One common use of statistical models is to make predictions about the future. These predictions are ubiquitous in our tech-infused lives today. Meteorologists deliver predictions about the weather to you via the apps on your phone. Your credit card company might flag a transaction as suspicious using a prediction from
I have this thesis that people in education often get frustrated with data – or they feel like data is useless – because the structure of the data they’re collecting doesn’t allow them to answer the question they want to answer. This usually happens because someone – a principal, a social
In the last two posts in this mini-series reviewing Virginia’s new school performance framework, I shared my thoughts on its mastery and growth components. I’d encourage you to check out those posts if you haven’t, but my quick summary of them is that I think the mastery
In my last post, I wrote about the mastery component of Virginia’s new school performance framework. I’m more or less optimistic about that component of the framework in that it’s straightforward to calculate and the weighting of different proficiency levels feels generous (particularly when compared to a
The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) recently – within the past year or so – completely revamped their school performance and accreditation system. I’m not going to describe all of the changes in detail, but the gist is that we now have 2 different systems – an accreditation system and a “school
I mentioned in last week’s post that people often think of quantitative data as objectively true. Not always, but often. And I'll grant that there is something compelling about seeing some phenomenon bundled up into a tidy, concise metric, some little nugget that we can carry around
Documentation is like sleep. It’s unsexy. It’s boring. It feels like it gets in the way of doing more. It eats up time that you could be using to do something else, something more productive. And yet, if you skimp on it, you always regret it. Maybe not
Student addresses are an interesting, and largely untapped, data point. They’re mostly seen as something that a school district's transportation department needs for creating bus routes...and that’s pretty much it. But there are a handful of cases I can think of where addresses provide us
Back in high school, I ran track and cross country. Every Sunday, my teammates and I would meet somewhere to do our long runs, which typically ranged anywhere from 6 to 15 miles, depending on where we were in our training cycle. I grew up in Northern Virginia, which, despite
We talk a lot in education about “using data,” and my general take is that the phrase “using data” doesn’t actually mean anything. But, if we want to be gracious and ignore all of the vagaries that come along with that phrase, then I think that “applying Bayes’ Rule”
I have a 4-year-old daughter who owns a truly staggering number of stuffed animals, which she calls “stuffies.” Probably literally 60 or so. She sleeps in a full-sized bed, and if she puts all of her stuffies on her bed – some of which are bigger than her – there’s very