After investing eight years and more than $130 million, the New York City school system is shelving a glitchy information system that was supposed to track special education students, but fell far short of expectations.
The long, expensive saga of New York鈥檚 Special Education Student Information System has elements that are unique to the nation鈥檚 largest school district, which has enough students with disabilities鈥攁bout 224,000鈥攖o make up a school system of their own.
But the problems with the system also illustrate issues that school districts of all sizes face. Schools and districts around the country are working to build data systems for a variety of needs, said Rachel Anderson, the director of policy and practice for the Data Quality Campaign.
But 鈥渢hose systems haven鈥檛 always been designed to match the needs of teachers and families,鈥� said Anderson, whose organization advocates for effective education data use.
A 2011 survey conducted on behalf of the Consortium for School Networking, or CoSN, found that only about half of teachers reported being happy with their district鈥檚 student information system; many said they didn鈥檛 feel well trained on how to incorporate that information into classroom instruction. And a 2018 survey from the Data Quality Campaign found that while most teachers valued having data, more than half said they didn鈥檛 have enough time during the school day to access and use it.
In the case of New York, the city school system faced numerous pressures to move away from a cumbersome, paper-based system to a process that promised more accurate and timely tracking.
One of those incentives was financial: School systems are allowed to receive Medicaid reimbursement for providing certain services, like occupational therapy, to qualified students. But tracking those services and making sure they meet federal compliance requirements has been a long-running problem for the state of New York as well as for the city school system. In 2009, the state and the New York City district were ordered to give back more to the federal government more than half a billion dollars in cash and in reimbursement claims that the New York agencies agreed to release. The Justice Department said the city and state鈥檚 claims were not properly documented, or weren鈥檛 covered by Medicaid.
Chronic Problems
The new system went online in 2011, but was a problem from the start. According to a district audit in 2016, at one point the system was malfunctioning more than 800,000 times a day.
鈥淲orking with SESIS was like working with a pen running out of ink,鈥� said Brad Alter, a special educator who worked in a co-teaching environment, teaching math and science to 6th graders and 9th graders. He is currently a member representative with the United Federation of Teachers, the American Federation of Teachers-affiliated union that represents most teachers in the city system.
And it wasn鈥檛 complex tasks that were the sticking points for SESIS, Alter said. One huge problem is that the system does not automatically save input; Alter said he got in the habit of saving his work after nearly every sentence he typed, just so he wouldn鈥檛 lose it all.
鈥淚f you鈥檙e trying to write something meaningful and you lose an hour鈥檚 worth of work, put yourself in that person鈥檚 shoes,鈥� Alter said.
Maggie Moroff, the special education policy coordinator for New York鈥檚 Advocates for Children, said the program 鈥渄idn鈥檛 allow anyone to know if any one student was getting their services in a timely or complete manner.鈥� Parents were sometimes waiting weeks to see updated individualized education programs for their children because it took so long for school staff to enter new information into the system, she said.
Though the school system made improvements along the way, it still had to pay educators more than $38 million in back pay in 2013 because they were forced to enter student data on their own time.
In 2016, a working group conducted an assessment of SESIS that offered a number of recommendations, including moving to a new system. The district plans to release a 鈥渞equest for expressions of interest,鈥� a step that comes before a request for actual proposals to do the work.
鈥淲e want the best, most modern system in place in order to meet the needs of our students with disabilities. Our investments have greatly improved SESIS over the past two years, and have put us in position to take this next step. We鈥檒l engage families, staff, and communities throughout the process,鈥� said Danielle Filson, a spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Education, in a statement.
Moroff said that the city must continue monitoring students in special education while making plans to replace its current system.
鈥淎s flawed as the data collection with SESIS was, they were working on making it better,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e want to make sure this interim period is a thoughtful period, and that there鈥檚 data collection that continues as well.鈥�
The promise to loop in multiple stakeholders is important, said Anderson, with the Data Quality Campaign.
鈥淲hat we always encourage is to not start with the solution, but start with the questions,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 where we鈥檝e seen states and districts be successful鈥攚hen they start with what they鈥檙e trying to do, and go from there.鈥�
