This story in Sunday’s Washington Post about data and airline safety has some obvious parallels, obvious and subtle, to the debates about data in education. Namely, data can drive improvement and airline safety is a real success story over the past few decades. It may suck to fly, but it’s safe. But it also shows that people want to guard information.
And, speaking of data, two new initiatives you should be aware of. School Data Direct* is a new data warehouse of data about American public schools. It’s a joint project but the Council of Chief State School Officers is doing the legwork right now. Coupled with the new Schoolmatters.org site and Great Schools.net there is a lot out there now for parents, educators, and analysts.
And, the Secretary of Education has released a state-by-state dashboard about educational progress. Will be interesting to see the (any) impact from that…
Disc: I’m on the advisory board.
I am glad to see that all of the policy efforts at equalizing teacher quality has worked. Looks like many states have no gap in teacher quality between poor and affluent schools. Finally, a policy that worked quickly!!!!
Equally bad.
The data or the teachers?
Great links in there – I hadn’t read that Washington Post story yet. Quite a different take on things.