New York City Creates Replacement for Student Data Website

Starting next week, parents of students in New York City public schools will be able view their children’s attendance, grades and, ultimately, scores on Regents exams and state reading and math tests on a new website, NYC Schools.

The city’s Education Department created NYC Schools to replace Achievement Reporting and Innovation System, or ARIS, a data system built at great expense under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration that was used by only a small fraction of parents. At the end of last year, the department ended its contract with Amplify, the company that maintained ARIS and is run by Joel I. Klein, who was schools chancellor during the system’s creation. Since then, parents have not had a way of viewing their children’s information online.

Hal Friedlander, the department’s chief information officer, said on Tuesday that NYC Schools was designed internally for less than $2 million and was expected to cost under $4 million for further development over the next four years. By contrast, ARIS, developed by IBM and a group of subcontractors, cost the Education Department $95 million from 2007 to 2014. Department officials said that only 3 percent of parents used it. Teachers and principals used it more often, but a 2012 audit report by the city comptroller found that nearly half of them had not logged into the system during the previous year.

Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for Amplify, said: “Over six years ago, we were called in to fix this project when it was well underway. We did so on time and on budget and are proud of what we accomplished.”

Starting on Monday, according to the department, parents and other guardians can register for an account in person at their children’s schools. They will need photo identification, an email address and their child’s student identification number. They will immediately be able to see on the website the contact information on file for their child and how many days their child has been tardy or absent.

Report card grades are to go online at the end of the year, and scores on Regents exams and state reading and math tests will be available in the summer, after they are released by the state. Previous years’ grades and test scores are to be added later in the year.

The schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, said on Tuesday that though the department planned to add to the website over time, “at least right now, no parent can say to us, ‘Well, I didn’t know my child wasn’t doing well.’”

The website includes an option for parents to comment about what else they would like to see. For now, one piece of data that was available on ARIS but is not on the new website is high school students’ credit accumulation.

Mr. Friedlander said that to protect students’ privacy, all of the student data will be encrypted, and, because the system will be maintained by the department, no outside vendor will have access to the data.

Carolyn Pereira, whose son is in seventh grade at Quest to Learn, a middle and high school in Manhattan, said she had used ARIS and had been disappointed when it was discontinued. She said she mostly used ARIS to look at her son’s test scores and the analysis of his test performance.

“It would really be detailed about what they did well in and what they didn’t do well in,” she said. “Say it was math, it would say if it was the fractions that he did bad in or did good in.” A department spokeswoman said that there were no current plans for NYC Schools to include that kind of analysis of test performance, but that it could be added if parents requested it.

Ms. Pereira said she also used it to verify her son’s information and correct mistakes; in one case, the department had him listed as the wrong ethnicity.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/03/nyregion/new-york-city-creates-replacement-for-student-data-website.html?ref=education