I don't know the history of this deal, but I'm entirely unsurprised that this didn't work out. Digital tools are just not up to snuff. Experiments like this are

I don't know the history of this deal, but I'm entirely unsurprised that this didn't work out. Digital tools are just not up to snuff. Experiments like this are worth doing, but not with an entire school district. And jumping in when there's no actual curriculum yet is completely irresponsible. Blaming Pearson and Apple is disingenuous of the district. Of course salespeople are going to lie and overpromise. Anyone who's spent any time in any business knows this. The administrators and board members who agreed to this deal are the ones who are responsible. That $768 for each iPad and software could have bought a lot of books and classroom supplies for these kids that would have enriched their lives a lot more. The overhead of supporting all these new devices likely drained a lot of operational money from other areas as well. And there's absolutely zero evidence that tablets or computers are better ways to teach kids than traditional methods. Turning over all the responsibility for educating our children to a corporation with a magic solution sounds like a brilliant plan because we want to believe there's an easy way to solve the problem, but there's not one, and this is so much snake oil, and the people in charge should be wise to this stuff by now.