Dad Gone Wild is a blogger in Nashville whose children attend the local public schools. In this post, he recounts his decision to start serious running, first for his health, but then because he became obsessed with collecting data about his running.
You see, it started with a simple app that measured time and distance and kept a running total for a benchmark. But then it progressed to enough of a dependency to justify getting a top-of-the-line Garmin race watch because, well, dependence on data requires more data. Where I once was only concerned with how far and how fast I ran, I am now measuring footfalls, cadence, and several other categories that a) I don’t know exactly what they mean, and b) I wouldn’t know how to change them even if I knew what they meant. I imagine that my running has gotten better over the years, but I attribute that to running more and trying to eat better, not measuring my cadence and footfalls. My sense of accomplishment has certainly not grown; in fact, I’ve noticed a weird phenomenon.
If I head out on a run and one of my measurement tools isn’t working, I’ll either quit the run or proceed without the measurement. The weird part is, that if I continue the run sans measurement, it’s almost like it didn’t happen. I’m going the same distance. I’m burning the same miles, but for some reason it doesn’t feel real. When I look at the data for the month, those runs cease to exist and any progress I might have made is discounted. When I compare my results to friends I “compete” against, it almost feels like I’m lying about those results.
He realizes that the data have taken over; he no longer thinks about why he runs, but only about the measurements. That’s data addiction.
We also say that standardized tests are for the good of the child and that we are preventing minority children from slipping through the cracks, the opposite is actually true, but I ask you, how many people have cited that one test back in 7th grade that opened the door to learning for them? Until they took that test they were lost in the wilderness, but that test inspired them to greatness. Now substitute test with book or mathematical concept, and I bet you get a different answer. By putting emphasis on learning for the measurable we are actually restricting people’s potential. Like when I fail to take a 3-mile run because it doesn’t add significantly to my monthly totals, similarly, students will potentially fail to partake in opportunities to learn because it will produce no measurable results.
Data addiction also leads to putting undue pressure on suppliers. Let’s face it, that is what we are turning our teachers into, data suppliers. Our teachers are under a constant barrage to deliver more data. They are losing valuable time and sanity trying to meet the ever-increasing need. They are in an endless churn to produce more data under the threat that if they don’t, we will replace them with people who can, though we never mention a viable source for these replacements. Perhaps there is a teacher orchard producing an overabundance of quality teachers willing to work for decreasing pay and autonomy that I am unaware of.
Our thirst for more that is measurable has reduced the art of teaching into that of a producer. We’ve lost sight that teaching children is more than just about instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Think about the teachers who had a profound effect on you and your growth. Do you remember them because in fifth grade they had you reading on a seventh grade level, or is it deeper than that? Is it because you felt that they cared for you and were truly vested in helping you understand your place in the world?
Can data addiction be cured or are we doomed to reduce everything we do to numbers, forgetting why we do those things?
We will have a life with data, but a life without purpose.
Teaching like parenting is a human endeavor. That first time someone kind and perceptive noticed a particular interest or ability of yours when you were young, and encouraged you in developing it, that is what makes the difference for kids.
The problem with Arne now taking this position is that there’s too big of a track record of him making sweeping and bat-sh#%-crazy statements about how massive testing — and federal control of standardized testing — is needed ensure “equity” and “the civil rights” of public school children, particularly those who are poor and minority.
WTF???!!!
Read this article:
http://national.deseretnews.com/article/4189/education-secretary-arne-duncan-praises-senates-effort-to-reimagine-no-child-left-behind.html
In this article we get these gems from Arne:
(quotes that are quite infuriating when you consider where he sends his own children — the Chicago Lab School, which has no Common Core curriculum / test prep / testing… and where, at the time, he sent his children… a Virginia public school in an upscale neighborhood… a state where, once again, there is no Common Core curriculum / test prep / testing):
———————————————–
DESERET NEWS:
“In a wide-ranging conversation sparked by questions submitted by the audience, Duncan also addressed the testing controversies that hampered the Common Core roll-out in several states.
“Duncan, who sent his own children to public schools, said his family has not been stressed by tests …
ARNE DUNCAN:
“We don’t spend a lot of time worrying about (his own children’s testing). They do OK. It is not a traumatic event. It’s just part of kids’ education growing up.”
———————–
Really, you, your wife, and your kids “don’t spend a lot of time worrying about” standardized tests?
Well that’s because the Virginia public schools where — at the time he gave this interview, and, until recently Duncan, sent his children, DOES NOT FOLLOW THE COMMON CORE, OR GIVE COMMON CORE TESTS.
Therefore, his other comment that his kids’ testing “is not a traumatic event. It’s just part of kids’ education growing up” is completely bogus and misleading.
There’s more ridiculous pro-testing blather:
——————————————–
ARNE DUNCAN:
“When we fail to measure and let parents know how their children are doing, we do our kids a tremendous disservice.”
“This is really an issue about equity,” Duncan said of testing.
“This is not just about assessment. This is about a civil rights issue. We need to know where students are and whether those gaps are closing, or not closing.”
Love this. Great analogy! I pray that folks like John King and Chris Christie are reading excellent articles like this. The author makes so much sense of the problems in the way things are being done in education today. I want to ask politicians and education leadership: does this article help you to see what educators – people who really teach – and parents are talking about? Do you get it? If they care about education and about a generation of students, new decisions based on what makes sense will be made. Namely, testing will be decreased tremendously in all grades and all but eliminated in pre-k and k.
It’s a good essay but I think the students are the data suppliers:
“Let’s face it, that is what we are turning our teachers into, data suppliers. Our teachers are under a constant barrage to deliver more data.”
Teachers are the data collectors in these testing systems.
I noticed something strange in the Obama Administration statement announcing new mandates on testing. The report they relied on came from Great City Schools. I looked thru it and they measured testing in urban systems. I thought the Obama Administration position was that the only people who object to constant standardized testing are parents in wealthy suburban areas. Is it in fact true that the people who manage and work in urban systems also object to their obsession with endless data collection? That seems to go against what the ed reform “movement” has been saying for a year- that opposition to testing was centered in wealthy districts.
When the official attitude to urban schools is that they are failing then they are failing to tell their story in an acceptable manner (they have failed at this as well), and so their story can be not just discounted but ignored entirely.
Brilliant insight. Knowledge may be measurable, marketable, and subject to outsourcing or implanting. Wisdom, and it’s comic twin Stupidity, are infinite and capricious. Watching our society choose to see the world through a smartphone screen brings to mind Plato’s allegory of the cave.
Love that Smartphone/Plato line.
High-stakes testing isn’t about the testing, it’s about the stakes.
Uncle Bruno:
TAGO!
😎
When a student of mine asks a good question, I hope to have the insight to help her find meaningful answers, putting our minds together. If I were lazy, I would say, Just Google it or Ask Yahoo Answers. Jeeeves! Today, our captains of industry, medicine, education, service, R&D, and government have grown lazy, using technology as an intellectual crutch. Rather than developing mental insight to solve problems and understand consumers, they jump down the rabbit hole of Big Data hoping for computerized miracles. Yes, they have grown addicted to the crutch. Yes, we are all in big trouble.
Have you ever noticed that it’s mostly MEN who obsess about statistics – sports statistics, business statistics and on and on? I know men who can rattle off the sports statistics of a certain team from 30 years back to the present! My husband tells me that as a child he MADE UP his sports teams and their statistics! Made them up! I haven’t met one woman who gives a rat’s — about statistics unless it’s DIRECTLY related to something she needs to know or has an interest in. I think the computer has had a detrimental effect on this as well. First, our society has elevated technology to the status of a GOD. Without the technology we have, we wouldn’t be able to keep statistics on every little thing the way we do. We are now just making up formulas to apply to things (teaching, for one) that can’t be put into a formula! Teachers are now inputting data to make money for software companies. WHY are we doing this? The unexamined life is not worth living said Socrates. Well, unfortunately, as a society, we are a people who rarely think things through thoroughly. Rarely do we really take time to look deeply at ourselves. This is one of the valuable aspects of literature. It helps the individual to look at himself in relation to many things – religion, his society, family, etc. Now we have to make sure students read 70% informational text. WHY? So, Diane, to answer your question as to whether we’re doomed to data. I think the answer is YES until we begin to question and really think about the PURPOSE of education. For most people, it seems to be all about making money and having the ability to buy the things THEY tell us we need. For me, the purpose of education will always have a deeper, spiritual meaning. Sure, we will get the skills we need from our schooling for our future jobs, but will we get the skills we need for our future LIVES???
We are more susceptible than we may think to the “dictatorship of data”—that is, letting the data govern us in ways that may do as much harm as good. The threat is that we will let ourselves be mindlessly bound by the output of our analyses even when we have reasonable grounds for suspecting something is amiss. Or that we will attribute a degree of truth to data which it does not deserve. Viktor Mayer-Schönberger & Kenneth Cukier. (2013). Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 166.
VAM is a perfect example of data misuse, and it is being used to destroy people’s careers.
I was going to say “brilliant” but see that michaellangford has beat me to it.
Reminds me of the book ” The Sabre Tooth Curriculum” which I read years ago. http://www.amazon.com/The-Saber-Tooth-Curriculum-J-Abner-Peddiwell/dp/0070491518 and this may be the full text here: http://www.nassauboces.org/cms/lib5/NY18000988/Centricity/Domain/57/TheSaberToothCurriculumshort.pdf
Imagine many of the readers here know this book, but I think it bears a quick read…entertaining, thought-provoking and well…maybe makes us long for the “good old days”…..before data driven mania….would that we could see the forest for the trees. And let’s not forget children, their childhoods, their well-being and their many diverse needs, beginning with their basic needs being met. (IE careful parenting and enough money for a meaningful existence, and values…but whose? therein is a rub.) But the children. We simply cannot ignore child development stages and their growth. There are so many who don’t reach their full potential until later in life and whose data might indicate a dire trend when there is just a need for time, guidance and intrinsic motivation. I know the discussion is larger right now because it is so politically driven, but I always think of the kids first. Maybe it is because I am a teacher.
Data Addiction? More like the Holy Church of Data and Everything Old (Taylorsim) is New Again. Data suppliers and Data Producers? Must everything be reduced to the conceptual/ideological framework of capitalism?
“Our thirst for more that is SUPPOSEDLY measurable BUT IS NOT has reduced the art of teaching into that of a producer.”
Left this reply over on his blog, thought I’d leave it here too:
Hey there – saw a section of your post on Diane Ravitch’s blog and thought I’d hop over here to comment.
First, I enjoyed your post and thought your analogies were great. I also think that the current system and culture surrounding standardized tests isn’t helpful. I’ll also say that I know what you mean about “data addiction,” and can even identify times in my own practice when I’ve felt this. Overall, my sense is that you’re arguing that using data in education is good, but not when it gets out of control.
That being said, I’d just caution against 1) an overly narrow definition of “data,” and 2) crossing the fine line between making an argument against data addiction and data itself.
In terms of defining data, data are anything that give you feedback about what you did. That feeling of euphoria in an “a ha” education moment? Data. That student coming back to you 10 years later telling you what changed their world? Data. Ongoing formative assessment, including informal observations during lessons about who’s paying attention and “with it?” Data. So all of those other indicators of what it means to be successful in education that you mentioned aren’t “non-data,” they’re just different forms of it. So, my main point here is that let’s stop arguing against data as a concept, and arguing against ineffective data or ineffective applications of potentially good data.
This isn’t just splitting hairs, but getting to one of the fundamental concepts of why we teach: to make a difference. How do we know if we’re making a difference if we don’t see an impact? Data give us a measurement of this impact, even if informal and qualitative. We can’t just rely on our feelings during the process of teaching – we need to know that something happens.
In terms of data addiction versus data itself, data doesn’t cause us to narrowly focus on test scores – we do. Test scores never said, “Only pay attention to us.” Politicians and state level folks did. It wasn’t data – it was the people using it, the contingencies attached, etc.
Finally, I’d say that we need to keep things in perspective and remember what we really want out of education. I very much think that loving education and remembering your 7th grade teacher are important, but there are some really important things that teachers do that may not be remembered. I doubt many second graders, for example, remember how great their teacher’s use of direct instruction during small group reading was, but it may have mattered, and may have been the difference between the student reading and not. In a way, then, only caring about the warm and fuzzies of education is pretty selfish of us.
I think everyone knows we are talking here about computerized test score (and footfalls and cadence) data collected by school districts as required by the NCLB as opposed to “folks at the state level,” not about warm and fuzzy neurological experiences which are not measured by numerical algorithms. One human brain is more complex, powerful, and inscrutable than a worldwide web of microchips.
I think that’s my point exactly – that we need to choose our words wisely. What exactly ARE we talking about? “Data addiction” sounds a whole lot like “data addiction,” rather than “accountability addiction” or “state test addiction.” Is our argument really against data, or state tests?
“Data give us a measurement of this impact, even if informal and qualitative.”
Not to split hairs but that data does not “give us a measurement of this impact”. It may help in giving more information, but the fact is is that data from standardized testing is COMPLETELY INVALID and therefore COMPLETELY USELESS in helping us to assess the teaching and learning process.
Data is not a measurement by any stretch of that word.
Hi Duane – When I say “data,” I refer to the broader definition – any input, qualitative or quantitative, that gives us feedback about how we did. Even within the quantitative realm, there are far more applications of data than just state tests. My argument is that we should choose our words wisely so we don’t accidentally craft an argument against things which are actually good.
As an aside, I would argue that standardized tests are not “completely invalid” as they have psychometric properties which suggest validity. That said, I agree that they aren’t helpful in making high-stakes decisions about teacher performance.
The amount of data about us that is collected will only increase. It’s not a phase we’re passing through, and it will never decrease. That’s essentially a law of nature. If individual people take less interest in their own data over time, it will be not because the data isn’t being collected and sifted, but because the process of collection and sifting has become invisible and automatic. Balancing one’s checkbook is probably already considered by young people as an archaic form of data self-obsession.
Excellent analogy and insight. I’m no runner, but I do wear a FitBit and can tell you, when I’d lost the proprietary charging cable just before a trip to Disneyland, I did miss “proof” of those 10-12K steps that I otherwise would have earned. OP is right; I did feel I’d been cheated. I would not have said I believed in “data addiction” before this, but now, on a personal level, I get it.