History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Data-driven instruction and the practice of teaching
- 05-12-2011
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Blog by Larry Cuban/Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
I like numbers. Numbers are facts: blood pressure reading is 145/90. Numbers are objective, free of emotion. The bike odometer tells me that I traveled 17 miles. Objective and factual as numbers may be, still we inject meaning into them. The blood pressure reading, for example, crosses the threshold of high blood pressure and needs attention. And that 17-mile bike ride meant a chocolate-dipped vanilla cone at a Dairy Queen. Which brings me to a school reform effort centered on numbers. Much has already been written on the U.S. obsession with standardized test scores. Ditto for the recent passion for value-added measures. I turn now to policymakers who gather, digest, and use a vast array of numbers to reshape teaching practices. Yes, I am talking about data-driven instruction–a way of making teaching less subjective, more objective, less experience-based, more scientific. (more...)
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