Social discussion of CS in K-12

[Avigail Snir <avigail AT snir.org>]

A very good point from the teachers' side. I wonder what type of data the administration needs to the tune of so much money.

Avigail

On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 4:24 PM, Smith, Kathleen Rapp <smithka AT illinois.edu> wrote:

As a former teacher I can say that data useful to a teacher is usually gathered by the teacher.  The data received from the "administration" is always from the semester (or generally year) prior to when the teacher needs it.  The life of a student changes so drastically in 12 months, even if only by maturity.  Good teachers learn to take what last year's data says with a grain of salt. 

In the later years of my teaching it was no longer acceptable to "go down to the last year teacher's room and have a conversation about Stu."  That was the best data.  Talking about a particular student with another human who spent 180 days with that student.

If a teacher knows how to use a spreadsheet and pull info from a database, then maybe good decisions could be made for a "full class" decision, but short of that, the ole "quartile report from the ISAT" was fine for a base from which to work.  There is no way the IT guys pulling the data can answer every question a teacher might ask, so there is no reason to collect, store and analyze data that will have no real purpose. In many cases the person asking for the data analysis is not sure what they want, or implies that correlation implies causation when of course we all know that is not true!    Sure the district can use the data to make points, but districts have been known to make data lie, so district data driven decisions are always suspect.

I can not see any argument for spending that type of money to manage data. 

Kathleen

Mathematics is the Language of the Universe.

Kathleen R. Smith
University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign
Department of Mathematics, Retired
217 687-2889

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From: ctrl-shift-bounces AT lists.mste.illinois.edu [ctrl-shift-bounces AT lists.mste.illinois.edu] on behalf of Charles Schultz [sacrophyte AT gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, March 27, 2015 2:17 PM
To: ctrl-shift AT lists.mste.illinois.edu
Subject: [Ctrl-Shift] IT trends in schools: driving decisions with data

Yo, Shifters!

At Monday's school board meeting, there is an item to request approval for a piece of software that acts as a tool to consolidate and analyze information and help administrators make decisions. Among the many buzz-words, we call this "data driven decisions" and "business intelligence". I cannot deep-link the agenda item (right, David?), so I will copy portions here.

Before I paste, here are my questions:

1. Do we have too much data in the first place? Apparently we have more than we can handle presently
   
2. "School" is becoming more and more like a business; is this a bad thing?
   
3. Crikey, $50,000/year for upkeep and maintenance!?!? Is this the best we can do?

I am not a teacher, but I do have a career in Information Technology; I understand the jargon, I see the trends. But what is truly best for our students? I firmly believe that what is best for our students is also best for our society.

Here is the excerpt from the school board agenda:

Right now our over-taxed data team works very hard to get data reports as quickly as possible that help us make instructional and environmental decisions.  Data comes from a variety of sources and often times we spend an extraordinary amount of time getting the right data collected into one file and then even more time creating a chart or table that displays the data in a useful way. This is not sustainable to keep up with the changing needs of 19 campuses and a growing number of programs and activities that require data analysis.  We need our data to start working for us.  We need a better, faster, more robust, instantly customizable, constantly updated data repository that gives us reports and analysis so we can make timely decisions for our students’ academic and social well-being.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS:

The software (including set up/training) costs $252,000.  The annual fee of $50,000 covers ongoing upkeep and necessary changes.   

Data Driven Graduation White Paper (2).pdf (552 KB)

DecEd_Decatur CS (2).pdf (205 KB)

VoicesfromDistrict (2).pdf (193 KB)

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Charles Schultz

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