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Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Feds won't file charges after investigation of LAUSD iPad program | 89.3 KPCC

Feds won't file charges after investigation of LAUSD iPad program | 89.3 KPCC:

Feds won't file charges after investigation of LAUSD iPad program
Federal investigators have closed their inquiry into the Los Angeles Unified School District's troubled iPad program without charging any of the current or former district officials involved, according to a statement from the head attorney for the school system.



The decision ends a probe that officially opened in 2014 — within months of a KPCC investigation —into L.A. Unified officials' troubled $1.3 billion attempt to supply every student in the nation's second-largest school district with a tablet computer.
"Since then, the District had been fully cooperating with the federal government’s investigation," read the statement from L.A. Unified attorney David Holmquist.
The iPad effort was the brainchild of former L.A. Unified Superintendent John Deasy, who saw the marriage of Apple technology and software developed by publishing giant Pearson as a new opportunity for students to learn. In 2013, with officials estimating the effort would cost around $500 million, L.A. school board members gave the program the green light.
But many L.A. residents balked at the program's ballooning cost. For example, original projections did not take into account how much it would cost to equip every school with the wireless internet needed to operate the iPads
The district purchased the iPads using bond dollars, which left some voters, who felt they had been approving bond measures to build new classrooms to relieve overcrowding, feeling misled.
It also became clear the Pearson software pre-loaded on the iPads wasn’t even finished. A KPCC investigation, published in Aug. 2014, revealed Deasy had close Feds won't file charges after investigation of LAUSD iPad program | 89.3 KPCC:





Actions Speak Louder than Words – Have You Heard

Actions Speak Louder than Words – Have You Heard:

Actions Speak Louder than Words

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos says she wants to empower teachers to make them great. Detroit teacher Stephanie Griffin isn’t buying it… 


By Stephanie Griffin
When teachers in Detroit organized sick-outs last year, we weren’t in *receive mode,* as Betsy DeVos would say, waiting to be told what to do. The protests came about because no one would listen: not the school district, not our union, not our political representatives, and not the state that has been running the Detroit Public Schools for nearly two decades, during which conditions for teachers and students have gotten progressively worse. And our protests weren’t *sponsored and carefully planned.* My school, Cass Tech, is one of the best schools in the city, but teachers here believe in solidarity, and we knew that our only hope of drawing attention to the plight of teachers and students in Detroit was to join the protests. So we joined in, along with teachers from 90 other schools, and we ended up getting national attention.
After teachers at the Washington DC school Betsy DeVos visited last week challenged her depiction of them, she clarified her remarks and tried to paint herself as a champion of teacher voice and empowerment. Don’t believe it for a minute. DeVos is a champion of diminishing teacher voice and above all, weakening teacher unions. That’s why the politicians she funds were so quick to try to take teacher certification from teachers who participated in the *sick outs.* Public school teachers still have unions, which means you can’t just run roughshod over them. If DeVos and her allies can’t take our unions away from us, what they can do is try to come up with new ways to silence us. What teacher who loses his or her certification is going to choose to remain in the profession?
As for DeVos claiming she just wants to empower teachers, don’t believe that either. The goal is to have teachers who do what they’re told to do, even when the directives don’t make sense. They want robots. In the charter schools that DeVos wants more of, teachers are overwhelmingly *at will* employees, meaning that they can be dismissed for any reason, including Actions Speak Louder than Words – Have You Heard:

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 2/21/17


Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 2/21/17

Featured Post

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Why DeVos is making Florida's charter system her 'model'. She practically owns it.





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