Here's Why the City Is Spending $542 Million On Technology For Schools

The Times looks at how much money Bloomberg is spending on technology for schools even as he threatens to fire six thousand teachers and slashes school construction spending to the bone.

The reason for all the tech spending?

City education officials are not shy about their goal to more fully integrate computers into everyday instruction. Instead of a lonely desktop or two at the back of a room, officials picture entire classrooms of students going online simultaneously, taking Internet-based classes or assessments to measure both their and their teachers’ performance. This school year alone, the city has issued $50 million in contracts to build an online course-management system, called iLearn NYC, as well as to provide training and to pay companies like Rosetta Stone and Pearson Education to provide content.

That's it in a nutshell.

This is the Bloomberg education miracle in action.

And of course Bloomberg gets to hand out hundreds of millions to his tech and business cronies in the bargain too.

Never mind how much money he has wasted on technology spending before from the $770 million wasted on CityTime to the $80 million wasted on ARIS - he is the Mayor of Money and he knows what is best for this city and its children

And that means computers at every desk to measure both children's performance and the performance of their teachers.

Maybe we can do this every week?

McGraw-Hill and the other no-bid contract test companies will love it.

Hope the bed bugs won't mind sharing the space!

Bloomberg needs to be stopped now.

As we have seen from testing scandal after scandal (the latest bringing light to the Michelle Rhee reform miracle in D.C.), an over-reliance on standardized testing is harmful and reductive.

Stop the testing.

Stop the over-reliance on technology.

Humans evolved in the real world.

Why is it all these business reformers want to take education to the virtual world?

Might it be they don't want children to know the difference?