Musings on the State of Education in the US

Although this article sounds a bit paranoid, its good to know the full scope of data collection in schools. Identity theft and mislabeling children into categories, while rare, does actually happen. Not all data is created equal though, and not everything deserves to get recorded about children. Research groups, however, are able to use a lot of data in areas such as student achievement and propose solutions to reduce the achievement gap.

Glossing right past the arguments over whether its ethical, or even legal, to include this level of student information publicly, does it even make sense for teachers to engage with the data in this way? Diane Cox, Executive Director of Student Improvement believes it helps teachers share the burden of responsibility for students in the school. The communal aspect of working together can only make others share in the help. But are teachers uniquely qualified to work with this type of information, analyze, and implement change from it? Probably not. The school district solutions to put teachers in charge of this task seem a lot like putting a band-aid over a wound and hoping that it will just heal itself, but perhaps they should be asking themselves why they have low test scores and graduation rates in the first place. Student data is perfect for finding the root of the underlying problem, but in order to find the answers, you must first ask the right questions. And "can teachers solve this problem for us" is not the right question.