ARIS's "Parent Link" is up, but not everyone has a password yet

Image from the DOE's Parent Link Web site (Geoff Decker / Chalkbeat)

First it was principals, then it was teachers, and now parents are next in line to gain access to ARIS, the Department of Education’s data warehouse.

Each school will give parents passwords to log into the Parent Link section of ARIS sometime “between now and the end of the school year,” according to DOE spokesman Andy Jacob. Once logged in, parents will be able to monitor their child’s test scores.

The department is planning to hold a press conference tomorrow to debut Parent Link, ARIS’s previously missing puzzle piece, Jacob said. But the site is already up and running, and it appears that at least one school has given parents their usernames and temporary passwords: A commenter on Insideschools reports having received a password to access Parent Link — and finding that some of the information there was incorrect.

Principals and teachers have had access to ARIS for some time, but previous rollouts have not been without incident.

In a videotaped message promoting Parent Link, Mayor Bloomberg welcomes parents to the site as the camera pans over this relic of a question: “How is Nancy doing?” and footage of parents walking children to school.

Update (5/28): Jacob adds that the error reported by the Insideschools commenter was caught and fixed within 12 hours. “The ELA scores were correct. The issue was that the system also started displaying 2009 math scores, which don’t exist yet. Since the 2009 math scores don’t exist, it simply copied the 2008 math scores and called them 2009 scores.”