Thoughtful design and execution of a data governance practice can greatly streamline your organization’s data processes, improve alignment between technical and program staff, enhance data quality, and most importantly, reduce the frustration that comes from…
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This fall a new cohort of education organizations around the country, including state education agencies, school districts, charter management organizations, and county education offices are initiating or expanding their Ed-Fi implementations. Through our years of…
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As I sat down to write this entry, my day was interrupted most unusually.  Doug texted me the picture to the left.  The caption said simply, “Say hello to 26th street and the railroad track.”…
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There are a lot of good signs to be seen in recent news about security and privacy in the education technology sector. Some of the key questions being asked by educators and administrators are “how…
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In my six years of teaching, I had plenty of colleagues who carried on non-stop private conversations through every faculty and department meeting they attended. The very educators who brought down the wrath of God…
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Although I have over 25 years of for-profit corporate America experience, I am not one to think that we should leverage everything from the business field to the education field. However, I do think there…
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We know political campaigns are driven by numbers. Since long before we started talking about data-driven decision-making as a key driver in education reform, political strategists had sophisticated models for crunching numbers and using them…
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I like numbers. Numbers are facts. My weight scale reading for today: 165 lbs. Numbers are objective and free of emotion. My pedometer tells me that I ran for three miles today. However, as objective…
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In 2008, the Copenhagen Consensus Center asked a group of the world’s top economists to identify optimal social “investments” that could best help reduce malnutrition, broaden educational opportunity, slow global warming, cut air pollution, prevent…
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