“In the first formal evaluation of the troubled iPads-for-all project in Los Angeles schools, only one teacher out of 245 classrooms visited was using the costly online curriculum. The reason, according to the report, was related to the program’s ambition, size and speed,” Howard Blume reports for The Los Angeles Times. “The analysis found that district staff was so focused on distributing devices that little attention was paid to using iPads effectively in the classroom.”
“Among the issues cited at several schools: high school math curriculum wasn’t provided, efforts to log in and access curriculum were unsuccessful and at least one school said it preferred the district’s own reading program. Four out of five high schools reported that they rarely used the tablets,” Blume reports. “The early goal ‘was to just get the devices out, that was basically it, just get the devices out, use them as quick as possible … there were other goals… they were talked about but they really didn’t get implemented,’ one technical specialist told evaluators. A district leader who was not identified said: ‘We didn’t have enough people so everyone was working on deployment… that really, really impacted our professional development [training] rollout, in fact we barely had one because of that.'”
“The curriculum, which cost L.A. Unified about $200 per device over three years, was among the biggest problems identified by schools. In May, researchers visited 245 classrooms in a sample of 19 schools. The Pearson curriculum was being used in one classroom — for a lesson on fractions,” Blume reports. “An administrator from one high school noted that the curriculum did not contain high school math. ‘At nearly all schools, staff stated that the Pearson curriculum that was promised during initial… trainings was not available during the school year,’ the report said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Utter incompetence begets tremendous waste.
The brainless wonders responsible for this clusterfsck should be fired, but since this is U.S. public education we’re talking about, they’ll likely get awards and raises instead.
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