College-prep website may not help NM

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - A new, expensive state website is incomplete and may not be able to provide college-bound students much help at all, sources said.

The state's Public Education Department spent nearly $2 million on the website, which it hoped would be able to guide middle and high school students on the path toward college education. But, according to college-prep experts and even the PED itself, there are doubts as to whether it offers many benefits.

"So there are parts of the site that are working very well, and other parts of the site that I think are lost, basically non-functional," said Mark Truman, a counselor who works for an Albuquerque college test preparation and consulting company. "There are broken links, pieces that don't go anywhere, pieces that I can't figure out what they're supposed to do to begin with."

For example, click on the link for parents and you are directed to a blank screen. The teacher link sends users to a for-profit website for teacher recruitment. A link to Santa Fe Community College leads to an "error" page.

"There are areas of the site that don't work at all -- specifically the teachers' side, the administrators' side, the counselors' side," Truman said.

Counselors at Albuquerque Public Schools -- the state's largest school district -- don't think much of the site. The head of APD counselors told News 13 that she'd seen a demonstration of the site, but it was not yet ready for use. Her employees are not promoting the site, she said.

Finally, there's Devaun Smith, a 14-year-old, eighth grader at LBJ Middle School in Albuquerque who plans to attend college. He said he'd never heard of the website.

"My friends never talked to me about this site," he said. "And they've never said that they've gone to it at all."

As it turns out, the PED had doubts of its own about the site. Documents uncovered by News 13 show that in November 2010, then-Secretary of Public Education Susanna Murphy told those working on the project to sever ties with the contractor who designed the website.

She ordered an audit of the project and wanted to know if the Denver, Colo., contractor -- Celero Partners -- was paid for work it didn't do. Murphy also wanted to know if state workers or Celero violated the state's procurement code. The audit determined that Celero acted in good faith, and the company agreed to fix any defects in the website.

The new PED secretary was non-committal when asked recently about the website.

"[We're] going to look at every program," said Hanna Skandera. "And ask the tough questions ... Carveyourpath is not exempt from that. I don't feel like I have anything concrete to tell the taxpayers going forward about what's going to happen to this program."

Truman, the college counselor at Omniac Education in Albuquerque, was more succinct.

"If we're going to spend $2 million to get kids to college, I can think of a lot better places to put that money before the website," he said.

Experts suggested the following websites in place of the Carveyourpath website:

• College Board
  
• Unigo
  
• CampusCompare