The nation's second-largest school district is woefully unprepared to administer new state standardized tests by computer, a survey of Los Angeles Unified schools has found.
An internal district report, obtained by The Times through a California Public Records Act request, indicates that fewer than a third of Los Angeles schools said they were ready for this spring's tests, which for the first time will be given online.
The survey comes amid a $1-billion effort to provide every student, teacher and administrator with an iPad or other computer. That effort has been delayed even though the Board of Education agreed this month to buy as many of the tablets as needed for testing.
The review, however, revealed larger problems: limited Internet access on many campuses, a lack of expertise at many schools and too few computers. Additionally, the iPads may not arrive in time.
At 122nd Street Elementary, which has 700 students, administrators initially thought that 17 computers could be used for testing but it turned out that only five would work.
At 2nd Street Elementary, there weren't enough computers to test all students in a class at the same time.
Scores of campuses also mentioned similar computer shortages. For example, 75th Street Elementary, would have to rely on 50 computers to test 1,200 students. And the license for the operating system on those computers expires in March, which could render them unusable.
The 15 computers at Leland Elementary "are 10 years old and they only work intermittently, often do not boot up, or crash mid-use," the school said on the survey.
Throughout district campuses, the number of computers that could be used for testing ranged from three to 564.
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