The Fix is (No Longer) In

A recent Daily News report that the NY City Department of Education is using school repair money to build a $38,000 luxury lounge facility may be just the tip of the iceberg. According to a source inside the DOE, the consulting firm Alvarez and Marsal (A&M), has decided to close the Division of School Facilities and will then take over its Long Island City headquarters. The Division is responsible for school repair and maintenance, but A&M has determined that repairing schools is not cost effective. It is far cheaper, they decided, to simply close down those schools which are in need of repair, and to put their students into “small schools” within the remaining school buildings that do not have repair or maintenance problems. The Facilities Division will thus become superfluous, and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has agreed to sell its building to A&M for the price of $1.

Apparently, the lounge that was the subject of the news report is only the beginning of a complete luxury renovation of the former Facilities headquarters building. The building is to become a sort of private “clubhouse” where A&M executives and those of DOE partners such as Edison Schools and New Visions can relax and decompress after a hard day of plundering the city school system. The cost of the renovation, which will be borne by the DOE, is to be defrayed in part by applying the $1 price that A&M will pay for the building.

This entire plan has been a closely guarded secret, but, according to the DOE source, there is more to the secrecy than meets the eye. There has reportedly been growing concern among DOE staffers as to the Chancellor’s state of mind since he reportedly became addicted to playing the new monopoly-like game, “Children First: A Game of Irony”, and these staffers have become convinced that the Chancellor has been confusing the game with reality. Blaming an “overzealous” aide for the recent ill-advised sale of a historic school building may, according to this view, have been simply a way to cover up the Chancellor’s own misconception that this sale was part of the game. It is unclear whether the decision to renovate and sell the Facilities Division building represents a similar circumstance, but speculation is that A&M Co-Chairman Bryan Marsal may have actually “acquired” the building from the Chancellor playing “Children First”.

In other education news, Chancellor Klein was said to be so pleased with the success of his appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as School Transportation chief, that he is looking to employ other notables with a proven track record in public relations. For example, Mr. Klein has reportedly offered an unspecified position to recently fired radio “Shock Jock” Don Imus. However, Mr. Imus spurned the offer, saying that the DOE was “just too controversial”.

ARIS: Boon or Boondoggle?

“The city just awarded IBM a five-year contract to create a massive system to manage, track, analyze, and share information about student and school performance. But it won't buy Johnny new pencils.”

That's how a properly skeptical article from, of all places, Information Week, begins about the DoE purchase of the ARIS system, called “Can An $80 Million IBM Deal Save New York City's Schools?”

"How will this look in practice? Think of a teacher trying to help a student struggling with geometry... The teacher could tap into the system and search for best practices on geometry instruction, and get contact information for teachers identified as having strong skills in that area."

Sure, this is reasonable, for a teacher to pursue for his 150-160 students -- when it's too time- consuming for most of them even to be able to correct weekly homework.

"IBM says ARIS will be a highly secure system, yet it's likely some parents and teachers will voice concerns about a Big Brother approach to tracking the performance of more than one million students, and even teachers, which total about 90,000 in the public school system."

The conclusion?

“….businesses and schools are worlds apart on the types of challenges they face. Technology may help, but it'll never be able to address the all-too-familiar problems of overcrowded classrooms, overworked or inefficient teachers, and lack of parent participation and funding."

Amen.

ARIS Critics: IBM Responds

March 7, 2007 (GBN News): Critics have raised numerous questions about the DOE’s institution of a new supercomputer system, ARIS (Achievement Reporting and Information System), to track academic performance. To answer these criticisms, GBN News interviewed a key figure in this program, IBM Assistant Senior Vice President for Educational Public Relations, Fredrick Lerner. Excerpts of the interview follow:

GBN News: Mr. Lerner, 80 million dollars for a computer system is a lot of money. How can the city justify this sort of expense?
Lerner: New York is expensive. Things cost a lot of money here. We’re here to do a job for you, and we do it right. You don’t think we can do our job if we eat lunch at McDonald’s, do you? If you want the job done right, you pay us for Le Bernadin.
GBN News: OK, but I actually wasn’t referring to your expense accounts. What I meant was, what are the capabilities of ARIS that can justify the 80 million dollar expense?
Lerner: It’s an amazing system. It can track just about anything, down to the most minute detail; from standardized tests to bathroom visits.
GBN News: Bathroom visits??
Lerner: You know, back in the old days, teachers used to keep track of those things. Remember the old “number one” and “number two”? It was obviously quantifiable, but they never actually did anything with that data. Now that we have the technological capability to track it, imagine all the ways we can use it!
GBN News: I think I’ll pass on that one. Changing the subject, critics say the system has no bearing on the quality of education for the children. How would you answer that charge?
Lerner: Nothing can be further from the truth. ARIS can track students’ achievement on a minute to minute basis. Remember those quizzes the whole class would bomb out on? Obviously, a teacher not doing his or her job, but you wouldn’t know it until the end of the semester. With ARIS, school administrators will find this out immediately. The teacher gets called in and reprimanded, and the kids had better improve tomorrow or that teacher will be looking for another career.
GBN News: Smart teacher! One last question: Many critics have suggested that a system that can track such minute detail smacks of “Big Brother”. How do you address that concern?
Lerner: You don’t think the DOE hires those high priced consultants for nothing, do you? With Alvarez and Marsal around, that 80 million will be cut down to size before you know it. The DOE will be lucky if it can use ARIS to play solitaire.
GBN News: Well, I’m sure that will be a great comfort. Thank you, Mr. Lerner, for your time.
Lerner: Thank you. Let’s see, that took about 15 minutes. At $650 an hour, that will be $162.50.