Start Of School Year in D.C. Marred by Technology
V. Dion Haynes writes in The Washington Post:
D.C. school system leaders congratulated themselves when classes resumed Aug. 29, saying they had avoided the opening-day chaos of a year ago, when officials at Eastern Senior High School in Northeast Washington were unable to produce schedules for hundreds of students and three administrators were fired as a result.
But in the past three weeks, a less orderly picture of the new school year has emerged at several schools: students spending days in the auditorium or library because of scheduling mistakes; staff members working into the wee hours of the morning to correct bad data; principals filing attendance reports late; and computer response times so slow that in some cases, administrators and teachers have been unable to access the Internet for hours.
School officials are sorting out which of the problems are related to the installation of a new, $10 million computer system called D.C. STARS and which can be traced to other deficiencies in the school system's technological infrastructure. Either way, it has been a rough start to the school year for numerous students and employees.
The transition to D.C. STARS "has not been smooth," said a D.C. secondary-school principal who spoke on the condition that he not be identified because he feared his comments might get him into trouble. "One spends less time tackling the problems of learning and teaching and more time on facilities and computer glitches."
posted by Fergie @ 9/18/2005 02:15:00 PM
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