NYCDOE Getting Rid Of Joel Klein's $95 Million Dollar Computer System Boondoggle

Gee, who couldn't see this coming?

A controversial $95 million computer system that tracks and distributes student scores and other data is headed for the scrap heap, the Daily News has learned.

The Achievement Reporting and Innovation System (ARIS) was implemented by the Education Department in 2007. It’s one of the city’s biggest computer systems, with records on more than 1 million current and former students. But it has been blasted by critics for being clunky and slow.

Former schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who oversaw the creation of ARIS, has also drawn fire for taking millions to maintain the system with his company Amplify.

That’s all coming to a screeching halt by 2015, Education officials told The News.

“The Education Department has decided to end our contract with Amplify as a result of the extremely high cost of the ARIS system, its limited functionality, and the lack of demand from parents and staff,” said agency spokeswoman Devora Kaye.

“The shockingly low usage of ARIS shows that the vast majority of families and Education Department staff don’t find it a valuable tool,” Kaye added. “By developing an internal program we’ll not only save millions of dollars, but better serve parents and school communities.”

NY1 did a couple of reports on ARIS years ago that demonstrated how many teachers and administrators found the system to be mostly useless and a huge waste of money.

I'm sure the Bloomberg DOE knew that, but I would bet Bloomberg kept it around because it was Klein's baby.

Now, a year into the de Blasio administration, the de Blasio NYCDOE is trashing it.

To which I say - good.

Next up on the trash heap?

Another Klein technological boondoggle - iZone, the computerized learning program that costs a bundle to run and does little to educate students or aid educators.

Pass/fail rates for iZone classes are abysmal - as is the cost to run them.

They stick kids who have failed classes in the past in front of computers for "credit recovery" classes.

Many of these kids already have difficulty paying attention in real live classes - that's why they have failed some of their classes in the past.

Who would think sticking them in front of a computer for hours a week and forcing them to slog through online material would work with students who already struggle in school?

Why Joel Klein, that's who!

More and more, we see the vaunted Klein track record fall to scrutiny and the light of day as the failure it was.

Of course, the real idea behind the system was to steal money from children and give it to edu-entrepreneurs:

“Good news they’re junking it,” said Arthur Goldstein, an English teacher at Francis Lewis High School in Queens. “They spent $95 million on that thing and my kids are in trailers. What they did with that money is criminal.”

Indeed.

Online Pre-K - The Next Frontier In Education Reform

Given the excitement by the investor class over online, for-profit education, you knew this was inevitable:

WASHINGTON—Saying the option is revolutionizing the way the nation’s 3- and 4-year-olds prepare for the grade school years ahead, a Department of Education report released Thursday confirmed that an increasing number of U.S. toddlers are now attending online preschool.

“We found that a growing number of American toddlers are eschewing the traditional brick-and-mortar preschools in favor of sitting down in front of a computer screen for four hours a day and furthering their early psychosocial development in a virtual environment,” said the report’s author, Dr. Stephen Forrest, who said that the affordability and flexibility characteristic of online pre-primary education are what make the option most appealing, allowing young children to learn their shapes and colors on a schedule that works best for them.

“With access to their Show-And-Tell message boards, recess timers, and live webcams of class turtle tanks, most toddlers are finding that they can receive the same experience of traditional preschooling from the comfort of their parents’ living room or home office. In addition, most cited the ability to listen to their teacher’s recordings of story time at their own pace as a significant benefit of choosing an online nursery school.”

Forrest added that, despite their increasing popularity, many parents remain unconvinced that online preschools provide the same academic benefits as actually hearing an instructor name farm animals and imitate their noises in person.

Okay, the story is from The Onion and it's a parody.

But given the push for online schooling from the reform movement and Wall Street, it may not be parody for long.

Murdoch/Klein Amplify Tablet Chargers Melt, Tablets Suffer Multitude Of Other Problems

There has been such a heavy sell of the Amplify tablet in the media lately, including a long Times Magazine piece a few weeks ago.

Turns out Joel Klein and Rupert Murdoch should expend less effort on the p.r. around Amplify tablets and more on the safety and workability issues:

Facebook Shedding Investors AND Users

Alec Liu at Motherboard:

On a day when Wall Street darling Apple hit new highs, making it the most valuable company ever (not adjusted for inflation), ex-darling Facebook continues to reach record lows. After its controversial IPO, Mark Zuckerberg has been unable to convince investors of a brighter future. It’s not just Wall Street that remains flocking to the exits, the company has been leaking high-level execs since it went public. The site is also shedding users. Despite robust international growth, Facebook lost 6 million U.S. users in May.

Now, with the three-month investor lock-up period over — the period in which pre-IPO shareholders are barred from selling a certain chunk of their shares — the company is losing one of its largest and most notable shareholders. PayPal co-founder and early Facebook investor (he famously paid $500,000 in 2004 for a 10.2 percent stake) Peter Thiel on Monday sold another 20 million shares, nearly his entire stake. Along with the proceeds of the initial IPO, Thiel has netted himself a tidy $1 billion for his troubles.

That investors are cashing out after one of the most hyped IPOs in history is only natural but the velocity of the selling belies a lack of confidence in Zuckerberg to fulfill Facebook’s lofty promises. Thiel isn’t just any old investor. He sits on the board and has privileged insight into the future of the company. As he must understand by now, this is only beginning for Facebook’s Wall Street woes. It faces three more “lock-up” expirations by year end with the biggest in November, when a further 1.32 billion shares could flood the market eclipsing many times over last week’s paltry 271 million share window.

“We don’t build services to make money,” Zuckerberg wrote half a year ago in Facebook’s IPO prospectus, hinting at the company’s inherent identity crisis. The site was never designed to make money, it was crafted to suck users in and keep them within the confines of Facebook’s world. Zuckerberg, perhaps unwittingly, admitted the central paradox to this agreement: “People want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits.” But by going public at the valuation that they did, around $100 billion, Zuckerberg and company signed a pact with the devil. That number doesn’t represent real value. It’s a promise that would conceivably be delivered down the line, essentially a public declaration that profits will indeed be maximized.

Those profits have yet to materialize as Zuckerberg now tries to toe that fine line between making people happy — or rather, keeping them hooked — while sucking them dry along the way. In trying to please all, the users (the site has the lowest customer satisfaction rating among its peers), its partners (who complain about robot infestations), and Wall Street (the stock is down nearly 50 percent since it went public), Zuckerberg has only succeeded in disappointing everyone.

Facebook’s drastic fall from grace isn’t just a Zuckerberg screw-up, it’s indicative of a broader trend. Many of the startups expected to fuel new web economy are floundering. Zynga’s stock continues to tank and even Groupon’s staunchest supporters are starting to give up hope. In short, the race for users hasn’t proved as fruitful as most would have hoped.

How poorly has Facebook performed?

Facebook (NASDAQ: FB  ) shares are down about 37% since the company went public in 2012. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is up about 26% overall.

Very poorly indeed.