LA Times:
The Los Angeles Unified School District is seeking to recoup millions of dollars from technology giant Apple over a problem-plagued curriculum that was provided with iPads intended to be given to every student, teacher and administrator.
To press its case, the Board of Education on Tuesday authorized its attorneys in a closed-door meeting to explore possible litigation against Apple and Pearson, the company that developed the curriculum as a subcontractor to Apple.
This story has been ongoing and includes an FBI investigation, resignations of officials and plenty of blame for all to go around.
I remember hearing things said about LAUSD that sounded a lot like this:
I don’t like this ice cream flavor. Can I sue the cow?
I remember this district – a dozen years ago they got sued by Microsoft for putting Office on thousands of machines without licenses. Apple messed up – they should not have gotten involved with this deal because Pearson was supplying the curriculum. Pearson is awful. They’ve got a bad rep in ed tech. In this case, they sold a curriculum product they hadn’t even made yet. The district never should have signed this deal, but I’m not surprised they did – it’s the kind of stupid move a bunch of morons in suits who don’t know anything about ed tech would make. I think Apple will not repeat this mistake.
Please don’t misunderstand – I love the idea of each student having an iPad. Both of my kids have Macs. But if you want to give iPads to students, you’d better really, really know what you’re doing – how you will manage the devices, how to get the staff to buy in, training for staff and students, how to handle all issues, etc. Most 1 to 1 initiatives fail because the district is just plain not equipped to handle that many devices and they don’t know it until it’s too late.
The morons in those suits are a big part of the reason why education services is a potentially lucrative business to be in. It can’t be an accident that there are so many of them across the continent, running school districts everywhere.
Pearson screwed and Apple let them. Under the covers I expect that heads will roll.
Honestly, I don’t think Chromebooks are a bad option for a classrooms. And this is coming from someone who is in his 31st consecutive year of owning Apple products.
Organized education is for the weak minded, and lawyers.
Truth of the matter is that Pearson is a fairly awful company. I’ve worked with and been rather casually screwed over by them. I am not the least bit surprised that their software and electronic curriculum was not even remotely ready for prime time.
But Apple was a bit careless in not vetting them very thoroughly, and testing the materials supplied by Pearson – they’re the ones who ended up with the black eye.
You’re thinking of organized religion.
I’d be interested to know if your experience with Pearson was reflected in public news coverage.
Actually, they (organized education & religion) are very similar – though many people can rise above.
Done right, one does way less harm than the other.
Honestly, I’ve no idea.
My last intereaction with Pearson was in the years following the crash. I am a Graphic and Web Designer and they stiffed the agency I was working with for nearly a YEAR after some major Catalog work. I am reasonably certain they didn’t particularly plan to pay us.
This was possibly part of the trend of major companies after the crash, treating their accounts payable to smaller vendors, consultants and contractors essentially as UNSECURED LOANS, knowing that the legal and economic resources we have to fight back are limited.
But most of the coverage I’ve seen had an “Oh look, Apple/iPads in trouble!” slant. Pearson typically just gets a mention, if at all, and their role in the FUBAR is usually unexamined.
Sorry you got treated that way. And it’s sad to hear such a major player in educational services indulges in such behavior.
That is a bit how it sounds. Apple is the only one that might be blameless in this. They gave the district what was asked for. Not their issue that the district didn’t do their homework etc.
The only real reason why this went bust was two fold
1. they didn’t include training the teachers
2. they didn’t use MDM that could’t be removed by the kiddies
The issue wasn’t really Pearson. Its very common for school systems to get everything from one publisher so they can work deals. And LAUSD went with the whole package instead of saying no to that part of it.
The issue with this program wasn’t even how the iPads were selected, over other tech. No one would have known about that if not for the real gun shot. The kids being able to nix the MDM because it didn’t require a password. Had that not happened then the whole thing wouldn’t have ended up toe up and in the news.
Sounds like there was more than one big factor that brought this project down.
I’ve worked for at least one educational services company that pitched a complete-curriculum product to a school district. Despite that district’s best efforts to ignore their own deadlines, we delivered.
And not too long after that, our division got shut down, partly for excessive production costs. Because we kept allowing the client to stop the assembly line for committee conversations.