
Yeah when you see the decisions that are made you can appreciate the irony of less then bright and easily bamboozled educators making the critical choices on behalf of students.
The educators did *not* make the choice. IT droids, administrators, and either elected or appointed — i.e., politically chosen — board members made the choice.
I kinda lump them all in together though I know many teachers prefer Apple solutions.
I know many teachers also prefer Google Chromebooks. There are some advantages that were pointed out to me once. The principle being if any chromebook is ‘infected’ all that is required is a simple power on/off and it’s gone. If a lot more serious a simple <10min restore will work. Another was the complete integration with Google's Cloud office suite for Education making it simplicity itself to manage each class' work the educator has responsibility over.
So the schools f’ed up the rollout of ONE product, so now they are going to roll our SIX products?
IT is now going to work on 6 laptops instead of 1 iPad?
LA is far, far too stupid for this to end well.
I was thinking the exact same thing.
Two words come to mind that would have avoided this entire debacle: Casper Suite
I think the problem is that there just aren’t enough people around who understand how Apples OS works. Most of the IT guys in schools are Windows guys! Also enterprise wise, I feel Apple should do much more in the way of what’s available in education. If I were a teacher, I don’t think I would know how to use an ipad as an effective teaching tool.
They have classes for that.
Giving the benefit of the doubt, the choice of 6 laptops seems to be only for a group of high schools. I take that to mean the people making the decisions have opted to do a pilot project with various devices to see which may be a better overall fit for the costs involved before going ahead and rolling out to all the other schools. For all we know it may have been the case where other options were not examined before the decision to use iPads was made and tax revenue was not where the city/State was expecting. The ‘glitch’ in the rollout of iPads may just have been simply one of the reasons for this outcome.
It’s all about job security for the IT department(s), folks. Can you imagine the work load increase from having to support SIX Windows-based platforms? Hours/union dues will increase, additional staff will have to be added, additional training seminars (in Las Vegas, of course) will have to be funded, sophisticated repair equipment will have to be purchased, etc., etc., etc.
It’s all good, folks (except for the students and the taxpayers)!
Public workers unions. Now you’re on the right track.
@shaft you are correct. It is time for me to put on my conspiracy theory hat again. Somebody got paid. C’mon a chromebook over an IPad.
I just knew it was a matter of time before some fool blamed the unions for what is obviously an administrative decision.
Yes, administrative decision.
But the union costs, power and strike capability were foremost in their mind.
LA School district. They used to put auto grease on top of the fences to keep us from jumping the fences when I was in HS. Then we started cutting holes in the fences with bolt cutters. They are a bunch of pathetic losers.
I’ve done over 10 of these deployments. They aren’t easy. There is a learning curve. And Apple’s documentation doesn’t include “this is how you should do it.”
The tools work. But the procedures for deploying and securing are not intuitive. In addition, kids are brilliant. While I would say a pilot program would have been smart… Anyone who hasn’t done an iPad one-to-one deployment should not be bashing on the LAUSD IT staff.
They’re not getting bashed for the first try. They failed to see they needed to learn from their experience and went in a direction ( or six ) that guarantees another failure. That’s very good justification for bashing.
MY son’s school does iPads. They sent out instructions on how to set up Apple ID. Had students come to a one hour meeting to pick up the ID and boom it was done. Locked down with school approved apps with some flexibility for older
Great and easy experience.
As we speak, Microsoft is excavating the billion dollars worth of Surface 1 tablets they wrote off and dumped in that landfill in New Mexico . . . MS: “Hey, we found some suckers to buy these !” . . . LAUSD IT Guys: “Ya, with all the dirt and water damage, we’ll have lifetime employment!”
I suspect the typical IT/CIO shenanigans to jettison Macs out of the picture. Happens all the time in business world.
Also… Most IT Staff know how to manage windows already. And chromebooks are stupid simple to manage since you order them tied to an education management account or they aren’t enrolled at all. That’s why they can deploy 6 different computers.
Also, to MDN: your cursing in news items and comments seems unprofessional. I’ve been using your site and app for years now and it’s the one thing I wish your editors would hold back on. Say what you mean without the vulgarity.
One thing you can sure of. The press and Apple Haters will have a field day with this. It will be headline and talking point arguments for IT/CIO people pressured to bring Apple products in. LA School District just provided ammo for them to use.
Perhaps LAUSD should offer their students an education. The whole district is giant Charlie Foxtrot.
Actually, I am in favour of choice within education, in this case. Let them choose the device they want to use, but at least INCLUDE Apple devices!
This move is just going to recreate the same message that existed back in the Windows IT-mindset days.
Same “mess”
It saddens me that LAUSD students will be stuck in the dark ages for the next 10 years due to the incompetence of the “leaders” of LAUSD . . . but to be honest, Apple dodged a bullet, because LAUSD always finds a way to “F” up a good idea. A few examples. 1) Ten years ago I was teaching an after school program at LAUSD, and I taught a 2nd grade girl how to use Powerpoint. A few days later a furious woman, her 2nd grade teacher, approached me and said, “What do you think you’re doing?” . . . Here is the PG translation of what she said, “Why are you teaching my kids Powerpoint?! Now I have this girl not wanting to do her work, because she wants to use Powerpoint, and then she’s showing the other kids how to use Powerpoint, and now I have a mutiny on my hands.” I asked, “Would you like me to show you how to use Powerpoint?” She snapped, “Now what good would that do?” . . . Story 2: A friend of mine who teaches at LAUSD, who is in her 50s, was issued an iPad along with her colleagues. She said that she never uses it because she’s “not sure which button to press” (true story, I couldn’t make that up) . . . I told her, “Go find a 2 year old, hand them the iPad, and they will show you how to use it” . . . Summary: adults at LAUSD are technologically incompetent, and they don’t want to give students a device that the students are more adept at using, because it makes the adults feel uncomfortable to not be in control . . . and anyone who has worked at LAUSD knows that it’s all about power and control, not education.
When I was in college I shared many of my classes in psychology with education majors. As a group, these are not just the dumbest, but the laziest people on earth. If some dweeb put his hand up and asked, “Is this going to be on the test?”, you could be sure he was an education major.
On top of that, the selection process to promote administrators from the teaching ranks is organically great at finding the lowest common denominator; that individual who never sparks a controversy, who never has a creative (disruptive) thought, and who religiously avoids making any judgments pertaining to anything if it can be avoided.
These are the people educating our kids, instituting zero tolerance (judgment) policies, and going along with “best practices” in order to avoid any possible criticism. Does anybody think the kids won’t immediately crack these Windows and Android systems? I’m sure it was not Apple personnel who were responsible for the easily cracked security systems installed on the Apple devices.
Hiring relatives is number one priority too!
And raising my property taxes (pay cut) every year to fund their incompetence.
An iPad is not a replacement for a laptop for general educational purposes. My guess is that it had more to do with Apple screwing this up- badly.
Now let them deal with some serious security, maintenance and durability issues.
Not to mention the higher cost of the new devices.
A huge public school system made a horrendous mistake–how shocking!!!
This is further proof that throwing money at public schools will not help educate kids. The money always seems to be totally wasted by the administrators who then say they need more funding to be successful.
Here is a hint to parents: don’t send your kids to public schools unless you want them to remain dumb. Find an independent private or charter school or, god forbid, homeschool your children. They will learn far more and be better citizens then most of the students attending government schools.
All four of my school age children spent at least 2 years of high school home schooling. All of them did very well on their SATs and got scores that would get them admitted to almost any university they chose. Home schooling is not the caricature that is portrayed in the media. it’s not fundamentalist parents teaching anti-science to their kids. It’s intelligent parents not letting the school systems abuse their kids for being bright and assertive.
Great to hear, Zeke.
You’re right, the media narrative is 99% negative regarding home schooled for a reason.
Same with Tea Party, et al, that do not reflect the actual reality. Instead, always portrayed in a negative way to support a political position.
The problem seems to be more the district. Some districts can screw up anything. In others they are shining successes. It’s not that Apple didn’t do a decent (not to say stellar) job trying to help the LAUSD implement their iPad program but the system scuppered it. The coming mishmash of insufficient trash will not make the situation better.
The real reason for the shift is too any iPads were stolen. Who would consciously steal a chrome or windows surface.
Students in Los Angeles STEALING something/anything? Unheard of. /s
Shocking naivete if they expected otherwise.
The LAUSD school board, prodded by “reformer” superintendent Mike Deasy, rushed headlong into this billion-dollar iPad rollout, and they’re getting what they deserve now. And for what? What was the point of putting an iPad in the hands of every student?
Well, mostly because it’s sexy. Deasy’s long grandstanded about this as a “civil rights issue” (seriously), which is laughable considering the fact that that money could have been spent to actually educate the majority-poor students of LAUSD. And LAUSD apparently spent virtually no time planning or strategizing or testing any of this, or even considering that the fruits of their billion-dollar investment will be obsolete in a few years, at most. They just handed a blank check to Education Industrial Complex titan Pearson to develop some nebulous “curriculum” for the iPad.
Apple’s not very culpable, in my opinion – it’s the snowblind techno-zealots who are. But Apple should have at least helped them devise some – any! – sort of strategy to ensure that this inevitable train wreck didn’t happen.
For Apple to have nanny hand-held LAUSD would be unprecedented without them specifically asking Apple.
Meanwhile, as I constantly point out, Apple provide all the free tools required to entirely lock down iPads as any enterprise (that includes schools) desire with no chance of hacking. This ALL falls on the school district’s incompetent shoulders. That they recover from their blundering by forcing inferior tech on their children is not acceptable.
True. I’ll rephrase: would’ve it have been nice if LAUSD had asked, and Apple had provided, guidance?
Apparently, LAUSD could have used a helping hand. I strongly expect Apple would have obliged. I wish Apple had leapt in when this lunacy at LAUSD became publicly evident. For all we know, they did, but without successful resolution.
My wife was given an iPad for use with her special needs students and she loaded up about 30 apps that have done wonders for her most challenging students who can’t focus for more than a few minutes. The third party apps are a killer feature for a Apple in education.
There is going to be sooooo much money moving under the table on this deal