Summary: *“Education is a people profession. Not a program profession.” – Jim Cox* ##Dear Valued Stakeholders, I used to be one of those people who thought that I wasn’t very good at math. I didn’t have any strong feelings about it, but I didn’t put a lot of effort into excelling at it either. Somehow, like many youngsters then and now, I had deluded myself into thinking I just wouldn’t use math when I got away from school and into my “real life”. If you’re smiling now, you are likely one of those who did well in math from the get-go. Or you are one of those who, just like me, figured out later that mathematical thinking is required for life. (Period!) No one can get by without mentioning something in the language of numbers – distances, sizes, frequency of occurrence, savings, retirement accounts, bank balance, bandwidth, costs, percentages, time, weight, intensity, endurance, dates – the list is endless because every action we do in life can be measured as some fraction of a bigger picture. Data that drives our world is delivered as numbers, then analyzed, studied and reported out as proof of change, no change, or need for change. We are a data driven world. The question is, with all the numbers that are tossed about in the media and between colleagues, how do we know what the numbers mean? For educators and the general public, school-wide test scores are an example of numbers acquired to assure the public that their schools are delivering a quality education to their young. These test scores have become so pervasive in the conversation about quality education that many people accept them as being just that - accurate measures of quality. But is that really true? Our guest on today’s B2W Radio program, Jim Cox, is about to give you the rest of the story. Jim is held at the highest level of respect and trust among education leaders throughout the state of California and the rest of the country as someone who knows how to make difficult measurement and statistical concepts easier to understand and apply. Jim doesn’t claim to be a statistical expert in all economic areas, but in his charmingly curmudgeon style, he makes it very easy for others to learn some tough mathematical processes needed to operate in today’s data driven education environment. He has a love of numbers and is clear about what they do and don’t tell us. He is a consultant, facilitator, and evaluator for school districts engaged in school restructuring, testing, and other forms of assessment and program evaluation. But Jim’s enthusiasm for data isn’t so much about the numbers themselves; it’s about what the numbers hide and what they reveal. He’ll talk about how, when used thoughtfully, measurements can have a huge impact in support of truly valuable programs, or they can be used to destroy others. As a citizen, a business leader, and a parent, you need to know the difference. The key to using data is to first define the word. One of the six steps in the Birth2Work process for aligning communities to solve some of today’s complex problems is to “agree on common language.” That means we don’t assume we agree on what key words mean when we are working together. Here’s an example. My radio co-host, Rick, often talks about an experience he had when listening to a county superintendent give data some years ago, about how few students drop-out from the schools he was in charge of, compared to the rest of the state and the country. The superintendent reported his drop out average in a single digit number. Just that morning, in the local paper, Rick had been reading about the astonishingly high number of dropouts in the state and found the superintendent’s number suspect. “Really?” he questioned. Rick thought for another moment, deciding he and the superintendent weren’t defining the term “drop out” in the same way. He framed a different question, “What is the average drop out rate of students who start high school as freshmen...
