City Swears Parents Will Want to Use Its New Student Data Tracker

Beginning June 8, parents of New York City public school students will be able to access the city's latest tool for tracking their child's academic progress. And this time, city education officials say, it will be parent-friendly and a breeze to navigate.

The new online tool, known as NYC Schools accounts, will be available to parents after they pre-register in-person at their child's school to verify their identity. The first iteration of the program will provide student grades, attendance and contact information. Eventually, the city will add data points based on feedback from parents. 

"Everyone in the city will be able to go on the app and be able to get certain information," said Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña. "It's not as much as we would hope to have over time, but at the least right now no parent can say to us, 'Oh I didn't know my child wasn't doing well.'"

Parents will also be able to see their child's scores on the state tests once they are available in August.

The online tool replaces ARIS Parent Link, a system that cost $95 million dollars and had a parent usage rate of 3 percent in the 2012-2013 school year. 

In contrast, the new system was created in-house by Department of Education employees for $2 million. Maintenance of the site will remain in-house as well, costing an additional $4 million over four years, city education officials said. 

The new program was born out of focus groups with about 40 parents.

"As we moved on from ARIS, we wanted to provide a tool for parents that was really going to give them the critical information that they wanted and most needed," said Hal Friedlander, Chief Information Officer at the Education Department.

For that reason, the data tracker was designed to work best on mobile devices. 

The new program will also allow parents with multiple children in the school system to create only one account. With ARIS, parents had to create a login for each child.