Quest to build a better data system lands teacher in hot water
A teacher who left the system to peddle a program he created to make up for shortcomings in the education department’s data system was fined this month by the city’s ethics board.
In 2009, Jesse Olsen was a teacher at Validus Preparatory Academy in the Bronx when he realized the school wasn’t accurately recording students’ attendance patterns. Realizing that the city’s school data clearinghouse, ARIS, couldn’t help, Olsen created a data system of his own, called Impact Solutions. The data system was one of several created around the same time by educators who were frustrated with ARIS.
By September 2010, Impact Solutions had already been picked up for use in 21 city schools, which were paying between $10 and $25 per student per year for the program, and Teach for America had started using it
