Apple and Microsoft each wrote an AP computer science curriculum around their own tools

A curriculum lead reading a free AI course offer this term is deciding which product a cohort will practice in for years. Singer, who covers education technology for The New York Times ^[2], is specific about what the last arrangement returned to the vendor: schools helped create a new class of would-be workers, and students trained on the companies' own products and software became likely future customers ^[5]. "I worry we have collective amnesia," Singer told The Vergecast ^[6].

Her test for a parent is easier to run than most procurement rubrics. "What's striking about this is you can imagine that parents would not want, say, Pfizer AP Biology, or Northrop Grumman AP Physics, or ExxonMobil Environmental Science AP," Singer said ^[8]. People in medicine grasp the problem quickly, she found, and one expert gave her the case of medical students who are trained by a company on how to implant its proprietary device and rarely choose to try another ^[9].

The AI pitch does not have to win the platform decision. Singer writes that by the time generative AI took off, Google was already a key platform provider for many schools and well positioned to promote it ^[11].

On the buyer side, the evidence for change is thinner than the framing around it. Singer found little pushback during the coding push ^[14], and she believes that in some ways schools have learned lessons from past tech cycles ^[19]. That is one reporter's read of the mood. The reporting names no district policy or purchasing rule that puts the lesson into effect.

The usable test is separability. Ask the vendor for the version of the lesson that runs on a competitor's tool, and ask who wrote the assessment students will sit. When the material only works inside the vendor's product and the vendor also sets the passing mark, the purchase is distribution with a lesson plan attached. When the standard survives a tool swap, the material is curriculum and the tool is replaceable.

Hours delivered is a delivery number. Code.org's founder Hadi Partovi had little planned for how to capitalize on his video's attention once it took off, and funneled it into the Hour of Code, entertaining hour-long courses introducing kids to coding building blocks ^[13]. Singer also describes a group of academics who took the slower route, testing and rolling out their own computer science curriculum methodically, with the express goal of diversifying the kinds of students enrolled and with coursework that taught students to scrutinize builders' motivations ^[15].