GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Ahhh ARIS.  What a monumental waste of $$. Zero training was given in my school.  I figured out how to log on and use it for attendance and home addresses.  Never once have I used it for goal setting, lesson planning, collaborating, etc.  I do that 1:1 with my colleague and students.  ARIS is just a very expensive attendance book.  If it disappeared off the face of the planet, I wouldn’t notice.

If Liu really wants to look at a hard to manage website, all he should do is look at the DOE web site.  How hard is this web site?  Most parents will look for their child’s school information….but wait, you have to know that the programmers put things in dfferently…  you can’t find PS 102 in Brooklyn.  You have to click on parents and students, our schools and then enter the correct (by DOE standards) number configurations which is K P102.  Does that make sense to you?
That site is so difficult to get around that it is wasteful of a parent’s time and effort.  It’s easier to go to Inside Schools, or use a life line and  call a friend!

Ralph, not to b i t c h about your post, but the bathrooms at my school lack things like : toilet seats, hot water, soap, tp, paper towels, and most importantly, locks on the doors to keep the kids out.  Personally, I can deal without the tp, towels, and soap because I carry those around with me in my “bathroom bag,” but no toilet seats (they fell off long ago), no hot water, and no locks are difficult to deal with.  Let’s not forget the filth.  Ew.  You’d be horrified at how some schools lack the basics.

Our chapter leader won’t do anythng about it and our admin doesn’t care.  We’ve begged for help, but NOTHING!

I got the ARIS survey, and frankly, since it asked for my name and school, I was a little wary of putting into writing how little I use the mayor’s big-money system.  If I could respond a bit more anonymously I’d be more likely to return it.

Last year I used Datacation, and besides the big question of pronunciation (-kay-shun, or -say-shun?), my main concern was that it was really buggy and I felt like a beta tester much of the time.  I had many communications with the Datacation staff, though admittedly they were pretty responsive.  Overall, I found it much more useful than ARIS ever was.  It was possible to check students’ attendance by period (to check for cutting), and to add “anecdotals” documenting students’ good and bad moments.