I’m at a leadership conference in rural Pennsylvania. The audience is school and district administrators from the three counties served by the Colonial Intermediate Unit 20. My main address is at 11:00. But until then, I am sitting in a presentation by one of my main influences, Doug Johnson. So during this period, I am just going to jot down some quotes from Doug that strike a chord with me.
“In Mankato, MN, I have more choices for how I educate my children than food restaurants.”
“No body buys a quarter-inch drill bit because they need a quarter-inch drill bit.”
“You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much bandwidth!”
“Our face to the community is not long just the appearance of our buildings and lawns.”
Johnson just said that the data-driven decision making is not fulfilling its potential because our professional culture does not value data. This reminds me of a conversation I had with a central office person in Houston. She said that she showed her child how she was now able to access data about students and schools to help her provide here services. She said that her daughter responded, “Why wouldn’t you do that?”
OK….I give up. What does this mean? How would I cleverly drop this quote into my daily conversation?
“No body buys a quarter-inch drill bit because they need a quarter-inch drill bit.”
Confused in Colorado.
Al,
So sorry! I’m pretty sure that he was referring to our desires to “integrate technology”. We shouldn’t buy technology because we need technology. We should buy technology because we want to affect a more relevant style of teaching and learning in our classrooms.
Does that make sense? It’s possible that I was listening with only my own myopic lens.
“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” – Albert Einstein
What is Doug’s definition of data-driven decision making?
I have to admit that I do not value data-driven decision making that only looks at quantitative, accountability-driven data. That leads us to making decisions that do not reflect our true mission, core values and goals. Passing the state exams is not our mission, does not reflect our values and should not be our goal. Do our state tests evaluate the skills our students will need to have for the 21st century?
I think that the type of data we need to value is more qualitative in nature and difficult to count and certainly more subjective (which will certainly not satisfy the drive for accountability). But it is the kind of data we need to drive decisions that are in line with our vision.
Should I make my decision on whether to read a blog’s posts based on the number of posts the blogger writes in a week and the number of words in their posts, or on the amount of reflection the posts provoke about my own practice and the quality of new ideas and concepts presented in the posts?
Zack, I agree 100% with what you say here. Implementing data-driven decision making at the expense of broader, more intuitive, and even more traditional practices is a danger to our students. Within the context of Doug’s overall presentation, data was only one element and not a major element among all of the practices he was suggesting.
I confess a bit of irritation when I hear the data apostles. But information does help us get a fuller picture of what’s going on.
Some ideas are just bad, yet well-meaning educators are hell-bent on making them good. Data-driven-decision-making is one of these bad ideas.
It turns teachers into accountants. Real teachers don’t need data. They need insight, wisdom, experience, passion, talent, expertise and a relationship with kids.