Do other parents have problems with Aspen?

[Anonymous]

DS goes to Wilson and has teachers who post assignments and ask him to submit work through Aspen. Neither function works reliably, which is how I came to look at Aspen - DS asked me if I could make the site work because I am a Web developer, so he thought I might know tricks to make it work. As it happens, I was able to resolve his issues by doing things that no non-programmer user ever know to do. In the course of figuring the issues out, I also saw that the system violates basic security best practices and has frequent un-handled errors that dump system messages to the screen. Basically, it is total junk and something that would never get out of QA at my company.

How much did DCPS pay for this piece of crap? Why are they doing this rather than Jupiter? Who can I call to complain?

[Anonymous]

I'm pretty sure the parties responsible no longer work for DCPS. Take it up with the new wave. And go to the Council with what you know.

[Anonymous]

Jupiter used to be great!
Aspen has proven to be problematic both for teachers and parents. Teachers are not always able to log on to update on a weekly basis.

[Anonymous]

Actually Jupiter was pushed really hard by one of the AP Calc teachers at Wilson. He still uses it.

Aspen sucks.

OP my guess is that ASPEN was obtained and implemented by a contractor for DCPS. You should definitely reach out to your Council member. Also isn't there a new high level operations type person at Wilson? I'd contact her too. I'll post back if I can find her name.

[Anonymous]

From DC Council Performance Oversight 14-15:

"INITIATIVE 1.2: Ensure DCPS has a cost-effective, user-friendly Student Information System (SIS) and increase data use and quality across schools and central office.

Partially Achieved. In FY2014, DCPS selected Follett as the vendor for a new student information system called Aspen. The Office of Data & Strategy conducted focus groups involving school-based staff as well as central office business owners to determine the scope
? and design for this system in its first year. Elementary Schools transitioned to this system in the beginning of school year 2014-2015. As was originally planned, secondary schools will remain on the current system, DC STARS, in 2014-2015 and will transition in the 2015-2016 school year. DCPS also installed infrastructure to integrate multiple data systems into a single reporting platform with the goal of satisfying all data requests from this platform by school year 2015-2016."

[Anonymous]

I hate Aspen! OP, please complain to someone with what you know. Over the break my son was having trouble logging in. It kept telling him his email address was an incorrect match with his Login ID. He tried every email address possible and could not get it to work. There was no other recovery option, so it was just a loop of him trying an email and the system telling him it was wrong. He couldn't access it via security questions, there was no option to say 'forgot Login ID". He wasn't able to access the site for the entire winter break!

[Anonymous]

It's awful. My understanding is that Aspen can't even be used by Wilson teachers to send assignments. Two of my kid's teachers are paying on their own to use Edmodo or a personal Jupiter account to send assignments. Students also can't submit work through Aspen. Aspen is ONLY a gradebook, at least for Wilson. (One teacher told DS that Aspen has extra functionality, but that DCPS isn't letting Wilson use it.) I'm not even sure that parents can use it to see absences/tardies.

Also, my student's first marking period (first half-semester) grades in Aspen were COMPLETELY different than the ones we received in the mail. Anyone else?

[Anonymous]

Wilson parent here, totally miss Jupiter has been next to useless.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Sent an email to my council member. We'll see if anything comes of this.

[Anonymous]

Plus Aspen made us reset the password after 90 days! Disaster for most families I would assume since kid and parents share the same log-in.

We had Engrade and Engrade pro before--much better.

I'm sure Follett is raking in huge amounts of DCPS funding thru their help desk and fixing of the continually broken site.

[Anonymous]

The snow has been great this year. My DD loved it. Only wish Mariah had been there during the new year.