ACADEMIA

In order to measure how well public school students are learning, the New York City will spend $80 million on a supercomputer designed to analyze the performance of the city's 1.1 million school children. Mayor Bloomberg said the cost is worth it. The five-year deal with IBM, one of the largest in city public school history, will give schools, teachers and parents a fantastic array of information in up-to-the-minute detail. Mayor Bloomberg says the city will spare no expense on quality education for each child. The supercomputer program, called Aris, or "Achievement Reporting and Innovation System," will be partially running for teachers and principals by the fall and for parents to access online next year. "Aris will bring together every bit of learning information that we have on every one of our 1.1 million students," said Jim Liebman, the Education Department's chief accountability officer. "Now, school professionals will be able to slice and dice that data to see what's working." The Department of Education (DOE) chose IBM from a field of national leaders in data systems to create ARIS, which will help schools analyze, report, and manage information about student and school performance. IBM will provide software, hardware, consulting, and technology services for the system, which will give educators and parents access to achievement data from state standardized exams as well as from periodic assessments administered at the school level. The information will help teachers identify effective practices citywide and improve and individualize instruction in response to demonstrated student need during the course of the school year. "ARIS will give the teachers, the principals, and the parents of New York City the critical tools they need to really understand what students know -- and don't know," said Chancellor Klein. "Armed with this information, 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." The DOE has engaged IBM in a five-year contract valued at approximately $80 million. Under the terms of the contract, IBM will develop ARIS and provide ongoing maintenance and support. A team from the law firm Reed Smith, led by Anthony S. Traymore of the firm's Advertising Technology and Media Law practice, worked with the DOE at no cost to the city to develop the contract. Additionally, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation committed $2.4 million to strategic planning and the development of the ARIS request for proposal and evaluation process. "IBM is excited to have this opportunity to support the city's educators and to develop the tools needed to help all of New York City's public school children meet the learning challenges of the global economy," said Marianne Cooper, Public Sector Vice President at IBM responsible for education initiatives. "This innovative approach to education will be a leading example of collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and information access that will serve as a model for other school systems." ARIS is projected to become available to principals and teachers in September 2007. Pending project completion, parents will receive ARIS-generated reports on their students' performance and progress beginning in fall 2007, and will have online access to the system by September 2008.