LA Schools demand refund for iPads (opens in new tab)

This was posted yesterday, and variations of it have been posted regularly over the last year. (just search "schools" and "iPad" in the search box at the bottom.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9385738

Seemingly always with the misleading headline implying there's something wrong with the iPad, when apparently the issue is with the publisher of content.

The district rushed to single source the deal so it could get curriculum and hardware for a single price, all to be paid for by your grandkids (school construction bonds), who won't be voting for a long time. The curriculum sucked. How exactly is that Apple's fault?

  And this week, the school board took a step to replace 
  some of the online materials: It authorized the purchase 
  of new math textbooks. 

This summarizes the problem nicely – it's not clear (at least to me) what advantage digital curriculum has over textbooks. There are a lot of pie-in-the-sky promises when it comes to the intersection of technology and education that don't really hold up in practice.

The blame should be placed first and foremost on politicians and bureaucrats who made terrible decisions with taxpayer money.

That being said, Pearson is an company that exists almost entirely on rent seeking and lobbying. If they can be taken down in the aftermath of this fiasco, all the better.

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9385738