Feedback is one of the most important words when I began to learn automatic control theory in college. The PID algorithm is such a beauty to do object tracking automatically in our real life which has been advancing human life for many many years. One application is the cruise control button in our car. As simple as when we drive on the highway, we will slow down when we are too fast, we need accelerate when are too slow. Human has the built-in feedback system which is learned over years when we grow up.
Our school system needs such a feedback mechanism too. A consistent, timely feedback mechanism should be built into our school program performance evaluation. In software design, we have another term: continuous integration and testing. That means the system will automatically check the system performance without any human interference when there is any change . This will minimize human errors. We also need the feedback mechanism to run continuously and share that result with us whenever available. Any anomaly in the system will be detected automatically and then analyzed by humans later.
Many our school programs are multi-layered. However, we should try our best to set some quantifiable, measurable objective function, evaluate them continuously and get the feedback into the human hands periodically.
We should make substantial effort to get the input data right, set up a feedback process and evaluate program performance continuously for our school system.
As taxpayers, what is Our return on investment from the School System?
How can we effectively provide feedback/feedforward when there are so many known unknowns?
How is the School System educating the community? How is the community educating the School System? Opportunities abound…
How is the community able to utilize school system resources including facilities, without double taxation? Schools can be Community Centers, let’s make this so…
Jo, by comparing with other counties, HCPSS is doing a good job educating our children. For sure, we can also do better. We always need accountability on school programs as our school grows larger and larger. That is the reason I talk about the feedback mechanism. I also agree with you that the school can be community centers. We should make it easier for the community to use those facilities while there is no school.
Children are NOT data points and they are NOT meat widgets for the workforce. There is entirely too much data collected from students as it is. This data is subject to hacking at the county and state level. This data can also be skewed to show desired results as we saw with our former Superintendent. We don’t need teachers spending more time entering data…..we need well trained teachers at the helm of classrooms leading children through lessons that will get them through school and life and to help turn children into good and decent, democratically thinking adults. Get the data OUT of the schools!
Children are NOT data points and they are NOT meat widgets for the workforce. There is entirely too much data collected on children in the school system as it is. This data is subject to computer hacking at the county AND the state level. Data can also be skewed to give a desired result as we have seen in the past with our former Superintendent. The data mining of children is wrong! We don’t need teachers spending more time entering more useless data….we need well trained teachers standing in classrooms and leading children through lessons that will get them through school, through life and make them better human beings.
Lisa, I agree with you that children are not data points. I am not advocating for more data. I am advocating for evaluating programs using the data we have.
I am also a strong advocate to protect our students’ data privacy.