Costs for student IPads continue to escalate in Los Angeles

The idea that every student should have a laptop or an IPad is being treated as by some as if it is a civil right.

Access to technology is important, but the rush to give students devices to keep with them seems to be driven more by the greed of the technology and testing companies than by any concern for students' rights or for that matter for student learning.

A column in Saturday's Los Angeles Times addressed the issue. Columnist Michael Hiltzik noted that the costs of the Los Angeles School District program to give IPads to every high school student continues to escalate:

It turns out that the district costs for the software on its thousands of student-friendly tablets could be $60 million a year higher than anticipated.

That's because the licenses for the educational programs installed on the devices expire after three years. Originally, the district was led to believe that once the programs were paid for, they belonged to LAUSD, lasting "as long as the iPads themselves," as Blume and Ceasar write. But no. As LAUSD board member Monica Ratliff extracted from a district staffer, "at the end of three years, that content is going to disappear or we're going to be violating something by attempting to use this content."

The most obvious lesson to be learned from this is the necessity of dotting your i's and crossing your t's when you contract for any goods or services with a vendor. That sort of fiasco can happen whether you're a public body purchasing chalk, floor wax or electricity. 

But what's more important is that this belated discovery that software commonly isn't sold but leased (anyone who owns a computer running on Microsoft Windows and using Microsoft Word should know this already), gives the lie to a fundamental rationale put forth for moving from books to computer tablets. That rationale is that books go out of date but software is infinitely upgradable.

Yes, but at a price.

Technology is vital in today's society. Being able to use it is important as students prepare to enter the workplace, but the idea that students have to have it provided to them by school districts 24/7 needs to be re-examined. That idea does nothing but take billions away from taxpayers and enriches the technology companies.