TNSTAAFL
Written by redqueeninla in Education
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Which includes even that Apple on teacher’s desk.
Our superintendent John Deasy, the former deputy director of the Gates Foundation, has long framed education issues, from teacher evaluation to 1:1 personal computing, as a matter of “civil rights”. First was touted the justification – sensible or otherwise — to evaluate the entire teaching work force via quantitative, computer-driven means. Every student, so the focus-grouped-spun-line goes, has the civil right to ‘a highly effective teacher in front of them every day’. Then came the Common Core Technology Program in August 2012 for which the imperative to purchase a technology device for every man, woman and child in LAUSD was eventually declared, in the face of mounting public skepticism, a “civil rights issue” too.
By rebranding the ipad Common Core (CC) testing-device imperative a civil rights matter, this musters the forces attuned to social injustice as pawns in the rather ancient party game of harvesting public monies for private technology buys. Beyond a few administrators functioning as central LAUSD’s mouthpieces for the institution’s pet project, there is some talk in the community appreciating LAUSD for ‘finally acquiring something “tangible” for its students’. Opposition to the initiative, it is feared, jeopardizes the ipad giveaway as collateral damage to a recognition of inequity and injustice that is long-standing and delinquent.
This may be one of the subtler costs of the ipad initiative, its function as a “wedge” issue dividing constituents and communities. The fundamental civil rights of all students remains the right to an accessible, high-quality education. The extent to which these ipads impede this endeavor is the degree to which their damage is incalculable.
For there are many direct costs to the program as well. While it is true that education money resides in pots labeled differently, it is not the case that construction bond money co-opted for ipads would have been unavailable somehow if appropriated differently. Given that there is insufficient repair and