Denis Doyle has passed. I didn’t know him really well but was fortunate enough to cross paths from time to time around various things. He was early to the leverage that data provided in education and built, with others, a company around that – Schoolnet. A few things stand out. First, his mind. You run into smart people in this sector all the time, and then you run into *smart* people in this sector. He was the latter. A real intellect, polymath, and curious person. Second, he was funny. He was kind, but he was hilarious. And finally, upon his passing, it was noteworthy the number of people who said things like, “a real mentor to me.” People spend a lot of time worrying about impact and legacy. People calling you out as a mentor, it seems to me, is impact and legacy.
Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt passed Monday. Interacted with him on different things over the years, he was a pro and also a genuinely nice person. He was a free thinker on education, willing to challenge orthodoxy.
Latest salvo in the math wars.
The NSBA letter, despite the NSBA walking it back, is impacting the organization’s finances says Axios. The NSBA state affiliates have the power in that organization, seems like, surprisingly, the national leadership didn’t run the traps on this one. I thought the letter would backfire, but not like this.
Remember when getting under your desk in case of a nuclear attack was a thing schools did to kids? This generation will likely look back on a lot of “active shooter” preparation the same way.
New York City spends a lot on its schools. $30k per kid. Now there are some caveats, special education costs or pension costs and so forth. But the average parent, or average taxpayer, doesn’t think about all that. They think, ‘$30k, that’s a lot. Especially given the results.’ And they’re not wrong.
This new demographic project from Politico has some education relevance.
…the 2020 census crystallized a picture of a new landscape, with African Americans departing major cities, some for warmer locales, others for smaller cities, others to the ever-expanding suburbs where there is generally less crime and better schools.
