Focusing on the learning rather than on the teaching.

["John Constantine" <thesfg1@cox.net>]

Linda Hansen points out many of the flaws and many of the difficulties faced
by participants within the educational community.

I particularly found her comments to be very poignant, as in the following:

"If, instead, they produce a bunch of automatons capable of spitting out
rote
answers to rote questions and meaningless (eg. context-less) facts, certain
that because they learned it in school it must be true or immutable, we have
failed miserably to serve the community and humanity in general."

To which I would add that politicians have made much of the supposed need
for high test scores, high ranking by schools and school districts, and have
expressed the purpose in terms of economic development.

In other words, to paraphrase Linda, they are producing cannon fodder for
corporations and government services. At the same time, there is a great
hoopla about the perceived problem of dropouts.

Oh yes, there seems to be a disconnect here, between the aims on the one
hand, and the perceived refuse coming out the other end of the system. It is
sickening to behold especially at election time.

Who benefits? Who stands to lose? Shewhart, as pointed out by Wheeler in his
book Understanding Variation, gave two rules for presenting data.

>From pp. 12 and 13: 

"Data should always be presented in such a way that preserves the evidence
in the data for all the predictions that might be made from these data."
and, secondly, 

"Whenever an average, range, or histogram is used to summarize data, the
summary should not mislead the user into taking any action that the user
would not take if the data were presented in a time series."

Unfortunately, most of the reports regarding the rating, ranking and
standings of various schools and school districts, and the associated
reporting of racial, ethnic and income related social groupings, leave much
to the imagination as to just what the basis for such reporting actually
was. All the pie charts in the world cannot make a better pie out of bad
data, old data, misinterpreted data, and misused data.

Creation of a trend where none exists is a common thread among the many
reports I've seen over the past several years. Unfortunately, they seem to
be part of the outsourcing of responsibilities by the agencies involved, and
not from any nefarious plan or scheme on their part. In other words, you get
what you asked for, but not what you may need.

Many thanks to Linda Hansen.

_______________
John Constantine