Looking for teachers/parents with views on ARIS

I won't get into what I think of the Education Sector and always have reasons to suspect their motives. But Leonie may have a point here. Let's see what they come up with though I wouldn't be surprised if they find ARIS to be one of the great inventions of all time.


For parents and teachers who have experience and/or views on the value or importance of ARIS, data inquiry teams or other aspects of the DOE accountability initiative, please contact Catherine at ccullen@educationsector.org from the think-tank Education Sector.

See her email below. It is important that she hear from stakeholders with a wide range of opinion on this important issue. Thanks, Leonie

From: Catherine Cullen
To: Leonie Haimson
Subject: RE: ARIS interview request

Ms. Haimson,

Thanks again for your time today. My email address is ccullen@educationsector.org. Here's a short blurb about the project:

Education Sector, a non profit think tank, is looking into the ways that technology can facilitate collaboration around student information. I'm seeking a broad range of perspectives on ARIS, the DoE's data warehouse. Please contact me at ccullen@educationsector.org if you are willing to share your experiences and opinions.

DOE Tech Reorganization All About HAL-er -ARIS

As we reported yesterday (Yet Another Reorganization From Tweed) Tweed has instituted another reorganization of technology. Now we are getting a clue as to what's behind it all.

It is all about ARIS.

About a week ago, some members of Office of Instructional Technology were "observed" by officials of the Office of Accountability giving an ARIS workshop for teachers. Soon after, the Office of Instructional Technology was folded into James Leibman's Office of Accountability. Was their workshop an audition for their being chewed up by HAL - er - ARIS?

Yes, it's all about ARIS training for teachers and possibly parents. (See a bunch of Elizabeth Green's postings on ARIS at Gotham Schools.)

Now let's make it clear. The purpose of OIT has always been to train teachers to deliver tech services to children by developing programs that will increase computer literacy.

Amongst all the other gaps, one of the keys is the technology gap that poor urban kids seem to face. Can they use word processing and spreadsheets? Can they even use a keyboard effectively? Can they make effective use of the internet? I can go on.

As I said yesterday, the ability of the schools to deliver these services to kids is at a significantly lower level than it was 6 years ago when I left the system. In fact, it has suffered a steady erosion as they moved from a district to a region to a borough and now to a citywide level.

This growing tech gap is apparently not a civil rights issue of our times for people like Al Sharpton and Joel Klein.

All studies have shown that to just put hardware into schools is not enough. Estimates are that 35% of the money should be spent on support. Most of the money for this support under BloomKlein has come in the form of federal Title IID grants, not from city money.

Managing these millions of dollars of grants effectively is a big job and as it migrated from district to region to borough under BloomKlein, the ability to deliver effective services to schools has eroded. Until today, these grants have been managed by the OIT head in each borough. Now all grants will supposedly be managed by one person and a small staff at the citywide level. Someone at the fed and state level should take a good look at how effective this will be.

Now it looks like instead of delivering services to kids, OIT personnel will be used in the service of a flawed system like ARIS.

So, on top of the $80 million tag for the ARIS data system, add these costs of training and support. Soon to be added? The other multi-million dollar special ed compter system. The data munchers at the DOE have consumed the education of an entire generation of kids.

One day, like Colonel Nicolson in Bridge on the River Kwai, Jim Leibman will scream out in pain, "What have I done?"


Leibman leads his new troops from the Office of Instructional Technology over the bridge to nowhere.

Top graphic by David B

Related

New Visions warns principals not to trust ARIS data warehouse

ARIS Smashed

UPDATE:
See Comment #4 for letter from David Yasky and Robert Jackson calling for ARIS contract to be cancelled.

Remember the famous spoof of 1984 with that Apple Super Bowl commercial attacking IBM with all those lemmings going over the cliff? (You can watch it here.)

They landed at Tweed.

(Many years ago I said that one day Joel Klein would be taken out of Tweed with his coat over his head – I half expected to see him among the Gambino Family crowd. Maybe he will be joined by Chief Accountability Officer Jim Liebman.)

Poor ARIS, Joel Klein's $80 million white elephant. Getting trashed all over the place.

Gary Babad is back with a satire over at NYC Public School Parents Blog "DOE Plans Billion Dollar ARIS Upgrade."

I attended a press conference a few years ago when Klein announced how data would be accumulated for teachers to use. Based on my knowledge of the state of computer access in schools (which has suffered severe deterioration under BloomKlein) and the state of available time available during the school day for teachers to check such data (which has also suffered severe deterioration under BloomKlein) I raised this issue with Klein:

"The reality on the ground, is that teachers will not be able to access all this other than on their oen time at home, and that is just not real." Klein just shucked the question off (I guess he figured threats to send teachers to the rubber room for not burning the midnight oil at home checking the ARIS data would suffice.)

Shame on the NYC press corps for ignoring this issue.

ARIS has also been taking hits from the pros. When the system was announced a year ago, the juiceanalytics blog called it an $80 million super mugging.

Ah, the sweet smell of a swindle. Don't you just hate it when consulting companies cajole deals with hand-wringing about technology and, especially, preying on clients' lack of expertise?

Teachers are underpaid, hardly appreciated, and overworked. I can only wonder what the half-life is of a system that asks teachers to log on to get information delivered by the "chief accountability officer."

A new blog post follows up at www.juiceanalytics.com/writing. It is worth repeating in full.

How to Feel Better About Your Data Warehouse Fiasco

Here’s a little predictive analytics:

About a year ago I took a swipe at the “$80 million supercomputer to analyze NYC student achievement.” It smelled more like a super sales job than a super useful analytical tool.

At the time I had said:

Teachers are underpaid, hardly appreciated, and overworked. I can only wonder what the half-life is of a system that asks teachers to log on to get information delivered by the “chief accountability officer.”

Well, it appears that things haven’t gone that smoothly with the supercomputer. Today I received a link from Leonie Haimson, a NYC education advocate, to a story entitled SCHOOLS COMPUTER AN $80M ‘DISASTER’.

Not only has the supercomputer struggled to gain much traction with users (“The school system’s new $80 million computer super system to track student performance has been a super debacle, teachers and principals say.”), it has coincided with severe budget cuts.

We see these data warehousing problems all the time with our clients, and the NYC supercomputer displays all the hallmarks:

• Delivery delays: Nearly six months after the Department of Education unveiled the “first of its kind” data-management system, the city’s 80,000 teachers have yet to log on because of glitches and delays.
• Bad user experience: Many principals have complained that it runs slowly, lacks vital information, and is often too frustrating to use.
• Complicated training and set-up: School officials were hoping to have everyone hooked up and trained within months…delays in creating IDs and passwords for teachers
• Trying to do too much; delivering too little: The principal added that she preferred to get student information from a combination of old data systems “rather than wait for ARIS to churn and churn and churn and maybe give me half the report I need.”
• Massive cost: Complaints about the expensive system - on which nearly $35 million has been spent so far - have gotten louder since the city unceremoniously chopped $100 million from individual school budgets last month.
• And yet, few success anecdotes to justify the investment: ARIS had already enabled her data team to analyze the performance trends of the school’s many English-language learners.

It does offer one thing that I haven’t seen before: a Chief Accountability Officer.

Tracking NYC School Data

I was going to write about today's NY Times article on the so-called independent commission that has both Joel Klein and Randi Weingarten on it but Reality-based educator has done a bang-up job as NYC Educator's columnist. So head on over.

Oh, and the Fund for Public Schools is spending millions to run ads lauding BloomKlein instead of funneling money to the classroom. Now there's Children First.

Check out Woodlass' post at the Under Assault blog.