What’s At Risk When Schools Focus Too Much on Student Data? | MindShift | KQED News
Have you ever seen a school data wall?
In a struggling Newark, N.J., public school, I’ve seen bulletin boards showing the test scores of each grade compared with state averages. And in one in affluent Silicon Valley, I’ve seen smartboards that track individual students’ math responses in real time.
These kinds of public displays send a message: This school cares about student performance by the numbers.
Source: What’s At Risk When Schools Focus Too Much on Student Data? | MindShift | KQED News
Being data driven does not work, just ask former IBM CEO Paul Otellini. He passed on a chance to supply a chip for the original iPhone because he was data driven.
“At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought.”
“The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I’ve ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,” he said. “My gut told me to say yes.”
