“We didn’t ban calculators. We taught math differently. We didn’t ban the internet. We taught research differently. So why are we trying to ban AI instead of doing the same?” We’ve been here before. I was a young teacher when the internet showed up in classrooms in the 90s. Educators panicked. Teachers worried it would make students lazy, that it would only be used for cheating, and that memorizing facts and dates would go out the window. They were right. Sort of. The internet did change things. But it didn’t destroy learning. It made us rethink what was worth teaching and how we wanted to spend instructional time. It pushed us away from memorizing trivia and toward analyzing, questioning, creating, and connecting. The same thing happened with calculators decades before. There was real fear that students would lose the ability to compute. But what actually happened was that students stopped getting stuck in multi-digit calculations and started spending more time doing real math. They m...
Evaluators on Autopilot: Is Data Crunching Drowning Out Educator Insight? Or Beyond the Numbers: Is It Time to Rethink Data-Driven Decisions in Education?
The real power of data in education isn’t fully realized when it’s just about collecting scores and ticking off assessments. I spent a good portion of my time in my doctoral program focused on my emphasis—Assessment and Evaluation. Though often used interchangeably by educators, these terms have different, more than just nuanced, definitions and roles. I believe that since these two terms are often considered synonyms, the depth of knowledge and understanding of the term “evaluation” has basically been lost. The term “data-driven decisions” is ubiquitous in education and often a hallmark of a skilled educator. Data’s real worth, however, comes from the questions it makes us ask, not just the answers it provides. Research by RAND emphasizes this point: “having data alone does not guarantee effective decision-making” (Marsh, Pane, & Hamilton, 2006, paraphrased). This observation underscores the importance of advancing beyond mere data collection to a deeper, more strategic use ...