Our Love Affair with Data: A Sad Tale

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1. southside teacher says:

   March 2, 2013 at 3:53 pm

   David Brooks wrote about the role of data not long ago.
   http://classroomadventure.blogspot.com/2013/02/role-of-data.html

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   • jemmuldoon says:

     March 4, 2013 at 11:29 pm

     Loved the David Brooks piece! Reminded me that there are no original ideas and that movements are started by people coming together over important unintended consequences of policy.

     Reply
2. situational says:

   March 2, 2013 at 4:06 pm

   Data is not the enemy you’re looking for – it’s the misuse of data and the posing of incorrect questions. When someone runs a bad experiment, you blame the scientist, not the results. Educators should embrace data that results from well-posed questions.

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   • Jon Awbrey says:

     March 2, 2013 at 4:24 pm

     Exactly. Having worked in fields where properly conducted research and properly collected data are literally life and death concerns, it makes me want to scream to see hype-hawking hacks give research and data a bad name.

     The public needs to be better informed about the critical differences between genuine, relevant scientific inquiry and the brands of agenda-driven white papers that so many armies of corporate-hem-kissing “think tanks” are tailoring to order today.

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3. Fred Klonsky says:

   March 2, 2013 at 4:18 pm

   Embrace your students. Trust in the examination of our experiences and the experiences of colleagues. Question the meaning of numerical data.

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4. Ron Poirier says:

   March 2, 2013 at 4:40 pm

   Data is great for those of us who are being evaluated with Student Learning Objectives. Manipulating data isn’t just for privatization pushers, you know.

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5. Michael Fiorillo says:

   March 2, 2013 at 5:42 pm

   Who gets to ask the questions which data is asked to answer, the interests, values and worldviews embedded in those questions, and the policy recommendations that follow from them, are fundamentally political matters. That point is often overlooked, with the “data” and the uses to which it is put then given the unassailable veneer of science.

   I once read an interview with the head of the NBA referees union. He was describing the data collection system the league uses, which records every refs call in every game and uses that data in performance evaluations. Speaking of the pressure and intimidation that followed from that, he said, “They (management) control the information, and they use the information to control us.”

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   • flerper says:

     March 2, 2013 at 6:55 pm

     As James Kunstler wrote, “efficiency is the straightest path to hell.”

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6. cmoore says:

   March 2, 2013 at 10:33 pm

   testing ≠ an education
   just as
   data ≠ answers
   as far as children go

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7. Duane Swacker says:

   March 3, 2013 at 9:36 am

   Someone please define “data” for me!
   Thanks!

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   • jemmuldoon says:

     March 3, 2013 at 10:22 am

     Another word for data is information. It does not imply quality. It does not have to be in percentages or averages. Perhaps you might avoid the term altogether, and instead think of what information do you need to make a solid decision.

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     • Duane Swacker says:

       March 3, 2013 at 4:21 pm

       What then qualifies as “high quality” information?

       It seems to me that most of the references in education discourse these days use data to mean some sort of numerical analysis of information. And that most of the conclusions drawn are highly suspect and more likely than not invalid.

     • Duane Swacker says:

       March 3, 2013 at 4:49 pm

       Jem,

       I tried to respond on your blog but can’t figure out how to use the wordpress account function to log in. Allow me to respond here to your blog on standardized testing:

       Have you read Noel Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700 or “A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review” found at: http://www.edrev.info/essays/v10n5index.html or http://www.edrev.info/essays/v10n5.pdf ?

       If not I suggest you read the essay review first as it is a bit easier of a read to help understand why educational standards, standardized testing and even the “grading” of students is completely invalid and any results gleaned from the process are, as Wilson states, “vain and illusory”.

       I would be interested in your thoughts on these most important works.

       Thanks,
       Duane

8. Kris Alman says:

   March 3, 2013 at 10:10 am

   As articulated well in this piece, this is NOT what data is:
   ——————————
   The most important finding would be to realize the assessment may be completely unrelated to what is happening in your classroom and in your building. If that is true, then the assessment may be serving a different purpose altogether. In this day of educator evaluation, this assumption is the most dangerous of all.
   ——————————

   This is coming from a lay person, but I’ll make my stab. Data is in the domain of the scientist. Create a hypothesis and test it.

   True for a teacher as well. Assessments should be a testing how well the teacher has taught a concept. The teacher might not make the mark because the concepts are developmentally inappropriate or the students have not had exposure to basic concepts to understand something more complex.

   As to both of those points, we see that clearly happening–especially in elementary education. The push to reach milestones before a child may be ready developmentally and the pressures to get children to reach them when so there are many societal failures (mobility, homelessness, lack of food and medical care, etc.) are handicapping public schools.

   Corporate reformers seized on the early care and education movement telling us we had to get the poor kids “ready to learn.” Well… they had no interest in paying for this! I know because I was on a Portland City Club Early Care & Intervention committee from 2003-05. When I pushed the committee to fund this effort with a dedicated corporate tax, I was summarily dismissed. “The business community (coming from a member who worked for Duncan Wyse, head of the Oregon Business Council) won’t support it.”

   That’s why you could read these headlines even in “progressive” Portland, Oregon.
   Business interests fairly pleased with Legislature
   http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2005/08/15/story7.html?page=all

   We (the people that is) get what they (the multi-national corporations and financial sectors) don’t pay for. Or more what is dumped on us. It’s called negative externalities.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

   We need different data to measure our societal breakdown!

   • “Value lost” measures for executives and financiers who have been raping and pillaging our democracy, stealing our wealth and ingenuity through crony capitalism.

   • Assessments that measure who is really raking in the return on investment in venture philanthropy and the global education reform movement.

   • Accountability to punish corporate citizens that have taken us on a race to the bottom.

   Rather than a school to prison pipeline, we need a plutocrat to prison pipeline!

   We need to unplug corporations that do not uphold our rights to clean water, clean air and clean energy; our rights to living wage jobs and our rights to and quality universal health care and education.

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   • Duane Swacker says:

     March 3, 2013 at 4:38 pm

     Kris,

     I asked the question because “data” seems to me to be such a nebulous term that it has, in essence, become quite meaningless except for those who use it to push a certain ideology concerning the teaching and learning process. I’m assuming you’re replying to my question and overall I concur with much of what you’ve written except the following:

     “True for a teacher as well. Assessments should be a testing how well the teacher has taught a concept.”

     Any assessment, whether written, oral, performance, computer based, etc. . . should focus on what the student has learned. It cannot say how well a teacher has performed as it has not been designed to do that. The use of the results of any student assessment for any other purpose than to assess the student on the particular topic at a particular time, e.g., to assess the teacher is, therefore, illogical and many times UNETHICAL.

     I cannot control what the student thinks or does nor can I control the myriad outside the class factors that bear upon a student’s learning. To use student “data” to evaluate teachers is dead wrong. Now can information on a student’s learning, and perhaps a little bit about the teachers command of the teaching and learning process, be gleaned from an assessment? No doubt, but that is a horse of a different color than saying something about a teacher’s overall competence, which is a very complex phenomena that should be analyzed in conjunction with the teacher and all the various factors that come into play in the teaching and learning process.

     Reply