Every Public School Student In LA Will Get an iPad In 2014

Jeremiah Cornelius writes "After signing a $30 million iPad deal with Apple in June, the Los Angeles School Board of Education has revealed the full extent of the program that will provide tablets to all students in the district. CiteWorld reports that the first phase of the program will see pupils receive 31,000 iPads this school year, rising to 640,000 Apple tablets by the end of 2014. Apple previously announced that the initiative would include 47 campuses and commence in the fall." Certain companies (not just Apple) stand to benefit from this kind of outlay.

Can't wait for the dog to eat the homework.

[jfdavis668]

How many will break in the first week?

Money better spent on education

[Anonymous Coward]

Giving students computers? When you could, oh, I don't know, spend those millions on teacher education, classroom supplies and capital improvements that are probably critically needed but neglected because of retarded earmarked funds like this?

Re:so... 900 bucks for one or fifty?

[cervesaebraciator]

Paper books can be used over the course of several years with several classes of students. I wonder if the licenses in this case will only apply to a single student.

Re:That's not news

[phantomfive]

FWIW I am close to a school district in California that is considering this iPad giveaway. I asked a person in charge why they are doing it (especially when they've been low on cash for a while), and the answer was that they couldn't just give the money to the teachers because of regulations that dictate how school money must be spent. So that's what they were doing.

Doesn't make it any better, just explains why it happens.

Re:That's not news

[pspahn]

I get the point, really I do, but I don't think simply raising their pay is the answer, not to mention the economics of your suggestion are way off target.

LA Unified had over 27,000 teachers in 2012, quite a bit higher than the 1000 you suggest. Also, the average teacher pay in the district for 2012 was $66,000/year.

I do agree that you will get some improvement in quality of teachers if you started paying them more, but I don't think it will be significant. Education majors already have some of the worst SAT scores. Simply offering to pay them more isn't going to improve that much as you still have the very real issue of people simply not wanting to be teachers because it is a terrible job. You do have people who actually love teaching, but those folks are incredibly rare, and rarer still are those who love teaching and are good at their job.

You'd do more to improve the quality of public school education by making the job itself more attractive, not the pay. There are too many teachers burning out early in their careers which says a lot more about the job's environment than it does the compensation. I know that the main reason I quit working in education wasn't because the pay was shit, the main reason was because administrators often are too out of touch with the modern classroom that the students have no desire to learn, and the teacher ends up being nothing more than a baby sitter for 8 hours.

Class rooms are broken. Fix them and you will find more student engagement, which will improve the teachers' morale, which will result in a better education. Now, a snazzy piece of tech in each kids' hands might be a move in the right direction, but it just screams of a band-aid fix when instead it should be introduced as part of a comprehensive overhaul of the entire system.

Re:That's not news

[EvilSS]

Does that higher spec'ed Nexus 7 include all of the Pearson curriculum and electronic textbooks that the iPads are coming with?

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Re: That's not news

[Haawkeye]

I will be the first to admit I don't have any studies to back this up only 15 years of teaching. The biggest impact of smaller classes is the fact that I know and can respond to individuals better. If I have a class of 25 students I end up knowing them all much better than if I have 35. This also allows me to differentiate the instruction to fit each student. Now I teach grade 5 so this probably does not help much. However also being a father of 4 I want my kids to be inspired and cared for at school. This means the teachers must have a good relationship with each of the students. So while I don't have any studies or papers to back up my opinion I hope my years of experience do carry some weight. I would love ipads in my class but only if they could print!