School Internet Program Audit Shows Fraud and Waste 387
uid0mako writes "CNN is reporting on the abuses of E-rate. E-rate is a government-sponsored program that provides discounted Internet access and internal connection gear such as wiring, adaptors and servers to underprivileged schools. One of the incidents includes $24 million spent on 74000 wireless network cards that never left the loading dock."
Remodeling at ratepayer expense (Score:5, Interesting)
Heard about this on Rush Limbaugh yesterday... (Score:5, Interesting)
What the hell's wrong with these people!?! (Not IBM, I think that part is hilarious)
Dammit! (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahh.. i can dream atleast...
Internet in schools... (Score:5, Interesting)
First off, not every kid should have an internet connection. Period. The Internet is not sesame street (which every kid SHOULD have.) In fact, I consider it more like the streets of NYC, at night, in the bad part of town.
Its simply not safe for kids to have un-guided access while at school. Blocking programs are even worse. As such, internet connections should be wide open and subjet to constant teacher review. Perhaps a single lab, with all monitors in view of the proctor would be considered adequate.
The rest of the money here is simply wasted. The current problems with america's education system is epidemic. Youve got underpaid, unmotivated and uneducated teachers, attempting to simply control a group of apathetic and uncaring students, who have little to no motivation and guidance from their gaurdians. The problem cannot be pinned on any single group. Everyone is messing up here, equally.
And as Americas education system continues to collapse the nation will be seriously hurt by this. A nation of unmotivated morons cannot compete with.. well.. india. Nor should we be able to. I dont know if youve looked at the job market in minute detail, but a major part of the problem is that people are too incompetant to do the job.
Typical of school systems (Score:3, Interesting)
After the 15/18 failure rate, he was replaced the next year. This new teacher was even more awful. He took the course the same way, and used us remaining 3 students to "help him" rebuild the lab. This involved taking old donated computers from the A+ lab and making them seaworthy for the class. Oh, and grabbing some old desks from the woodshop on the other side of the campus and doing chimp work with a drill to make them able to stand. Of the 3 remaining second year students, all of us dropped out. Of his 24 first year students, all of them dropped out as well.
These wastes of money were apparant, we got these expensive routers and bridges and our teachers were unable to answer simple questions about them. Useless, I think the routers ended up being shipped to another school so they could try their hand at the CCNA program.
Oh, and other schools in the district have had the CCNA program for a few years, and are turning out graduates due to good (suprise!) teachers.
Computers in schools (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a shame that there appears to be so much abuse of this programme. Sometimes I wonder if these types of programmes are really necessary, though. Mostly out of interest, what kinds of advantages do children actually get out of having computers in schools? By themselves the use of computers certainly doesn't cover the primary topics that schools are usually expected to teach, so presumably there's some expectation that having them there will either hugely benefit children in some other way, or will positively enhance the effects existing teaching.
I guess that in theory children can get used to having them around. To some extent it means that computers would be available for someone who might be able to learn from them extensively if they wouldn't have been able to otherwise. But is anyone out there aware of any actual research that demonstrates that computers in schools results in a verifiable positive return? (Keeping in mind that lots of people who never had computers in school were simply trained in the workplace.)
I don't mean to criticise, but I ask because I see a lot of people and governments claiming that it's a good thing. On the other hand, I haven't actually seen much evidence or that much that might convince me that we're much better off than we were a few years ago, when significantly fewer schools had access to computers.
I also don't mean to imply that maybe schools shouldn't have computers at all --- only that pouring vast amounts of money into actively supporting an infrastructure that deprecates so quickly might not be very effective. If the availability of technology means that most of people will already end up having reasonable computers in their homes within the next decade anyway, then pushing them so much in schools could be quite obsolete.
Re:Remodeling at ratepayer expense (Score:2, Interesting)
I worked at a school... (Score:5, Interesting)
-Connecting 5 towns to the Vocation School with redundant fiber lines
-Purchasing top notch routing and server equipment for each of the schools
-purchasing in excess of 200 brand new computers for each building
-and the founding of an Internet Service Provider which server the area as a dial up provider and as the central hub that tied the schools together.
It also led to the vocational school receiving much needed tech upgrades to CS labs and the Photo and Design Mac labs.
When this government money is well spent, it can be a great force for good. But once a unscrupulous contracter gets his hands on those kind of funs, these massive frauds occur.
I hope they don't nerf this... (Score:4, Interesting)
It was in the top three most rewarding experiences in my life, and one of the most valuable for jobs skills. it was a truly unique experience, and I would hate to see this go away because some people can't freaking be honest.
I'd be happy with oversight (lots of stuff needs oversight) but don't remove it. I heard that there was a proposal to just turn it into generic school grants or something, and I think that would be a mistake as well
Re:Remodeling at ratepayer expense (Score:3, Interesting)
They're doing road construction near where I work. At one point, they put in part of the new road, connected it to the old, and then tore up the old road. Less than six months later, they put road back where the old road used to be, and closed the new section while they extended it. In other words, they tore up road they knew they were going to need again shortly thereafter, but undoubtedly they get paid more this way.
Re:Internet in schools... (Score:2, Interesting)
While I'm sure there are some people who fit this image, it is unfair to cast this sterotype on the entire education system as a whole. Countries like India, China, Japan, etc, do not attempt to educate EVERY child. The consequence of inadequate performance is often horrible. Is this how we should incent our children in the US? I'd rather not. If education standards in the US are so poor, then why do we still have so many international students [iienetwork.org] in our Colleges and Universities? We have problems in our education system partly because our goal of "teach every child, equally and fairly" is so high.
I work for a state education agency.... (groan) (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Socialism does not work (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Money well spent? (Score:3, Interesting)
Pay teachers more to go to these areas, and more good teachers will go there. That $24 million could pay for a couple thousand teachers instead of going to some stupid wireless initiative. If the teachers aren't there, the kids *will not* benefit from technology.
Re:Heard about this on Rush Limbaugh yesterday... (Score:5, Interesting)
On the same Rush Limbaugh program, minutes later, a caller who claimed to be an anonymous IT expert explained that schools will put together a $500,000 network when they could just purchase a $100 cable modem. This sounds like one of the usual idiots who sees that a T1 is 1.5 Mbits/sec, local cable provider offers 1.5 Mbits/sec, hey they must be the same thing! And what expenses could there possibly be apart from bandwidth?
The caller and host went on to agree that everyone could save a lot of money if we just got some of the "12- and 13-year old boys" in class to string up the network themselves. Rush isn't the most reliable [mediamatters.org] source for information...
My Experience With IT In Schools (Score:5, Interesting)
I was a high school student several years ago; most of my family works for public schools and I have heard a lot of great stories about how IT works or does not work for teachers and students. Here is the summary.
As far as I remember, IT was a total disaster in my school. We were able to get computers and get them setup; however there was no qualified support. There was no single person responsible for providing user assistance and doing system administration! When computers crashed, students were not really allowed to repair them, instead our librarians tried to come to the rescue; it took them hours and hours to fix a simple problem. Go figure.
When it came to security of networks and school computers, it was even worse. First of all, every damn computer had some sort of "cop" software installed that prevented access to "bad" sites. As a result, students were not research about breast cancer or human sexuality eventhough the pages came from dot GOV. The best part about it was the fact that students usually knew more than teachers and staff; boy, it was fun seeing old ladies trying to remove a picture of a naked chick from the background.
Then there were students who did not know what to do with computers due to the lack of knowledge. I went to a good school that was required to bus certain number of students from the inner city and other "problematic" areas in order to meet some sort of a standard. Some of these kids knew zero about computers and there was nobody in school who could teach them. At least several computers had to be replaced every year because a frustrated student's actions.
My girlfriend work for public schools in MA. The state of IT in her schools is simply pitiful. They have the oldest technology, and virtually no help. Two guys who are in charge of the system have no interest in making things work. When the schools receive new computers or software, there is not enough training provided; therefore, nobody can use them efficiently!
So what's the point? Well, the point is that you can waste government's money in many ways. Direct stealing is just one of them.
Re:Situation Nortmal... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Heard about this on Rush Limbaugh yesterday... (Score:3, Interesting)
Teachers actually worked for years before Al created the internet. This is just another thing to spend money on to make us feel better about our dieing education system. I'd rather see them have enough rooms and teachers and no broadband at all if need be. It is handy for research and other occasional projets, but is not a necessity for every class hour.
The money could be put to much better use, but nobody wants to hear that.Re:My Experience With IT In Schools (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok... so why don't you volunteer a few hours a week to help them? It should be more rewarding than watching old ladies try to remove dirty pictures.
Ten years ago, when both of my children were in public school in a rural, mostly agricultural, school district I was contacted by the teacher who also had little experience with computers and networking. On my recommendation they ran fiber between all the buildings and used Linux (Redhat 4 and then early SuSE) for email, web, and - at least later - web proxy (and filtering). That teacher told the school board that my help had saved them over $50,000 and countless hours of fruitless effort.
I also became a reading volunteer on a program that helped younger students - especially hispanics - learn to read.
In addition, I nstalled Linux on several computers inherited by the Schools by the Public Utility District and put them into the library for kids to check out and take home. One student (mind you, the graduating class of the HS was around 40 in any typical year) used Linux as his senior project as a direct result of puzzling out how to make that Linux computer do what he wanted 6 years earlier.
Now my company does engineering services for this school district under the E-Rate program. But if that were gone I would still volunteer my time as a parent and member of the community. It's an easy way to make a difference.
Re:You're being sarcastic, right? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:schools careless purchasing (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why I refuse to buy a house. I don't have any kids, and really don't care to pay out to send your kids (not yours, personally) to skool so they can cut class and talk about how teh new hiphob album is teh best(typos intentional).
Well, that, and the fact that with the slow death of IT, I never know when I'll have to pack up and move to get my next job. =\
Re:Socialism does not work (Score:3, Interesting)
As an example: Go to DC and look at the main Department of Energy building. It easily holds a few thousand people. Realize that the DOE has HUNDREDS of buildings and sites around the country. Do they create energy? No. Do they manage it? No. Do they help reduce costs of energy? No. Are they doing research? Not much. Then WTF are they doing? Wasting billions. According to the DOE web site, they have 4 goals, two of which are envirnmental related. Then remember that we have "pollution credits" available to keep spewing filth. Another is research, then remember that most of the research is being done by universities with virtually free student labor, and that the government has near zero alternative energy research going on.
I could go on, department after department. Most of the federal government is waste - probably near 90% of all dollars spent.