One of the major initiatives of Mayor Bloomberg’s Department of Education was the development of a new IBM computer system called ARIS (Achievement Reporting and Innovation System).
According to a story by Ben Chapman in the Néw York Daily News, the city DOE is killing the system because so few parents and teachers use it.
The $12 million contract to maintain the system was held by former Chancellor Joel Klein’s Amplify, a division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
When Klein was chancellor, he awarded a contract to fix ARIS to a company called Wireless Generation. Soon after Klein stepped down as chancellor, Murdoch bought Wireless Generation for $360 million.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Bloomberg would do anything but hire more teachers. Even with benefits and pensions, think of all the teachers that could have been hired with this money and possibly–dare I say–reduced class size! Yhat administration wanted us to become data analysts AND teach our 170 students! Maybe if they had deigned to ask teachers about such a system–what was I thinking?!
This is chump change, not remotely in the ballpark of what it would take to have an impact on class size.
300 million is over 6,600 teachers at $45,000 salary. Definite impact on class size in NYC.
Where do you get $300 million from? For years and years I’ve heard about the $80 million lost on ARIS. Now Chapman says it’s 95. Do you have a source for 300?
$300 million hires you 6600 entry level teachers (who I guess are eschewing health insurance and all fringe benefits–the actual cost of a first-year teacher is closer to $60k). Where do you get the money to pay them next year and every year after that?
There is assuredly waste and fraud in the DOE–busing leaps to mind first and foremost. But it isn’t why class sizes are what they are.
It’s not the only factor affecting class size but it certainly is a part.
Michael you used the purchase cost not the billed cost for your calculation. Adjusting to the $95 Million and accounting for benefits package that would still be about 1,400 teachers for a year or 48 teachers for the typical 30 year term (not counting for raises, bonuses and increases in benefits over the 30 years.
So as you can see FLERP is correct when they say it would have little impact on 1.1 million students attending NYC 1,700 public schools.
I heard from several sources that the actual build cost was in the neighborhood of $250 million. Add to that the yearly cost of maintaining the system ($12 million??) it is a tidy sum and certainly had some impact on class size.
The usual naysayers, religious bigots, and economics trolls are out in full force.
They love to overlook and neglect the fact that the system has an ongoing cost and is not/was not a one-time payment, as they imply.
From the quoted article:
“ARIS ran into other issues when a company led by former Chancellor Klein (l.) landed a contract for nearly $10 million to manage the system in 2012. Subsequent contracts held by Klein’s companies have been worth millions more.
. . . . “They spent $95 million on that thing and my kids are in trailers. What they did with that money is criminal.”
See, when you oppose smaller class sizes, as a matter of form, whether conservative or reformist or neoliberal or just plain stupid, you tut tut and sigh about the recurring cost of teacher salaries and benefits when trying to silence a supporter.
You overlook the fact that the ARIS system has been in place for 7 years and has required millions and millions of dollars every year and will do so forever, including upgrading the hardware and software and paying some company to ‘mange’ the outdated and poorly-working program if it is kept in place.
Let no fact get in the way of your naysaying ideology! Right guys? Are you all really this obtuse or is this just a character you play on this blog as a troll?
Funny how the “little impact” would make a huge difference for some kids, like the elite, limited charters supported by these moronic trolls yet smaller class sizes for some in the public system isn’t worth the effort since it won’t impact all students equally.
What fools (some of) these mortals be!
Any additional teachers could reduce class size. If you are not a teacher, try to imagine collecting homework from 170 students two or three times a week. Then try to imagine grading it. I think you can get the picture.
Shelly,
While any additional teacher might be useful in reducing class size, spreading 48 teachers across 1,100,000 students will have a negligible impact, reducing class size by a good deal less than a single student on average.
There are 80,000 teachers in NYC. If my numbers are correct about ARIS, can’t say with certainty, that is the cost of about 6,000 more teachers. That is significant. Are those stating that it is not significant saying that class size need not be reduced unless it is “significant”. How about replacing trailers used as classroom with permanent classrooms? Every bit of money helps even if not “significant”. Public education is starved as it is so any money that can go into classrooms should be the primary goal.
I take your point, Michael. As a parent of two kids in overcrowded DOE schools, I want lower class sizes as much as anyone. (It is literally difficult to open the door to my daughter’s middle school “home room” without having the door hit a desk or chair.) And it’s hard to disagree with the general idea that the primary goal of education spending should be to get as many dollars “into classrooms” as possible. But I also think it’s important to not be flippant about how much money it would actually take to reduce class sizes or even get kids in Queens out of trailers. It will take big, big capital commitments. Our current mayor has essentially pledged *not* to making those commitments, and has received a free pass from pretty much everyone except Leonie Haimson. (Ironically, the lynchpin of BdB’s plan to eliminate the trailers has been the recently passed bond act that was roundly denounced on this web site.) Meanwhile, the DOE is handing over 40 million to private bus companies by executive fiat and nobody complains except a couple budget watchdogs and some laid-off drivers who know the score. But when “ARIS” is mentioned, we all step up for the Two Minute Hate.
Needless to say most teachers I know literally hate Bloomberg. The hate is derived from his endless assaults on teachers, hence the response to the ARIS news.
If you’re interested in DOE finances, this document is useful.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15LxXUl7sGDL3P44Sd1XtreYpVNg5b7rSqsmXz7Zch0s/edit?usp=sharing
Thank you, Chris in Florida, you said it completely.
Michael,
I think it would be more accurate to say that $300 million would pay for over 6,000 teacher years, not teachers. Assuming your figures are correct, those funds would pay for 200 extra teachers for thirty years.
Economic reports about jobs, generated in the building of the Keystone pipeline, don’t point-out X-L’s temporary employment.
If not for, the self-serving plutocratic discrimination against teachers, the situations would be described equally.
The oligarchs’ sights will be trained on devaluing and eliminating college faculty, next. The existing animus for professors, who the public recognizes, have enabled concentration of wealth, will make their destruction, easier.
Your post implies that a private company was making a boatload of money selling a useless service to public schools. How is that possible? The next thing you’ll be telling us is that climate change is really happening.
Merryl Tisch, the Chancellor of the New York Board of Regents, is Michael Bloomberg’s neighbor. She and Joel Klein attend birthday celebrations for each others children. Merryl is good friends with Charles Schumer’s wife. It is all so cozy in this elite world of money and power. Too bad the people of New York are not invited to the party. Our children suffer the consequences and we pay the taxes that finance all of these cozy living room deals going on behind our backs.
Bill Gates is one of Merryl’s wealthiest friends. It was Bill Gates who supplied all of the seed money for the creation of the Common Core, the marketing of it and the implementation as well. He created the data collection system which Joel Klein and Rupert Murdoch eventually took over. This company was given a $27 million no-bid contract by the NY Department of Education.
Just as a side note, it was Joel Klein who was the lead prosecutor in the lawsuit in which he represented the United States in an antitrust case against Microsoft in 1998. Joel Klein played soft ball when he was questioning CEO Bill Gates during that case which is why Microsoft still exists intact although it was in fact a monopoly breaking every antitrust law on the books. Michael Bloomberg appointed Joel Klein to be the Chancellor of NYC schools where he made lots of connections before he moved on to the data collection business.
It is all so incestuous. How can the rich keep siphoning off all of money for themselves? They just keep appointing their friends to those key positions of power and then sit back and watch the money roll in.
Welcome to the United Oligarchy of America, formerly known as the USA.
I am not ready to say goodbye to my sovereign nation. My ancestors fought and died to be able to create this experiment. It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.
Dawn,
This seems to be the AMERICAN way…GREED at any cost.
I don’t think Joel Klein questioned Bill Gates in the US v. Microsoft case. He was deposed by Boies, and he didn’t testify at trial. And I’m not sure Klein questioned anyone at trial, anyway.
United States v. Microsoft Corporation 253 F.3d 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001) is a US antitrust law case, ultimately settled by the Department of Justice, where Microsoft Corporation was accused of becoming a monopoly and engaging in abusive practices contrary to the Sherman Antitrust Act 1890 sections 1 and 2. It was initiated on May 18, 1998 by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and 20 states.
Joel I. Klein was the lead prosecutor.
The trial began on May 18, 1998, with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Attorneys General of twenty U.S. states suing Microsoft for illegally thwarting competition in order to protect and extend its software monopoly. In October 1998, the U.S. Department of Justice also sued Microsoft for violating a 1994 consent decree by forcing computer makers to include its Internet browser as a part of the installation of Windows software.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was called “evasive and nonresponsive” by a source present at a session in which Gates was questioned on his deposition.[5] He argued over the definitions of words such as “compete”, “concerned”, “ask”, and “we”.[6] Businessweek reported that “early rounds of his deposition show him offering obfuscatory answers and saying ‘I don’t recall’ so many times that even the presiding judge had to chuckle. Many of the technology chief’s denials and pleas of ignorance have been directly refuted by prosecutors with snippets of email Gates both sent and received.”[7] Intel Vice-President Steven McGeady, called as a witness, quoted Paul Maritz, a senior Microsoft vice president, as having stated an intention to “extinguish” and “smother” rival Netscape Communications Corporation and to “cut off Netscape’s air supply” by giving away a clone of Netscape’s flagship product for free.[8]
Right. Klein was lead prosecutor. David Boies was special trial counsel. The deposition testimony described in that opinion was from a deposition that Boies took. You can watch it on YouTube. And I’m not sure how you arrived at your authoritative conclusion that the questions in that deposition were “softball” questions. I think Boies did a grear job, and the testimony was not helpful to Gates. Microsoft probably didn’t call Gates as a witness at trial because it feared Gates would get eviscerated on the stand.
As lead prosecutor I am sure that Klein was involved with the final Microsoft settlement which was a very soft slap on the wrist. My point is that Klein and Gates are on the same side and have been for a long time even when they theoretically were not.
It was certainly clear what point you wanted to make.
FLERP I do not know what state YOU are from, but I was teaching in NYC when Klein took over from Rudy Crew, who had taken over for Cortines (now doing his worst in LAUSD)
I cannot begin to tell you the methods that tHIS DOE took to pursue the goal of removing the voices of the professionals who had been so successful in making NYC public schools a road to opportunity for Americans living here. He conducted a war on teachers which I summarized in this essay on my first blog. Totally lawless, this ugly, and I do mean ugly American, was tied to the billionaire’s who are assaulting public education across the nation.
http://www.speakingasateacher.com/SPEAKING_AS_A_TEACHER/No_Constitutional_Rights-_A_hidden_scandal_of_National_Proportion.html
Here is a link to Betsy Combier who chronicled the ‘gotcha squad’ during all the mayor’s terms. In this post, she is telling about David Pakter, a brilliant teacher at Fine Arts who had created th medical illustration curricula, and won the city award for excellence; he brought in a plant, and was thrown into the rubber room for insubordination, as his principal and Klein cooked up charges. David wrote the most erudite and amusing editorial about Klein at the Baron’s Blog, but here is his story, and it tells you all you need to know about the corruption over which Klein presided.
http://parentadvocates.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=7501
and Flerp, I don’t know if you follow my posts, but if you do, then you have seen the Grassroots fllm, “The inconvenient Truth about ‘waiting for superman.’ ”
https://vimeo.com/4199476
DON’T MISS IT…it is Joel Klein’s legacy, which he left behind to go into the business world as a lobbyist, and now, he makes a huge profit from the fact that he could put on his resume that he was the NYC Chancellor.
Read the comment I made to Flerp about that criminal Klein, serial narcissist, whose assault on teachers emptied the schools of the veterans int he nineties!
Yes, thank you for that. I think the public should be regularly reminded of these past crimes against “the people” committed by people who are still receiving tax funded remuneration to perform functions they cannot possibly fulfill due to an evidential shortage of moral fiber.
I’m glad to say I was instrumental in getting the city under the previous comptroller to investigate the ARIS system. I was called by the Comptroller’s office to inform me that ARIS would be investigated at my suggestion. The suggestion was made at a meeting Mr. Liu held for suggestions for his office to consider. At that meeting I stated that ARIS was a system written by IBM (as I recall), was not user friendly at all so teachers rarely used it and I dare say no parents used it. The cost to create ARIS was given as $80 million but I’ve heard from insiders that it was more like $250 million. After John Liu began the investigation principals were informed that part of their ratings would be based on ARIS usage by staff. A total boondoggle that would only end with the departure of Bloomberg, and a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars that could’ve been put to much better use. Similarly I suspect the privatization movement will slow or possibly even end with the departure of the Obama administration.
“Similarly I suspect the privatization movement will slow or possibly even end with the departure of the Obama administration.”
We can dream, we can hope.
“Hope & Change”! Where did I hear that before!
They have too much invested to quit.
That’s why parents and students need to opt out. Starve the beast.
Michael Brocum: those leading the charge for charters/vouchers/privatization do wonders with numbers.
I wouldn’t be surprised if your insiders’ info turns out to be more accurate than the officially released figures.
Whatever the case, thank you for your comments on this thread.
😎
Yes, I concur. Thank you for that!
The techs here in NYC were never enamored with ARIS. Quite the opposite. The more knowledge one had of programming and design, the less impressed and more derisive the comments.
I remember the mandate for using ARIS. Very heavy handed. One of the reasons it fell apart was because so many schools had internet delivery systems from the early ’90s. The service was unbelievably slow. You couldn’t even come close to getting the work done at school. Had to do it at home along with lesson and unit plans.
Lotta money was made by some people who were either at the top or knew someone that was. Blows me away that it was allowed and that nothing more will happen other than dropping it.
Thanks, Michael Brocum. Individuals make a difference. A couple of years ago, one guy forced more stringent reporting on capital gains.
It reduced the tax system’s favoritism for the 1%.
Your optimism is welcomed, however, the Common Core is coming from UNESCO and Bill Gates. David Rockefeller and his friends at the CFR want it to stay. So it will stay. The departure of the Obama Administration will have as strategic an affect on the Common Core as the departure of Bush had on U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan
The best way for students to defeat the CC is to refuse the test. 60,000 students in NY refused last year. Multiple that nationally and we are talking change.
refusing to take the test equals lost profits….amen
I don’t know about that. The tests will already have been purchased that sit before students who refuse to take them. However, perfectly bright children will not receive grades based on arbitrary cut scores and invalid tests. They will not be forced to receive intervention services and denied access to certain courses based on this unfair system. Fine teachers will not be unfairly evaluated as “ineffective” and schools will not be closed due to “failing” students, thus opening the door for yet another charter school. The consequences that the reformers are salivating over can not be implemented if they do not possess the ever-loving data they need to “justify” their capricious actions.
They move along with or without supporting data.
We can get mad at the contractor if we want, and we can get mad at the revolving door between government lobbying government for contracts, but the real responsibility should rest on the people we elect.
Our lawmakers are volunteering to buy this stuff. They’re signing on. No one put a gun to their heads in LA and said “blow a billion dollars on devices without any due diligence or forethought or planning”
We can’t reach the private parties. The one and only people we can hold accountable are public employees.
If my district gets ripped off with one or another data system or ed tech initiative I will blame the district leaders and the school board. They cannot swallow this stuff whole, no matter how hard it’s sold. They have a duty to NOT be dopes. The contractors have no duty to anyone, outside the contract.
We deserve better advocates and better negotiators. We can do better than this.
Boycott any AMPLIFY products if you can, sabotage if you must.
Letting an enemy have control of your children’s education is foolish -X
Here’s another horror story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/technology/privacy-concerns-for-classdojo-and-other-tracking-apps-for-schoolchildren.html
If they can’t get InBloom or some other app to hoover up student data, just bypass the administration and go straight to the classroom. If I were a principal and found out a teacher was doing this to children, I’d put a stop to it immediately.
Quoting myself on another thread yesterday:
“Like in the horror movies where you think the heroine has escaped from the slasher, only to have him reappear in her daughter’s bedroom.” Make that classroom.
As a NYC schoolteacher, I’ve long suspected that ARIS was just a phenomenal waste of money.
Now, it turns out that the entire system was designed to benefit Joel Klein’s pocketbook and those of his friends. What else is new?
This is the kind of information where headlines about this boondoggle should be splashed prominently in all of the major newspapers, and talked about on network and cable news. As many people have rightly pointed out, think of how many teachers could have been hired to benefit our classrooms, if ARIS never came to be.
On this forum, essentially, you’re preaching to the choir. Wonder how the many taxpayers of NYC would feel about ARIS, Joel Klein, and Michael Bloomberg, if this information was widely known? Or, is spreading false information about “greedy and incompetent ” teachers more appealing to the news outlets of NYC?
Regrettably the owners of major media outlets are supporters of common core and big data. Rupert Murdoch, to his credit, was up front about his involvement in “reform”. It went something like this (as reported somewhere)…”there is 600 billion spent in public education and he wants part of it”. Most reformers state they are in it for “the children”.
More wasted money on classroom technology:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/technology/privacy-concerns-for-classdojo-and-other-tracking-apps-for-schoolchildren.html?hpw&rref=education&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
This one is actually hard to believe. All money that could be used to purchase musical instruments, art supplies, science lab equipment, or more teachers. Just one more jar of snake oil.
ClassDojo – this is student behavior monitoring app for smart boards and parents and the great data miner in the sky. It is a high tech version of placing check marks next to student names. Complete with actual “bells and whistles”
I agree that it’s a fancy version of a chalkboard checklist. The difference is that this one records, distributes, and stores the data. Big difference.
May they drown in their own data
Another promising educational tool (aka: the Interactive Whiteboard) turning around and slapping the users and kids in the face.
Big Data. Big Brother.
The problem isn’t with the technology. It’s anything but a waste of money. It’s the people who control the use of the technology and those who deliver the lessons who determine the outcomes.
Technology is a tool which can be used for good or ill and a lot of it is simply not necessary (and i say that as someone who worked in high tech for a long time)
The biggest problem is all the snake oil salesmen (superintendents and others) who are trying to foist it on schools that don’t really need it or even want it — and taking money away from much more pressing things like textbooks, school repairs and new buildings, hiring more teachers, etc.(the list is very long)
Interactive whiteboards are great (and can be useful on a limited basis for schools), but an old fashioned chalk board works just fine for the vast majority of classrooms and is much much (did I say much?) cheaper.
And with regard to Big Brother, i’m waiting for the day when I read about a teacher being fired for mistakes (eg, in grammar or on a math problem) made on a whiteboard that recorded everything they wrote.
If not here already, it’s coming: the whiteboard that evaluates teachers.
It can be called the VAMboard (or the DAMboard, depending on one’s point o fview). School boards out. VAMboards in.
PS; maybe i should Trademark the name “VAMboard” (if it hasn’t been already) so i can cash in like all the others who are currently sucking the lifeblood of the public schools like a bunch of leeches.
I hear you. ‘Ve been heavily involved in tech.
One of Arne’s sneers that rankles me the most was the way in which he disparaged going back to “the days of pencil and paper”. As though it was the Stone Age. It’s just as effective and creative a tool as a computer. A lot cheaper, too.
Technology becomes more expensive with less autonomy by the individual/school (aka: subscriptions vs CD-ROM and DVD) the more we buy into it.
You know that Murdoch owns a large share of Pearson.
I remember Joel Klein, a businessman who Bloomberg hired to deal the death blow to veteran teachers. The DOE was lawless and the UFT LET IT HAPPEN.
This was Joel Klein’s NY legacy if you have not seen this Grassroots movie about what went down in NYC the largest school district of the 15, 880, then take some time and watch it, because it is coming to YOUR district…
https://vimeo.com/4199476
This is the methodology -the process that accomplishes “their” purpose.
John Taylor Gatto, who wrote “Dumbing US Down,” years ago, has a new book “Weapons of Mass Destruction.. He was interviewed recently by Rob Kall, and the podcast and transcript is available here.
http://www.opednews.com/Podcast/John-Taylor-Gatto-author-by-Rob-Kall-100919-193.html
He tells us that We MUST KNOW, the PURPOSE and the methodology that lets ‘THEM’ reach their GOAL! His words: “”Without knowing that [their] purpose of life and the methodology to reach that purpose]… you are like some helpless intelligent fool as you pass through your daily life, you are absolutely disadvantaged!”
You see, it is NOT merely about money.. The purpose of all the fear mongering and lying is to stress the masses, to keep them busy while they totally dismantle democracy from the bottom up. Their methods, the ones that help them achieve their purpose are insidious. Dismantling public education is the most crucial step. Klein is just one of their shills, selling magic elixirs, as the schools fail, and they take over, writing new curricula that re-writes history.
Remember Orwell’s “Animal Farm?” The original social contract that the revolutionaries posted int he barn, was rewritten by the pigs, once generations of chickens and sheep had passed away, and voices of truth like the horse Boxer were silenced. No one remembered their constitution.
Today, Jon Stewart, played clips of GOP legislators and media claiming that our Constitution has been shredded by the President.
Now they can re-write it.
Sorry Gatto’s Book is WEAPONS OF MASS INSTRUCTION!
Read John Taylor Gatto,former New York State Teacher of the Year, 29 year veteran teacher in NYC, to start getting the big picture…
…or listen to a five hour interview of Gatto in which he imparts some of the perspectives and facts he gleaned by reading voluminous amounts of books, reports, studies, as well as doing his own research of original documents. Take your time. Take notes. Become empowered by knowing who, what, where, when and especially WHY. When a preponderance of people KNOW…the elites who have loomed so large and controlled so much with their money and their tight control of the media will be seen in the light of day as little rats scurrying to find a dark place to hide. But they will not be able to hide because of all that data, all those video clips of them saying mean and murderous things, all those printed words documenting their thoughts and actions will ultimately condemn them. The surveillance state they have set up will end up revealing them to be so few and so small as to be insignificant in a world of 7 billion creative life affirming people. It is just a matter of perspective.
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” – William Casey, CIA Director 1981, Roman Catholic Jesuit