I don't see the value, personally.
Well, clearly it teaches (some) kids mad hacking skills.
Or something.
Re. being able to access the curriculum just as well from home with a computer, that's wouldn't be a valid assumption at our (Title I) school. Some kids would have to walk 10 blocks to the public library, which only has a very limited number of computers in the children's section anyway.
As for iPads being procured through very, very expensive channels... yes. Looks like some people are making a lot of money on that right now.
But. I have seen piles of donated computers figuratively rotting away, unused, in our district, because there are only 2 IT techs available to manage all computers on 10 different sites (district office, school admin, teachers' laptops, classroom computers in elementary and middle school, computer labs, computer carts...). The bottleneck is *not* the hardware. iPads are pretty black-boxy, but you still need somebody to research and load apps, handle returns for malfunctions and breakage, and reload/update/reimage the content. Some school districts might be better than ours at managing this (there are many other jobs available at better pay/promise of IPO money for skilled techs around here), but it needs to be taken care of... or outsourced, at a significant price.
