FAULTY EQUIPMENT: Imagine how helpful it would be if a Los Angeles Unified School District teacher had access to years and years of student grade and attendance histories. That was the hope that LAUSD officials originally had when the district first signed a contract with Maximus, Inc. in 2003 to build key components of an ISIS, or Integrated Student Information System. However, as reported in the LA Times today, the lofty hopes of that contract (and the more than $130 million that went into it) appear to fall short of the target, in what the LA Times calls a "technological disaster." After making its debut this year in September, the system has overloaded district database servers, caused scheduling blunders that have left hundreds of students without class schedules, and requires, at the moment, "more than 600 fixes or enhancements" to work at top performance. More from the LA Times here.
