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IEBC Newsletter – May 2015
May 2015 – California’s Golden Opportunity
Improving Response Time in Education
by Brad C. Phillips What if the solution to what ails education was a simple matter of timing? We know the fastest response times win the day in health care, retail, and other sectors, so why not education? The answer lies in when education’s data and accountability systems provide information – is it in time or too late? Too often the success or failure of education is measured after the fact. Education reporting and data collection systems almost exclusively focus on metrics like graduation rates, test scores, and even employment, which are reported too late to be acted upon. While important and representative of goals we as a nation must attain, they are not designed to help those in the delivery of education do the work required to meet those goals. Imagine being made to follow the speed limit, but denied access to a speedometer – only learning how fast you are going after the police officer pulls you over and gives you a ticket. And when you protest, you’re told you should have...
IEBC Newsletter – April 2015
April 2015 – The Next Big Things
Driving Education Accountability: ‘I’m Sorry Officer, the Gas Gauge Shows I Wasn’t Speeding.’ on Huffington Post
Driving Education Accountability: “I’m Sorry Officer, the Gas Gauge…” — full article on Huffington Post.
IEBC Newsletter – March 2015
March 2015 – In like a Lion?
A College Completion Idea That’s So Simple. Why Aren’t We Doing It?
This week’s White House “College Opportunity” summit will focus on an overlooked area with enormous potential for student success: K-12 and higher education working together to improve college completion. It sounds so simple and obvious. In fact many assume it’s already happening. After all both groups of educators share the same students, just at different points in their education careers. Why wouldn’t they share information about students and coordinate efforts to help students be successful? Origins of the divide The answer lies in the separate cultures and control agencies that have grown up in both sectors over time. And, professional development and practices never included the opportunity to collectively review student performance data and how it aligned with lesson plans and expectations for what students should be learning and doing as they progress through their education. It’s time to change that. The simple act of K-12 and higher education faculty and administrators...
IEBC Newsletter – January 2015
January 2015: The Year it Sticks
IEBC Newsletter – December 2014
December 2014 – #ThanksData: ’Tis the season for gratitude.
When Education Data Speaks, Are We Really Listening? on Huffington Post
When Education Data Speaks, Are We Really Listening? — full article on Huffington Post.
How We Got It Wrong About Data Use
Data has been promoted as the great game changer in education. Simply stated, once we have good data, we can figure out what the problems are and how to fix them to improve student success. The common wisdom states that to increase data use, you have to build better data displays, develop a data committee to engage with data, or even deliver data to every staff member’s desktop. While these efforts are laudable, they are destined for failure. Why? Because the current theory and practice about increasing data to inform and improve decision making ignores the human element – the receiver of the data who is supposed to comprehend, interpret, form a judgment and eventually add the information to their decision making. It also ignores the culture of the organization where the introduction of data as a tool for decision making may be unwelcome.