US News

SCHOOL PARENTS’ ‘NET GAIN

Nearly two years after education officials launched a mammoth, $80 million student-data system that has seen its share of bumps and hiccups, student records are being made available to parents at the click of a mouse.

Parents will soon be able to go online to see the same information their child’s teacher sees, including course grades, state test scores, biographical data, enrollment history — and even day-to-day attendance records.

Families can also access a school’s overall ratings data — such as progress reports, school surveys and state report cards — officials are set to announce today.

“It’s the first time parents will have online access to a lot of this data,” said Department of Education spokesman Andrew Jacob. “It’s not simply to give parents this data — it’s also to help foster a closer working relationship between parents and teachers, which will, in turn, help students.”

Education officials see the instant access to data as a way of sparking conversations between parents and teachers that go much deeper than how a student is doing in a particular subject.

The data in ARIS — Achievement Reporting and Innovation System — can pinpoint particular student weaknesses, such as a difficulty with grasping the main idea of a reading passage.

“We need parents to be true partners in their children’s education,” Mayor Bloomberg says in an introductory video on the ARIS parent link Web site: schools.nyc.gov/ARIS.

“Now you can work with your child’s teacher to reinforce lessons at home.”

Launched in September 2007 with IBM, the ARIS program was blasted by school principals in its first year as a slow, inefficient program that didn’t provide any new services — and by parents and teachers as a waste of $80 million.

This school year, however, the system has gotten a much higher approval rating.

As early as next week, parents will be able to test ARIS out for themselves.

yoav.gonen@nypost.com