Pointing Out The Parralles
“Your friend professes belief yet I’m not convinced. What about you? Are the gods real?”
“They are real,” says I, “And you’re a prick.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits
I watch a lot of football.
I've done so for years.
Of late, I've notice the over reliance on data creep into the game. Especially when it comes to evaluating Quarterbacks.
Playing QB is not an easy task. Few young atheletes make a smooth transistion from the college game to the pro game, but that doesn't mean expectations are tempered. just the opposite.
Self-appointed experts point to newly created data points in order to facilitate development, or at least thats what they claim. To me it just feels like an effort for those who never played the game to insert themself in the conversation. But maybe, that's just the cynic in me.
Release time, tightness of ball spin, number of rotations, even average time of ball in air before caught is measured in an effort to quantify something that requires a little magic to succeed.
The accumulation, and presentation, of these stats beg the question of correlation or causation. Is a QB successful because he does all of these things, or do successful QBs just have a lot of these traits?
Pretty sure that when Terry Bradshaw was winning Super Bowls, we never knew his average spin or how fast the ball was leaving his hand. We just knew that he was winning Super Bowls, so he must be pretty good.
Along with the over reliance on data has come an increased belief in the value of the coach. Supplied with their notebook of data and their brilliant plays, they can turn anybody to be a successful QB, if they'll just listen. But are they really that brilliant, and is it really that easy?
Strangely enough, despite all of this data, the NFL has become worse at developing QB's then ever. Something like 9 first round draft choices over the last three years are either riding the bench for their respective teams, or considered a placeholder while their team looks for the next field general. Only a handfull of teams possess a franchise quarterback. You know, the ever elusive rockstar quarterback.
I used to believe that my years of watching football qualified me as an expert on the sport. Well, that and a little high school ball. At least until my son started playing.
He's a high school varsity QB, early in his career. One of my favorite things is discussing plays during the car ride home after a game. What I have quickly learned is that don't know squat about football.
I'll bring up a throw that looked like it was thrown to no one, "What about that throw in the second quarter over the middle, who the hell were you throwing that one to?"
Non-plussed, he replied, "What do you mean?"
"That ball you threw, it looked like it was going to no one."
Still non-plussed, he says, "That's the receiver. It was a timing pattern. He cut the route short. I threw the ball to where he was supposed to be. He wasn't there, that's on him."
"Oh", I say, "What about that throw down the sideline. Looked like that receiver was wide open and you missed him."
"Yea, tha pressure was coming faster then I anticipated and I didn't have time to get my feet set, so I tried to muscle it. Should have released it a little earlier. I'll get it next time."
"Fair enough. But that touchdown pass was something else. You threw it through three defenders. That was risky."
Puzzled, he slowly resonds, "I just hit my window."
Huh...everything I thought was horrific wasn't nearly as bad, and everything I thought fantastic was merely mundane.
My mind wandered back to conversations from the past with his mother, a teacher.
i was just getting into this advocacy game. I'd read something and think it was the greatest idea in the world, and then she'd explain to me why it wasn't.
Then I'd hear about something that I though god awful, and she'd explain to me why it wasn't.
Through these conversations, I learned to wait to form opinions until after I talked to the people who actually did the job, not people who spent their time engaged in pontification.
Like football, teaching has become a profession overrun by data geeks. Instead of recognizing the preparation and personal traits that go into being successful, non-practioners draw up curriculum and practices that fail to seize upon the strengths of the individual. Just do it their way, and everything will be great.
But are they really that good, and is it really that easy?
Winning the game, or educationg the student is no longer sufficient. You gotta earn the style points as well. You gotta follw the method or you are out. The pressure to succeed based on arbitrary terms becomes overwhelming.
What happens with both quarterbacks and teachers, is that they succumb to that pressure. Doubt sets in, and ineffectiveness follows. How many quality practioners are chased out of the professions because they don't adhere to prescribed arguably best practices?
Right now, the Minnesota Vikings are being led on a championship run by a quarterback that three teams have written off in the last 6 years. Maaybe he's not as bad as evryone thought.
By the way, that QB is currently rated 12th, based on the new analytics, two spots ahead of three time Super Bowl winner Patrick Mahomes. Are there really 13 QBs a team would rather have then Mahomes, even though all he does is win?
Interceptions are the bane of a quartback existence. Pundits bemoan them for destroying a teams odds of winning. But they happen.
Amazingly, Mahomes is among the leaders this years with 9. Yet his team is 9-0 and favored to win another Championship.
Maybe. But doubtful.
That said, lets not underplay the importance of leadership.
I don't think Mahomes would be nearly as successful if he had a coach other then Andy Reid. See Reid understands that data is a tool and that not everything can be measured. He recognizes that success requires a bit of magic and individualism, and sometimes that means accepting the misteps that comes with it.
Data should be a tool foir people. People should not become tools for data.
Unfortunately, in both football and education, we default to the latter.
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Last week, Donald Trump was elected as the 47th President of the United States. Immediately after his victory was declared, the heated conversations began.
In the education policy sphere, the leading topic is the fate of the Department of Education. Many of you are quite upset about the possibility of the DOE being shuttered.
Me? I'm abliviant.
Hear me out.
The DOE didn't start functioning as an independent department until 1980, when then President Jimmy Carter carved it out of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. That said, it has existed for awhile, with an evolving mission. It also has been underfire since inception.
Per Wikipedia:
The Department of Education is administered by the United States secretary of education. It has 4,400 employees – the smallest staff of the Cabinet agencies[5] – and a 2024 budget of $238 billion.[6] The 2023 Budget was $274 billion, which included funding for children with disabilities (IDEA), pandemic recovery, early childhood education, Pell Grants, Title I, work assistance, among other programs. This budget was down from $637.7 billion in 2022.[7]
Primary duties of the DOE are deciding who gets federeal funding based on federal priorities, collecting data for research, setting the focus on what they deem key education issues, preventing discrimination and insuring equitable access to education.
That's a long way from the original intent as conceived by former President Andrew Johnson, who saw the need to collect information and statistics on local schools, and provide advice on what seems to be working. Even then, way back in 1867, there was concern about the influence potentially weilded by a National department. Over the years the department wandered around under different federal agencies. An unsuccessful attempt at creating a Department of Education, headed by a Secretary of Education, came with the Smith–Towner Bill in 1920.
They would further argue, that state constitutions do include education. Therefore the Founders intended it to be a state responsibility. Maybe true, but short sighted of the Founders. We'll get to that in a minute.
When Carter finally brought the department to fruition, and gave it cabinet level status, Rebulicans were not happy. In their eyes, the department was unconstitutional, arguing that the Constitution does not mention education, and deemed it an unnecessary and illegal federal bureaucratic intrusion into local affairs. However, others saw the department as constitutional under the Commerce Clause, and that the funding role of the department is constitutional under the Taxing and Spending Clause.
The intial department budget was $14 million a year with 17,000 employees. Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, during his campaign promised to abolish the new department. Once elected, he reduced the budget, but in 1989 had a change of heart, and requested an increase from $18.4 billion to $20.3 billion.
In 1994, the Rebulicans took control of both the House and Senate, and spending on education drastically increased, despite the fact that the Republican Party made abolition of the department a cornerstone of it's 1996 platform and campaign promises, calling it an inappropriate federal intrusion into local, state, and family affairs.
To quote, "The Federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the market place. This is why we will abolish the Department of Education, end federal meddling in our schools, and promote family choice at all levels of learning."
In 2000, the Republican Liberty Caucus passed a resolution to abolish the Department of Education. George W. Bush, didn't honor this resolution and instead increased the Federal footprint through the No Child Left Behind Act. The department's budget increased by $14 billion between 2002 and 2004, from $46 billion to $60 billion.
What's the first lesson I'm always trying to preach? Ain't nothing new in these debates.
While this all may seem like some crazy scheme dreamed up by Trump acolytes down at Margo Largo, it's really business per usual. What I often refer to as, the same old same old.
What we do best in education policy discussions.
On the flip side of all of this is, I'm not sure how much value the federal DOE actually provides. Supporters tout them as being a bulwark that ensures special education students are given the ducational services they deserve. But are they?
Have you ever tried to get a Individual Education Plan for your child? If you have, then you are aware of the level of difficulty this entails. Even the most well meaning of school administrators will fight you on an IEP. It adds work for the over taxed, and cost to the underfunded. That's just reality.
Once written, there is no guarentee that the IEP will be followed. The dirty little secret is that public schools may welcome all students, but they don't always offer them all the services they require. Not casting stones here, just stating that which often goes unsaid.
The counter argument is that they do the best they can with what they've been given. Maybe, but that ain't always good enough.
What happens if a school or district is found to be out of compliance?
Best I can tell, the DOE sends a nasty gram and threatens to withhold funding, a threat that always rings hollow.
Under former Commissioner Penny Schwinn, Tennessee was out of compliance for a number of years. The DOE sent their letters to Commissioner Schwinn and she largely ignored them. Eventually, I think, Tennessee came into compliance, but there was never any lost funding.
Let's face it, as a department charged with holding states accountable, the only tool the DOE has is to withhold funding. If they are never weilding that tool, how effective are they?
Another part of this is that despite all his bluster, President Trump is still only the President-elect. There is a long way to go in this debate.
As State Representative Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka) told Dan Mandis this morning on WTN, "We are not going to get a memo on Monday saying its closed. It will be step-down process because of all the grants and contracts involved."
For his part Cepicky is, depending on the details, supportive of the idea. He says, "Once that wind-down starts, states will grab hold of this, and start to create these 50 individual ideas of how to do education, and you'll start to bring competition to the education field, which is something that is sorely needed."
Maybe. But if you think that the Federal government is going to completely get out of the business of influencing education policy in this country....yea...I don't think so. The heavy hand will just pop up somewhere else.
Cepicky's argument, also ignores one of the primary purposes of public education. Perhaps its most important. That is to create citizens.
The myth created around the history of American public schooling as a national treasure that nurtures our democracy is only half true. The reality is that 19th-century politicians and citizens were fearful of and overwhelmed by rapid societal change, as thousands of immigrants streamed into American cities in the mid-1800s.
As Kerry McDonald writes in a piece for Foundations of Economic Education:
Between 1830 and 1840 U.S. immigration quadrupled, and between 1840 and 1850, it tripled again. Particularly troubling to lawmakers at the time was the fact that many of these new immigrants were Irish Catholics who threatened the dominant Anglo-Saxon Protestant cultural and religious customs. “Those now pouring in upon us, in masses of thousands upon thousands, are wholly of another kind in morals and intellect,” mourned the Massachusetts state legislature regarding the new Boston immigrants.
Universal, taxpayer-funded “common schools” became the mechanism to rein in these masses and “Americanize” them to societal norms. Interestingly, many of the Irish Catholic immigrant families didn’t want to send their children to these so-called “secular” schools that continued to reflect prevailing Protestant ideals and texts. So the solution for lawmakers was simply to make them attend.
1852 marks the onset of what public schooling advocates herald as universal, taxpayer-supported public schooling for all children regardless of background. What is often missing is the acknowledgment that the 1852 compulsory schooling law, passed in Massachusetts and subsequently replicated in all states, was the first to mandate school attendance under a legal threat of force.
Many families rebelled. Catholics, for example, created their own private, parochial schools. Outraged by this action, lawmakers throughout the country began in the 1880s to pass laws known as Blaine Amendments that prohibited any public funding for private schools. These laws remain today in many states, and are at the heart of the debate around school choice, particularly, vouchers that would enable parents to receive public money to use at private schools."
Once again, remember my first lesson? Yea, it applies here as well.
McDonal includes in her piece a quote that feels particularly relevant here.
In her October Atlantic, “The War on Public Schools,” Erika Christakis takes aim at current efforts to place education decision-making back in the hands of parents and away from the state. She says these school choice efforts, like charter schools and vouchers, threaten American public schooling. Christakis writes:
So what happens when we neglect the public purpose of our publicly funded schools? The discussion of vouchers and charter schools, in its focus on individual rights, has failed to take into account American society at large. The costs of abandoning an institution designed to bind, not divide, our citizenry are high.”
Good question and I look forward to the discussion.
- - -
I'd be remiss if I didn't report on Metro Nashville Public Schools latest historical accomplishment.
Per their press release:
Metro Nashville Public Schools is proud to announce a historic achievement: For the third consecutive year, the district has attained a Level 5 growth score from the Tennessee Value Added Assessment System (TVAAS). This "threepeat" accomplishment marks the first time in TVAAS history that our district has reached this level of consistent growth, underscoring MNPS’s dedication to academic excellence and growth.
"This achievement speaks volumes about our district’s commitment to rigorous, high-quality education," said Dr. Adrienne Battle, Superintendent of Nashville Public Schools. "Reaching a Level 5 growth score three years in a row is a testament to the hard work and talent of our students, the dedication of our educators, and the strong support from our community and partners. Our goal is to ensure every student receives the resources, support, and high-quality instruction they need to succeed – and this recognition confirms we are moving in the right direction."
Congratulations to Dr. Battle and her cohorts. Upon reflection maybe her newest contract extension wasn't enough. Should have been $400K a year and allowed her to continue to cash in vacation days.
Shows you what I know.
Just don't look to closely at the numbers, or consider achiement gaps.
You can come celebrate with Dr. Battle this Saturday at Nissan Stadium from 1-5pm. The district is hosting a parade. Students and families will have the chance to meet educators representing their schools and learn about the unique programs offered to students. There will be food, giveaways and activities.
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