The Los Angeles Unified School District has decided to spend one billion dollars providing iPads for everyone. Why?
“This is a civil rights issue,” [Schools Superintendent John Deasy] said. “My goal is to provide youth in poverty with tools that heretofore only rich kids have had. And I’d like to do that as quickly as possible.”
Indeed, the performance gap must come down to iPad access. What else could explain it?
By the way, where did the money come from?
The tablets are being funded by bonds: about $500 million for the devices and the rest for wiring campuses and other costs.
Who think the iPads will still be in use when the bonds get retired?
Steve Sailer ponders why public schools tend to suffer from such poor management:
Over the years, even the Van Nuys DMV has gotten better organized and more helpful.
Strikingly, I’ve never read anything about DMV reform, yet it seems to have sort of happened.
In contrast, I’ve read thousands of articles about Education Reform. Titans of industry like Bill Gates and Eli Broad have devoted themselves to Education Reform. The LAUSD is run by certified Education Reform stars from the Gates Foundation and other prestigious organizations.
And still … chaos. Why?
Perhaps one reason why DMV reform has progressed but Education Reform is so prone to confusion is because DMV reform is not a civil rights issue. It could have been called one: the long lines always seem to have disparate impact upon the Latino population of the San Fernando Valley, much of which could be found standing in line at the Van Nuys DMV any workday between 9 and 5. But it wasn’t.
In contrast, Education Reform always turns into a “civil rights issue,” which causes the Brain Freeze characteristic of anything having to do with race, IQ, and children in modern America. In turn, this attracts fad-mongers and the professionally gullible to the ranks of education management, and repels people who know what they are doing and are capable of projecting the consequences of proposed policies.
Hence, iPadGate.
In the late 1990s, my daughter went to a public elementary school that was trying out an experimental curriculum that demanded much more work, from both teachers and the students. She (and most of her friends) did quite well, despite a wide variance in the quality of the teachers. About a year after she left for middle school, the program was dropped due primarily to pressure from the teachers union (complaints about the amount of work involved).
My impression then, and in observing her schools through college, is that many, if not most, teachers want to find a magic bullet that will give great results without hard work on their part. (As Thomas Sowell has noted many times, college education majors have a lower average SAT score than the overall average SAT score. Not a good starting point for each successive generation.) Thus the eagerness to embrace each new fad or panacea.
Any time the phrase, “This is a civil rights issue” is used, expect stupidity to ensue…
LAUSD has become a cargo cult, only the iPads aren’t made from bamboo and coconuts.
Go to YouTube and find this excellent 1 hour, four part series on education in Finland: The Finland Phenomenon 2011 Full documentary
It’s eye-opening. And they did it in one generation. And mostly without iPads, although they are pleased to include new tech.
Yes, I’ve mentioned Finnish schools before.
I was amused by the documentary narrator’s breathless description of such innovative teaching methods as having students perform math problems at the blackboard. No wonder they’re so far ahead of us!