Linda found this one: Arun Ramanathan of Pivot Learning Partners on statistics in education and statistics in baseball. https://edsource.org/2016/baseball-can-teach-education-a-lesson/566467
image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-base_plus_slugging
“So, why is education so old school?”
…and not just the data…
• We’re talking about public money so accountability is a must, but do we have to spend fiscal resources on the same things, in the same ways, with the persistent inconsistent results (as measured by our oversimplified indicators)?
• Is teaching more complex than playing ball? As you said, what measures might matter if we wanted to instill a more challenging level of play into the learning field by being better informed about how well we are playing the game?
• How does this work when the students, parents, advocates and data savvy teachers have a deeper and better grasp of the scope and implications of the data than the educational leaders?
• And then there is that old assumption that just because every game starts out with a nine inning expectation (and a television time slot with fixed commercial breaks) that the game will end on time, that the outcomes can be simplified into a win or a loss, and the fans will have had an adequately good enough time when the talking heads have filled out all the available air time…
We have to talk about systems as variable as the weather but most of our data only tells us about the conditions at one point some time in the past, that has few reliable reference points for what we might best do tomorrow.