/ Recent content in Alex Spurrier on alspur Hugo -- gohugo.io en Fri, 08 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000 /collection/day02/01-netlify/ Sat, 02 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 /collection/day02/01-netlify/ So far, we’ve been leveraging GitHub Pages for publishing. This works great, but for blogdown we’ll start using Netlify. Let’s start RIGHT NOW with a site we’ve already built and published. Pre-requisites Pick either your postcards site, or your distill site from day 01. Refresh your memory- which repository was it again? /collection/day01/01-github/ Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 /collection/day01/01-github/ Profile https://docs.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-your-github-profile/personalizing-your-profile Pin projects to profile https://docs.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-your-github-profile/pinning-items-to-your-profile Profile README This is new! Let’s do it: https://docs.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-your-github-profile/managing-your-profile-readme /collection/prework/ Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 /collection/prework/ Welcome to the Introducing Yourself Online workshop! We look forward to meeting you. Before attending the workshop, please complete the following prework. Set up RStudio Cloud Sign up for a free RStudio Cloud account at https://rstudio.cloud/ before the workshop. I recommend logging in with an existing Google or GitHub account, if you have one (rather than creating a new account with another password you have to remember). /collection/day01/02-postcards/ Sat, 02 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 /collection/day01/02-postcards/ Pre-requisites First, make sure you have the latest version of the postcards package installed from CRAN: install.packages("postcards") Restart your R session. If you use RStudio, use the menu item Session > Restart R or the associated keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + F10 (Windows and Linux) or Command + Shift + F10 (Mac OS). packageVersion("postcards") [1] ‘0.2.0’ Create GitHub repo Online. /collection/day02/02-blogdown/ Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 /collection/day02/02-blogdown/ Pre-requisites First, make sure you have the latest version of the blogdown package installed from CRAN: install.packages("blogdoown") Restart your R session. If you use RStudio, use the menu item Session > Restart R or the associated keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + F10 (Windows and Linux) or Command + Shift + F10 (Mac OS). packageVersion("blogdown") [1] ‘1.0’ Create GitHub repo Online. /collection/day01/03-distill/ Sat, 02 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 /collection/day01/03-distill/ Pre-requisites First, make sure you have the latest version of the distill package installed from CRAN: install.packages("distill") Restart your R session. If you use RStudio, use the menu item Session > Restart R or the associated keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + F10 (Windows and Linux) or Command + Shift + F10 (Mac OS). <!-- --> packageVersion("distill") [1] ‘1.2’ Create GitHub repo Online. /collection/day02/03-blogdown/ Sat, 02 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 /collection/day02/03-blogdown/ Hi, I'm the here-bot cat! Use me to find your way in your website. Here I am: content/collection/day02/03-blogdown/index.md To remove me, delete this line inside that file: {{< here >}} My content section is: collection My layout is: single-series part 2! does this work? now for some very cool things more get ready! /project/priced-out/ Fri, 08 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000 /project/priced-out/ “The geographic lines that separate districts wouldn’t matter if school funding and affordable housing were spread equally across regions. But they’re not. Districts that sit right next to each other often have vastly different levels of both.” - USA TODAY Public schools are designed to provide every student with an equal opportunity to achieve the American dream. In reality, that ideal is removed from the lives of millions of K-12 schoolchildren. /blog/curriculum-pod/ Mon, 21 Jun 2021 12:00:00 -1000 /blog/curriculum-pod/ My recent piece in The 74 led to an opportuntiy to discuss how we can treat curriculum as infrastructure on the Melissa and Lori Love Literacy podcast. To read a summary of our conversation, head over to Ahead of the Heard. /blog/curriculum-infrastructure/ Mon, 24 May 2021 12:00:00 -0500 /blog/curriculum-infrastructure/ There’s been a lot of talk about what is and isn’t “infrastructre.” I’m not sure that curriculum is infrastructure, but we ought to act like it is: Curriculum should serve as a foundational organizing force in student learning, informing instruction, assessment and professional development. Well-structured, strong curricula provide educators with instructional materials and resources to cover a clear scope and sequence of the knowledge and skills students are expected to master. /project/pandemic-to-progress/ Fri, 08 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 /project/pandemic-to-progress/ In the wake of COVID-19, the development of multiple AP-like consortia aligned to different educational visions for grades K-12 could help foster quality, coherence, and pluralism across a diverse range of education providers. The movement to empower families to exercise educational choice has yielded significant progress. Though the struggle to empower every parent to choose a great option for their kids is far from over, the trend lines are undeniable: More families are choosing how their children are educated than ever before. /blog/retirement-spike/ Sun, 01 Nov 2020 12:00:00 -0500 /blog/retirement-spike/ My Bellwether colleague Chad Aldeman and I took a look at teacher retirement data pre- and post-pandemic in seven states. While some feared a massive wave of retirements, it does not appear to be materializing: After attempting to canvass all 50 states and Washington, D.C., we were able to get retirement data for Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. While this is not a random sample, it does capture about 865,000 active workers, including teachers and other education employees. /blog/refocus-acctbly/ Sun, 23 Aug 2020 12:00:00 -0500 /blog/refocus-acctbly/ Today, we released the final brief in Bellwether’s summer series on the past, present, and future of school accountability. It takes a look at how policymakers might improve accountability systems by clarifying their priorities: This is a critical moment for standards-based accountability policy. State summative testing and accountability systems were suspended for the 2019-20 school year and some states are indicating they’d like to continue that moratorium through the 2020-21 school year. /blog/2020-08-17-joe-biden-wapo/ Mon, 17 Aug 2020 12:00:00 -0500 /blog/2020-08-17-joe-biden-wapo/ My Bellwether colleague Chad Aldeman and I have a piece in the Washington Post arguing that Joe Biden ought not ignore the evidence on charter schools or assessments as he develops his presidential platform: In other words, Biden’s platform committee is not only mischaracterizing the evidence in these two areas. It is doing so in a way that would damage the students and families that Biden, and Democratic voters, say they want to serve. /blog/2020-07-07-espinoza-quote/ Tue, 07 Jul 2020 12:00:00 -0500 /blog/2020-07-07-espinoza-quote/ I was recently quoted in The 74 on the Espinoza decision: “My hope is that policymakers are able to apply the lessons learned from past forms of school accountability to inform the next generation of accountability, which, in a post-Espinoza world, will need to address both public and non-public schools.” /blog/2020-07-02-post-espinoza/ Fri, 03 Jul 2020 12:00:00 -0500 /blog/2020-07-02-post-espinoza/ My reaction to the Espinoza decision in Ahead of the Heard: The majority opinion in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue from Chief Justice Roberts could not be more clear: “A State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.” With this ruling, “Blaine Amendments” in state constitutions were essentially repealed. It’s an unequivocal victory for school choice advocates on the question of who can operate a school with public funding, decidedly in favor of a pluralistic approach. /blog/2020-06-30-making-next-year-count/ Tue, 30 Jun 2020 12:00:00 -0500 /blog/2020-06-30-making-next-year-count/ The COVID-19 pandeimc is disrupting our entire system of K-12 education, including assessment and accountabilty. I contributed to a new series of briefs from Bellwether that examine the past and present of school accountabilty to help inform their next interation: As a global pandemic interrupted purposefully designed systems of testing and accountability, we are left with critical questions: How does the underlying theory of standards-based accountability and its foundational goals of equity and transparency hold up decades later? /blog/2020-05-26-adapting-new-normal/ Tue, 26 May 2020 12:00:00 -0500 /blog/2020-05-26-adapting-new-normal/ School system leaders have a lot on their plate right now. I argue that they should resist the temptation to make every decision from the central office and to leverage the expertise of educators and other front-line employees: We won’t know the full impact of the choices school leaders are making for quite some time, but some school systems may be better positioned than others to navigate the challenges posed by the current pandemic. /blog/edweek-covid-data/ Mon, 30 Mar 2020 19:25:34 -0500 /blog/edweek-covid-data/ We don’t know what the total impact of the Covid-19 pandemic will look like. What we do know is that our economy, communities, families, and lives are disrupted in ways they haven’t been for a century — including schools. As I write this blog on March 30, school systems in 47 states have closed their doors to students, with the remaining three states of Iowa, Maine, and Nebraska opting to allow closure decisions to be made at the district level. /blog/2020-02-05-trump-sotu/ Wed, 05 Feb 2020 12:00:00 -0500 /blog/2020-02-05-trump-sotu/ President Trump’s State of the Union was many things, but it was decidedly not ambitious when it came to education policy. My latest in The 74: A good portion of the reaction to Tuesday night’s State of the Union was about a snubbed handshake and the tearing of a speech. Although in recent years the speech has certainly become a performative event full of partisan posturing, Tuesday night signaled a subtle yet substantial shift in the presidential approach to K-12 education policy: President Donald Trump indicated that his administration is more interested in incremental education measures than any administration in recent history. /blog/2020-01-22-scotus-blaine/ Wed, 22 Jan 2020 12:00:00 -0500 /blog/2020-01-22-scotus-blaine/ Do you know what Blaine Amendments are, why a Supreme Court case might invalidate them, and what it might mean for schools? I try to answer these questions in a recent post on Ahead of the Heard: The upcoming ruling in Espinoza may be yet another step towards articulating the relationship between state funding, parents’ choices, and religious providers of K-12 education. Some observers, including teachers unions, are hoping for either a ruling in Montana’s favor or a narrowly-scoped ruling for the parents, which might not lead to significant policy changes in other states. /blog/2019-11-17-courier-journal-oped/ Sun, 17 Nov 2019 12:00:00 -0500 /blog/2019-11-17-courier-journal-oped/ My first op-ed placed in Lousiville’s paper of record, the Courier Journal: All families deserve to choose the best educational path for their children, but right now in Louisville, that right is reserved only for the wealthy. Families with financial means who are unhappy with Jefferson County Public Schools have several options. They can move to nearby Oldham, Shelby or Bullitt counties, as thousands have done since the early 1990s, taking a significant amount of taxable wealth with them. /blog/make-a-simple-map/ Mon, 04 Nov 2019 15:12:56 -0500 /blog/make-a-simple-map/ Recently, I needed to make a map that would color-code states and overlay some points to represent data for specific metro areas. My initial reaction to graphic creation is to always start with R and use ggplot2, but the final product also needed to be editable as a PowerPoint graphic. This was the perfect opportunity to try a few R packages that were new to me: the urbnmapr package from the Urban Institute for map-making and the officer and rvg packages to export data from R into Microsoft Office document formats (including . /blog/2019-08-27-school-crossing/ Tue, 27 Aug 2019 12:00:00 -0500 /blog/2019-08-27-school-crossing/ My latest from Bellwether is a brief on student transportation safety: In our new report, “School Crossing: Student Transportation Safety on the Bus and Beyond,” we examine historical changes in how students get to school and the safety concerns of each mode of student transportation. We present a menu of recommendations for how individual communities, whether rural or urban, can improve student transportation safety. Many of these actions require leadership from and collaboration among different parts of a school community, including families, school and district leaders, local governments, and state policymakers. /project/school-crossing/ Mon, 19 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000 /project/school-crossing/ In 1969, more than half of students walked or biked to school, a little more than a third rode on a school bus, and relatively few rode to school in a car. Today, approximately a third of students still rely on a yellow bus, but only one out of 10 walk or bike, and more than half ride in a car. Students also live farther away from school, on average, than they used to, making school transportation logistics more complex. /blog/2019-05-15-ca-facilities/ Wed, 15 May 2019 12:00:00 -0500 /blog/2019-05-15-ca-facilities/ My first Bellwether publication is now live! Many of California’s urban public schools, both traditional and charter, have seen dramatic changes in enrollment during the past two decades. These trends have contributed to fiscal and facilities issues for both types of schools, but they also represent an opportunity for better cross-sector collaboration. In our new report, “Changing Enrollment, Fiscal Strain, and Facilities Challenges in California’s Urban Schools,” we analyzed enrollment trend data for district and charter schools in six of California’s urban centers: Los Angeles, San Diego, Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Fresno. /blog/selective-hs-diversity/ Mon, 18 Mar 2019 19:32:16 -0500 /blog/selective-hs-diversity/ New York City’s selective high schools have a diversity problem: Though black and Hispanic students make up nearly 70 percent of New York City’s public school system as a whole, just over 10 percent of students admitted into the city’s eight specialized high schools were black or Hispanic, according to statistics released Monday by the city. That percentage is flat compared to last year. It’s also a problem in Louisville. /project/kysrc/ Tue, 19 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000 /project/kysrc/ This package contains Kentucky public school data for 2012-2017 from the Kentucky School Report Card website. Data from the 2017-2018 school year are from the Open House page on the Kentucky Department of Education website. Installation Install from Github with devtools: library(devtools) install_github("alspur/kysrc") What’s inside This package contains nine different kinds of datasets with data at three different levels: state, district, and school. /blog/picking-pll-cities-v2/ Fri, 08 Mar 2019 12:52:26 -0500 /blog/picking-pll-cities-v2/ As of today, Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) has named 4 of the 12 cities that will host games during their inaugural season. The PLL started with a list of 30 cities and in January, I posted what I thought would be the ideal slate of 12 cities for the new league. My initial selections started with the idea that the PLL should focus the bulk of their schedule in regions where youth lacrosse has the fastest growth rates. /blog/t-salary-mhi-sickouts/ Wed, 06 Mar 2019 06:45:00 -0500 /blog/t-salary-mhi-sickouts/ Do teachers in Kentucky earn more or less than the median household in the communities they serve?1 The most recent data from the American Community Survey show that the Median Household Income (MHI) in Kentucky is $46,535. In the 2018-19 school year, data from the Kentucky Department of Education show that the average certified salary for Kentucky teachers was $57,819 - a difference of $11,284. However, household income and teacher salaries vary across communities in Kentucky. /contact/ Mon, 25 Feb 2019 13:38:41 -0600 /contact/ ** Contact page don’t contain a body, just the front matter above. See form.html in the layouts folder. Formspree requires a (free) account and new form to be set up. The link is made on the final published url in the field: Restrict to Domain. It is possible to register up to 2 emails free and you can select which one you want the forms to go to within Formspree in the Settings tab. /elements/ Mon, 18 Feb 2019 12:27:33 -0600 /elements/ Font Sizes A A A A A A A A 6rem (96px) 5rem (80px) 3rem (48px) 2.25rem (36px) 1.5rem (24px) 1.25rem (20px) 1rem (16px) .875rem (14px) Type Samples Head­line Sub­head­line Level 1 Heading One page to rule them all...well, not really. This page displays sample typography and page elements to illustrate their style. Things like headings and paragraphs showing the beautiful type scale, form elements, tabular data, and image layouts just to name a few. /blog/untapped-potential/ Sat, 19 Jan 2019 07:45:00 -0500 /blog/untapped-potential/ An incredible special report from the Boston Globe: Over the past year, the Globe has tracked down 93 of the 113 valedictorians who appeared in the paper’s first three “Faces of Excellence” features from 2005 to 2007. We wanted to know, more than a decade later, how the stories of Boston’s best and brightest were turning out. The entire collection of articles, graphics, and data paints a challenging and inspiring picture of the obstacles facing the “best and brightest” students in Boston’s public schools. /blog/cold-htl-packing/ Sat, 12 Jan 2019 10:08:03 -0500 /blog/cold-htl-packing/ One of the few things you can control when attempting a GORUCK HTL is your gear. Some of the items you’ll want are obvious and will be listed on the official event packing lists GORUCK provides, but if an HTL is one of your first GORUCK experiences1 and/or you haven’t done cold-weather events, this list might help you figure out what additional gear you’ll need. In November 2018, I successfully completed my first HTL during Veterans Day weekend in Indianapolis. /blog/picking-pll-cities/ Fri, 11 Jan 2019 20:42:26 -0500 /blog/picking-pll-cities/ The Premiere Lacrosse League (PLL) is attempting a new model for a professional team sport: a tour-based schedule with the entire six-team league playing in a different city each weekend. Paired with their NBC partnership, more people will get to see high-quality lacrosse than a city-based league like the MLL could attain. This week, the PLL announced a list of 30 cities that are in the running to be one of the 12 final sites for PLL games this summer. /blog/metacognition-and-data-analysis/ Thu, 11 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000 /blog/metacognition-and-data-analysis/ Learning how to perform various parts of a data analysis project - import, cleaning, visualizing, modeling - is hard. Learning how to bring those parts together in your day-to-day work is even more challenging. It’s hard because most analysis work is performed in isolation. We often see the results of great analysis work in blogs, articles, or presentations, sometimes even with source code, but seeing a final analysis product and it’s source code can obscure a lot of technique and thinking that went into the final product. /blog/marble-game-in-r/ Tue, 09 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000 /blog/marble-game-in-r/ The college football playoff selection process is broken. The current College Football Playoff (CFP) was created to address the shortcomings of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). Under the BCS system, a combination of polls and computer rankings were used to select two teams to play for the national championship. It seemed like a good idea, but controversial the results of the BCS system are well-documented. One of the most obvious flaws: several teams finished with an undefeated season and did not have a chance to play for a championship. /blog/2017-07-16-how-long-is-your-project/ Sun, 16 Jul 2017 09:00:00 -0500 /blog/2017-07-16-how-long-is-your-project/ Two years ago, we sold our house in Branford - a beautiful shoreline town just east of New Haven - and moved to Kentucky. Of all the things that we could miss about our life in Connecticut, like lobster rolls or getting Patriots games on broadcast channels, what we miss most is the tight-knit community in Branford. We couldn’t go to the grocery store or get an ice cream cone without chatting with a neighbor, a family from a lacrosse team I coached, or someone from our gym. /blog/2016-09-08-the-world-turned-upside-down/ Thu, 08 Sep 2016 05:54:00 -0500 /blog/2016-09-08-the-world-turned-upside-down/ After 11 years of litigation, Judge Thomas Moukawsher issued a seismic decision in the CCJEF school finance lawsuit. In the decision, Moukawsher not only eviscerated Connecticut’s school finance system, he also detailed flaws in the state’s approach to teacher evaluation, teacher compensation, the lack of clear definitions of success in elementary and secondary education, and gave the state 180 days to come up with a solution to all of it. /blog/2016-08-29-distributed-data-collection/ Mon, 29 Aug 2016 06:20:00 -0500 /blog/2016-08-29-distributed-data-collection/ A really neat concept that reminds me of my time tracking method: Jenny Bryan, developer of the google sheets R package, gave a talk at Use2015 about the package. One of the things that got me most excited about the package was an example she gave in her talk of using the Google Sheets package for data collection at ultimate frisbee tournaments. One reason is that I used to play a little ultimate back in the day. /blog/2016-08-22-long-term-orientation-and-educational-performance/ Mon, 22 Aug 2016 08:04:00 -0500 /blog/2016-08-22-long-term-orientation-and-educational-performance/ If there’s one common thread between Robin Lake relating The Boys in the Boat to schools, Neerav Kingsland on a recent charter study, and Robert Pondiscio on Hillbilly Elegy, it’s that culture plays a huge role in education. A new NBER Working Paper provides powerful evidence that it may be even more critical than was previously understood. The authors examine the performance of first and second generation immigrant students in Florida to understand the relationship between the “long-term orientation” of the cultures they come from to their educational outcomes. /blog/2016-08-18-essa-and-the-administrative-state/ Thu, 18 Aug 2016 06:26:00 -0500 /blog/2016-08-18-essa-and-the-administrative-state/ Chad Aldeman on the delegation of policy making in ESSA: Congress was able to reach broad bipartisan agreement on ESSA mainly because it punted on a number of key policy questions. Any reading of ESSA leaves one wondering what exactly Congress meant when it asked states to “meaningfully differentiate” among schools, when it required that states give “substantial weight” to each indicator, or when it stipulated that academic indicators count for “much greater weight” than non-academic ones. /blog/2016-08-14-aggregation-theory-and-education/ Mon, 15 Aug 2016 06:15:00 -0500 /blog/2016-08-14-aggregation-theory-and-education/ Five years ago, Marc Andressen took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to describe how software was “eating the world”: “More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services—from movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures. Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not. /blog/2016-08-12-why-some-american-schools-are-more-unequal-than-we-thought/ Fri, 12 Aug 2016 14:08:00 -0500 /blog/2016-08-12-why-some-american-schools-are-more-unequal-than-we-thought/ Using data to inform our conversations about public school performance is a good idea, but too often, the measures we use are reduced to imprecise terms like “proficiency,” which can carry several different meanings when describing a local, state, or national assessment1. As Susan Dynarski notes in The Upshot, this is also a common problem with the most-frequently used proxy for “poverty” in education, Free/Reduced Price Lunch (FRPL) eligibility: “Nearly half of students nationwide are eligible for a subsidized meal in school. /blog/2016-08-11-booknotes-the-checklist-manifesto/ Thu, 11 Aug 2016 06:43:00 -0500 /blog/2016-08-11-booknotes-the-checklist-manifesto/ Books have always been important to me. My grandmother was a librarian and as she babysat me, I was able to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of hours searching, consuming, and falling in love with books. That passion continues today, but I find that I have less time to devote to extended, deep periods of reading. I’m going to follow CGP Grey’s lead and start publicly sharing notes on books I’ve read. /blog/2016-08-10-tinkering/ Wed, 10 Aug 2016 09:18:00 -0500 /blog/2016-08-10-tinkering/ The most recent episode of Mad Dogs & Englishmen1 starts off with a discussion of buying and assembling and AR-15 from scratch. It’s an interesting process, but the conversation took an even more interesting turn as they focused on the decline of a tinkering ethos in our society. The machines and devices we use are often too complex to repair, disassemble, or customize. If you open the hood of your car, you won’t be able to see or even access many of the most critical parts - you’ll most likely see a series of injection-molded plastic meant to not only protect but to discourage amateur tinkering. /blog/2016-08-09-intellectuals-are-freaks/ Tue, 09 Aug 2016 13:31:00 -0500 /blog/2016-08-09-intellectuals-are-freaks/ Michael Lind on the weakness of intellectuals' approach to inequality: The views of intellectuals about social reform tend to be warped by professional and personal biases, as well. In the U.S. the default prescription for inequality and other social problems among professors, pundits, and policy wonks alike tends to be: More education! Successful intellectuals get where they are by being good at taking tests and by going to good schools. /blog/2016-07-29-time-tracking/ Fri, 29 Jul 2016 20:49:00 -0500 /blog/2016-07-29-time-tracking/ I tweeted this out earlier today: Insights from time tracking: I need to do more #rstats programming on Thursday/Friday afternoons. Also, mtgs suck. pic.twitter.com/14dFtGNubP — Alex Spurrier (@alspur) July 29, 2016 Why do I have time tracking charts that break down when I do certain kinds of work? A book ( Deep Work) and a podcast ( Cortex). I know that the ability to focus is important to the work I do, but Deep Work by Cal Newport helped articulate precisely why it’s extremely important to cultivate the ability to perform “deep work. /blog/2016-07-19-ezra-klein-interviews-yuval-levin/ Tue, 19 Jul 2016 21:54:00 -0500 /blog/2016-07-19-ezra-klein-interviews-yuval-levin/ This is a thoughtful, in-depth conversation that covers from the thesis of Levin’s latest book, The Fractured Republic, his experience working in the Bush (43) Administration, the most interesting policy ideas on each side of the political spectrum, and more. This is the first Ezra Klein Show episode I’ve listened to - I’m looking forward to adding others to my Overcast queue. /blog/2015-12-23-the-objective-paradox/ Wed, 23 Dec 2015 17:30:00 -0500 /blog/2015-12-23-the-objective-paradox/ This entire article on creativity is worth a read, but one passage in particular caught my attention: In one experiment a bipedal robot programmed to walk farther and farther actually ended up walking less far than one that simply was programmed to do something novel again and again, Stanley writes. Falling on the ground and flailing your legs doesn’t look much like walking, but it’s a good way to learn to oscillate, and oscillation is the most effective motion for walking. /blog/2015-12-01-fatal-conceit/ Tue, 01 Dec 2015 17:30:00 -0500 /blog/2015-12-01-fatal-conceit/ “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design” - F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit The ink on the recently released Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is barely dry, but progressive ed reformers are already panning the proposed successor to the defunct No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Conor Williams argues that not only should Obama veto the NCLB rewrite, progressives should fear it. /blog/2015-09-24-how-would-great-teachers-spend-a-time-bonus/ Thu, 24 Sep 2015 11:54:00 -0500 /blog/2015-09-24-how-would-great-teachers-spend-a-time-bonus/ This entire series of conversations with Fishman Prize winners is worth reading, but this passage stood out to me: “In so many ways, these hierarchies we have put teachers at the bottom. But that almost entitles everyone who is above us, so to speak, to put tasks on our plate.” It perfectly captures my feelings after reading The Allure of Order and Team of Teams: our highly bureaucratized school system is limiting the potential of our students and our educators. /blog/2015-09-23-the-real-obama-education-legacy/ Wed, 23 Sep 2015 08:12:00 -0500 /blog/2015-09-23-the-real-obama-education-legacy/ Rick Hess summarizes the frustrations of center-right ed reformers with the Obama administration’s approach to education policy (myself included): “Although some of Obama’s education moves have been inopportune, his agenda has also included a number of notions with real promise. But his administration’s excessive faith in federal regulation, lack of time for the niceties of federalism, and contempt for critics helped undermine these ideas and support for reform more broadly. /blog/beyond-taylorism-part-iii/ Tue, 22 Sep 2015 09:00:00 -0500 /blog/beyond-taylorism-part-iii/ If you’re like me, you’ve read articles, essays, and books that attempt to explain the root cause of the problems facing the teaching profession. In The Allure of Order, Jal Mehta only needs one paragraph to break it down: “In the longer term, the success of the reformers in the Progressive Era resulted in a shift from one-room schoolhouses to urban school systems, in which schools were expected to follow the directives of a central manager in a district office. /blog/2015-08-01-beyond-taylorism-pt2/ Sat, 01 Aug 2015 17:30:00 -0500 /blog/2015-08-01-beyond-taylorism-pt2/ When we realized __________, we did what most large organizations do when they find themselves falling behind the competition: we worked harder. We deployed more resources, we put more people to work, and we strove to create ever-greater efficiency within the existing operating model. Like obnoxious tourists trying to make themselves understood in a foreign country by continuing to speak their native tongue louder and louder we were raising the volume to no good end. /blog/2015-07-31-beyond-taylorism-pt1/ Fri, 31 Jul 2015 17:30:00 -0500 /blog/2015-07-31-beyond-taylorism-pt1/ Three books on three seemingly different topics changed how I think about public policy. My reading list this month came together serendipitously. A tweet led me to buy The Conservative Heart, I ordered Team of Teams after listening to a podcast, and purchased The Allure of Order after reading Neerav Kingsland’s blogs about it. At a first glance, these books don’t look like they’d fit together. The Conservative Heart is about communicating a conservative anti-poverty agenda. /blog/2015-07-23-r-rmarkdown/ Thu, 23 Jul 2015 21:13:14 -0500 /blog/2015-07-23-r-rmarkdown/ R Markdown This is an R Markdown document. Markdown is a simple formatting syntax for authoring HTML, PDF, and MS Word documents. For more details on using R Markdown see http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com. You can embed an R code chunk like this: summary(cars) ## speed dist ## Min. : 4.0 Min. : 2.00 ## 1st Qu.:12.0 1st Qu.: 26.00 ## Median :15.0 Median : 36.00 ## Mean :15.4 Mean : 42.98 ## 3rd Qu. /blog/2015-06-03-budget-deal/ Wed, 03 Jun 2015 09:00:00 -0500 /blog/2015-06-03-budget-deal/ The CT Mirror reports that Governor Malloy and Democratic legislators struck a budget deal that would allow two new charter schools to open as well as supporting the growth of existing charter schools.1 On paper, this charter growth will cost the state $12.4 million in FY16, but it actually took an additional $23.5 million increase in FY16 ECS funding to make it happen. In other words, for every $1 in new funding to support growth in charter schools, legislators insisted that $2 went to support traditional public schools via ECS grants. /blog/2015-05-15-hardchoices/ Fri, 15 May 2015 09:00:00 -0500 /blog/2015-05-15-hardchoices/ There are few people in Connecticut defending the current system of distributing Education Cost Sharing (ECS) grants. Sure, there’s a formula that is supposed to guide annual appropriations, but there are two big problems. To start, the legislature hasn’t ever appropriated the level of funding the formula calls for. Given the economic tumult of the past decade and Connecticut’s somewhat anemic growth rate, it’s not hard to understand why this is the case. /blog/2015-05-12-more-data-please/ Tue, 12 May 2015 17:30:00 -0500 /blog/2015-05-12-more-data-please/ Two weeks ago, Rob Stellar wrote about the low rate of college completion among Hartford Public School graduates on TrendCT. More importantly, he raised some important questions that may better explain what’s going on here: “What is preventing so many students who graduate high school from enrolling in college? Is it for financial reasons or lack of access to other resources/college prep programs? How well do Hartford high schools prepare students for college? /blog/2015-03-22-data-analysis-on-the-go/ Sun, 22 Mar 2015 17:30:00 -0500 /blog/2015-03-22-data-analysis-on-the-go/ A recent Fast Company article describes Tableau’s latest app, Project Elastic, as a potential game-changer in mobile data analysis. The app would allow iPad users to move from an Excel file in Mail.app to an interactive chart with a few quick taps. Filters can be applied/removed with swipes, zoom levels are adjusted by pinch/spread gestures, and charts can be shared via email. It’s a cleverly designed interface, but Elastic suffers from a critical problem: it assumes the user is accessing clean datasets. /blog/2015-02-09-outdated-funding-systems/ Mon, 09 Feb 2015 09:00:00 -0500 /blog/2015-02-09-outdated-funding-systems/ The Growth of School Choice in Connecticut, 1995-2015 For years, families in Connecticut demanded more public school options for their children. Over the last two decades, state funding for magnet and charter schools grew significantly. Even with this level of growth, thousands still end up unable to attend magnet schools or charter schools due to limited capacity. Wouldn’t it seem reasonable that lawmakers would work to expand the number of public school options available to families? /blog/2014-11-29-athoughtexperiment/ Sat, 29 Nov 2014 09:00:00 -0500 /blog/2014-11-29-athoughtexperiment/ What would happen if we actually followed the ECS formula? There are two significant flaws in Connecticut’s current school funding formula, known as ECS (Education Cost Sharing): It does not reflect the actual needs of towns and students. It does not treat the thousands of students accessing school choice equitably. I plan on addressing those concerns in subsequent posts, but for a moment, let’s take ECS at face value and assume that the underpinnings of the formula are correct. /blog/2014-10-28-whatstheproblemwithctschoolfinance/ Tue, 28 Oct 2014 09:00:00 -0500 /blog/2014-10-28-whatstheproblemwithctschoolfinance/ School finance in Connecticut is broken. The state’s main vehicle of support to public schools, the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) grant, sends $2 billion to local districts each year with the goal of equalizing the ability of communities to fund public education. Unfortunately, years of legislative tinkering with the ECS formula left Connecticut with a Byzantine approach to funding schools that takes more than 16 pages to explain. On top of this labyrinthine system, non-traditional public schools (including magnet, charter, vocational/technical, and agriscience schools) are funded under entirely separate mechanisms. /license/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /license/ My blog posts are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.