An $80 Million Super-Mugging

By Zach Gemignani
March 14, 2007
Find more about: bi

Ah, the sweet smell of a swindle. Don't you just hate it when consulting companies cajole deals with hand-wringing about technology and, especially, preying on clients' lack of expertise?

I've seen some of these situations up close but nothing so ugly as this story.

$80 million supercomputer to analyze NYC student achievement

March 6, 2007, 7:58 AM EST NEW YORK (AP) — To understand student performance, the city will spend $80 million on a massive supercomputer that will crunch huge amounts of data and offer up-to-the-minute reports to teachers, principals and eventually parents, the Daily News reported Tuesday.

One million students and no high-volume transactional data? That might be huge to Dr. Evil but even by late 90's standards that's not huge. You want to talk huge? Now these are huge. The system that was sold to New York is more along the lines of a CRM system for a medium-sized insurance company.

The "super" reference here is pure drive-through mentality. In the same way that we are a nation that's overfed and undernourished, this is about a super-sized services contract that sits atop something that could be handled by a regular-sized computer.

The information fed into the IBM-designed system called Aris, or "Achievement Reporting and Innovation System" could include existing data on students—such as gender, race and any disabilities—along with new data from incremental testing.

Some aren't so pleased with the system's price tag.

"You can lower a lot of class sizes with that money—or buy a lot of supplies," teachers union President Randi Weingarten said in a statement obtained by the Daily News.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg told the tabloid the cost was worth it.

"Every child in this city deserves a quality education and we will spare no expense," he said.

This is where the sweet smell of swindle comes in. There is a difference between being willing to make the investment and having a no-bid contract.

Jim Liebman, the Education Department's chief accountability officer, also lauded the system.

"Aris will bring together every bit of learning information that we have on every one of our 1.1 million students," Liebman said. "Now, school professionals will be able to slice and dice that data to see what's wrong."

Teachers are underpaid, hardly appreciated, and overworked. I can only wonder what the half-life is of a system that asks teachers to log on to get information delivered by the "chief accountability officer."

And from an article in InformationWeek, we're enthralled by a description of the system capabilities:

"Think of a teacher trying to help a student struggling with geometry," says Michael Littlejohn, VP of public sector for IBM global services. "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."

Sometimes it's good to reinvent the wheel - usually when you're trying to learn about wheels. But not when you're drawing away cash from an entity that doesn't have it to spare. Something like this could be built with off-the-shelf, mature products for a fraction of this wasted time and effort.

Sure, a fully-integrated, one-stop solution is going to run up the price but the functionality doesn't sound particularly whiz-bang. Best practices for teaching geometry can be found at Curriki or Edutopia or Wikiversity or Openplanner.

The real shame is not allowing such a system to connect more than just the overworked NYC school system teachers. But what would we call such a thing? An inter-net, perhaps?

Nah, that would never catch on.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. All source code is released under a BSD License unless otherwise specified.

18 comments | Show all comments only the last 5 are shown


March 20, 2007
john macinnes said:

I am a teacher in England and find it hard that there are fools still in high places. The demands for education over here are just as high as over there. We tried the QCA online test, a test that was to stay with the pupil and adapt to their learning style, for example, it would make questions easier for the less able. As the months rolled by the system failed to emerge until the multi billion pound project is now to be scrapped. Could it be suggested or rumoured that there is a golden hand shake or a deal in the back ground. Over here all of the ICT is talk, and talk is cheap.

What really winds me up is the government officials who tell us these stories and don't want/ expect to hear a comment like, 'well what about the last 2 times you have tried and failed. Shouldn't you be learning from mistakes instead of spending money, ' (on a company which a relative of his probably owns.)

I grumble but will it ever change?


March 20, 2007
john macinnes said:

I am a teacher in England and find it hard that there are fools still in high places. The demands for education over here are just as high as over there. We tried the QCA online test, a test that was to stay with the pupil and adapt to their learning style, for example, it would make questions easier for the less able. As the months rolled by the system failed to emerge until the multi billion pound project is now to be scrapped. Could it be suggested or rumoured that there is a golden hand shake or a deal in the back ground. Over here all of the ICT is talk, and talk is cheap.

What really winds me up is the government officials who tell us these stories and don't want/ expect to hear a comment like, 'well what about the last 2 times you have tried and failed. Shouldn't you be learning from mistakes instead of spending money, ' (on a company which a relative of his probably owns.)

I grumble but will it ever change?


April 1, 2007
Mary said:

Zach, Your thoughts on this subject make me think you know something about education. Hmmm... After 30 years in the field of education, I could give you another dozen examples of how educators (or, anyway, administrators) have been sold a bill of goods by big business. I agree with bee. There is no need for this. Good teachers already have this information about their students or know where to get it. The list of things that really would be useful for students and teachers for that amount of money is endless. Oh, well, just another example of a way to leave children behind.


July 24, 2007
David Andersen said:

<em>"Think of a teacher trying to help a student struggling with geometry," says Michael Littlejohn, VP of public sector for IBM global services. "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."</em>

Incredible b*llsh*t. This will never be implemented in any useful or novel manner, if at all.


November 24, 2009
greedcontrol said:

We need Greed Control in NYC not Mayoral Control. This mayoral thing has turned out to be the best business (kick back or otherwise) that he has ever done. Children are being marginalized (to put it kindly) by this mayor while he robs the city $60 billion budget. Oops there goes another billion!

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