What is the right number to measure?

Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, I had the chance to watch the movie Moneyball again. If you haven't seen it, the trailer is below:

The movie is based on a book by Michael Lewis, which was based on real events of the Oakland Athletics who took an obscure 1964 book (Percentage Baseball by Earnshaw Cook) written about baseball statistics to "change the way the game is played". Essentially, the A's wanted to look at statistics and data that would directly result in winning more games by scoring more runs by getting more players on base...didn't matter how it happened.

It wasn't until this morning, when I received a tweet from Brenda Colby to check out an article  written by Michael Brick, titled "When 'Grading' Is Degrading". As usual, something from my tweeps got me thinking. :)

NCLB, for better or worse, has radically altered the way that the public views its schools and the ways that schools are being measured as successful (or not). Schools now take a look at their results from previous years and with their practice testing try to accurately predict how students will perform and what 'grade' the school will receive. I read the article, which mirrors multiple conversations I have had online and face to face about the meaning of the test scores, and thought to myself, "What is the right number to measure?"

If you watched the trailer, you heard one of the scouts actually equate the beautiful-ness of a baseball player's girlfriend to his idea of self-confidence and whether that player will make a positive addition to the organization. This seems to be a bit of a stretch of logic to me, but the scout, who brings the 150 years of past practice, states that this way of doing things is valid and works. It also seems to me that measuring a school's success on set of test scores seems just as illogical. So again, "What is the right number to measure"?

As I was exploring the Brick article, I came across an older article on www.schoolleadership20.com with a powerful statement right at the beginning of it:

"Data itself has no meaning, until it is organized and displayed in charts or graphs that can be interpreted, usually in multiple ways. These interpretations may usefully inform our dialogue, decisions and subsequent actions so data definitely can be valuable, but it often seems to be granted undue reverence simply because it is numerical. Although insight can derive from analysis of data, equally it can arise out of intuition and, in fact, I wonder if some analyses are not actually rationalizations subconsciously imposed on data to justify intuitive speculations." (Beairsto, 2010) (Taken from http://www.schoolleadership20.com/profiles/blogs/don-t-let-data-drive-your-dialogue-by-dr-bruce-beairsto)

As someone who is trying to move from autopsy data to predictive data, are we just seeing what we want to see or what past experience has told us? I completely agree with Beairsto that we need to triangulate data points to get more meaning and that we must value a qualitative research paradigm to get at the underlying meaning of what the numbers say. Especially as teacher evaluations, under Race to the Top, will bring in elements of student achievement to a teacher's rating, we need to be able to triangulate our numbers to derive meaning. But, just as FOX and MSNBC can look at data and come to completely different conclusions, what will happen when teacher unions and administrators differ on the conclusions from the data?

As we look globally, to the success of schools, school districts, and the American education system, What are the right numbers to measure?

10 things I have learned in my short time at ISTE's inaugural Leadership Forum

Here we go for about the 4th time of getting started in blogging.

Here 10 things I have learned in my short time at ISTE's inaugural Leadership Forum:

From the address by the board of ISTE:

• Intelligent people who truly love to learn surround themselves with people from whom they want to learn.
• Intelligent people also correctly say "inaugural" instead of "1st annual".
• "True leadership begins with a commitment to students" -- Brian Lewis, ISTE President

From @chrislehmann's keynote address:

• Students have the ability today to create profound artifacts of learning.
• Students should have the opportunity to reflect on and direct their learning.
• "We NEED kids to be better than we are".
• The three major design influences for schools were factories, prisons, and churches.
• We cannot replace schools with Wall Street. High-stakes, one-shot testing does not meet the original vision of schools. Schools need to represent our Democratic ideals, not those of capitalism.
• Rube Goldberg has a larger influence in schools than imagined. Why do we keep trying to build a better multiple choice test or filmstrip?
• We have several challenges facing us to change schools:
• Leaders need to change the way teachers talk and model this talk. Students should never be the implied object of education.
• We need to ask questions that we do not know that answers to. That is the link between inquiry and care. In the same vane, we need to care about students, not care for them.
• Technology should be used to optimize person to person time. It should unite and connect...not isolate.
• Administrators, in particular, should understand this and remove themselves from their office for an entire day each week. Remember why we got into education in the first place. (See Brian Lewis quote)
• Schools need to be great places of passion: For teachers in guiding the learning and for students being an active participant in the learning.
• Students need to be synthesizers of information. Were current educators trained how to make this happen for students?
• Schools cannot be depositors of information. Learning needs to matter to students.
• True change happens when leadership develops a vision, models that vision for all, and sustains that vision with systems and structures. If you lead by majority rule, it is the best way to build 49% opposition.
• Leaders need to stop trying to fix the broken...we need to evolve.
• And above all, be one school. Don't have a 1 set of rules for students, one for teachers, one for parents, etc.

If the keynote is any indication, all administrators need to attend this conference as a team to remember what schools can be.