Pearson and Partners Pay in L.A. | Alan Singer

Pearson and Partners Pay in L.A. | Alan Singer:

Pearson and Partners Pay in L.A.

In April 2015, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) announced that it was canceling its agreement to install Pearson software on the 40,000 Apple iPads it distributed to students at a cost of $768 each. LAUSD also demanded a multimillion-dollar refund because Pearson could not deliver the math and English curriculum it promised. Although three-quarters of the school year was over, the vast majority ofLAUSD students still could not access Pearson curriculum on the iPads and in classrooms that had access teachers were not using what they considered to be an inferior product.

The entire LAUSD project has been a fiasco from the start. Shortly after the computers were distributed, students hacked into the supposedly unhackable system so they could run their own programs on the machines. In December 2014 an FBIinvestigation of the iPad contract was launched after emails surfaced showing communication between LAUSD and Pearson officials before the contract was awarded. The total computer and program package cost LAUSD a reported $1.3 billion.

In September, Apple Inc. and Lenovo, the leads on the project, Pearson is technically a sub-contractor, agreed to reimburse the LAUSD $6.4 million for the botched project after the district threatened to sue the companies. It is still not clear which of the companies will eventually pay the bill although LAUSD holds Pearson responsible for the problems.

On the other side of the country, in December 2013 the Pearson Charitable Foundation, the company's not-for-profit, supposedly independent, agreed to pay the State of New York a $ 7.7 million penalty. The foundation, which Pearson has since closed, was illegally using donations to school districts and personnel to channel Pearson and Partners Pay in L.A. | Alan Singer: