Jackson Condemns DOE Computer Contract

Local City Councilman Robert Jackson has added to mounting criticism of a year-old computerized system designed to assess and evaluate city public schools, calling in a letter to Education Chancellor Joel Klein for the termination of its $80 million contract between the New York City Department of Education and IBM computers.

The Achievement Reporting and Innovation System is part of the schools’ Accountability Initiative. Adopted in March of last year, ARIS was described by the DOE as a program to “help schools analyze, report, and manage information about student and school performance.”

“Armed with this information,” Klein announced at the time, “our educators will be able to tailor instruction to their students’ needs, and parents will be able to get involved in their children’s education like never before.”

Last March, the NYC DOE projected that the system would be available to teachers and principals by September of 2007, with parents also having access to reports on their students’ progress by that fall semester. But as of April 2008, only principals and a few administrators at each school have gained access to ARIS. The DOE reports that teachers, who have had trouble logging in and using ARIS because of programming glitches, will have access later this school year.

Principals across the city have reported mixed results from ARIS, most speaking under condition of anonymity. Many said they have found the program more cumbersome than helpful, and that the teachers’ lack of access has impeded much of the expected value. Others, however, said they have found the program useful as a tool in keeping with the citywide initiative towards schools’ accountability for student performance.

After reading a New York Post article from February of this year calling ARIS and the NYC DOE’s computer program an “$80 million disaster,” councilmen Robert Jackson and David Yassky wrote a letter to Klein in favor of terminating the five-year contract with IBM.

“We are writing to share our great concern about the state of the Achievement Reporting and Innovation System (ARIS),” Jackson and Yassky began. Outlining the issues raised in the Post and by teachers and administrators throughout the city, the council members urged Klein to consider the financial toll of ARIS. “In light of the recent cuts to the education budget, it would be a misallocation of resources to continue spending money on this failed system,” they wrote. With $35 million already spent on the computer programs, Jackson and Yassky proposed using the remaining $45 million to “help offset resent cuts” in the education budget.

Their letter has been praised by like-minded New Yorkers, including education advocate Leonie Haimson. “Hurray for them!” she posted on the NYC Public School Parents blog. Haimson expressed her skepticism about ARIS last March, when the program was first implemented.

Neither IBM nor the NYC DOE was available for comment at the time of publication.

alicia.outing@columbiaspectator.com