EMPTY: Of Data & Promises
Dear Governor Abbott:
If there’s a sacred refrain in Texas K-12 education, it’s this: Data driven!
In our schools, data analysis drives everything we do. In high-stakes grades, students may be promoted or retained based on their STAAR scores. High schoolers can graduate only if they pass End of Course exams. Schools are publicly graded based on metrics including test scores, student attendance, and student enrollment in advanced courses.
Every school in Texas has a dedicated Data Room where every student’s STAAR scores and benchmark scores are posted, informing teachers and administrators how to group students for intervention and about exactly which TEKS each student needs to work on.
We are nothing if not data driven.
Which is why we hoped that you and our state leaders would use a data-driven approach to making decisions about school reopening in the context of our coronavirus pandemic.
You can do this. You know how.
1. Start with the experts.
A scientific and medical approach to determining when it’s safe to return to school requires collaboration among scientists, doctors, and county health officials. Doctors’ sole focus is public health, while businesspeople bring their own motives and biases to the table. For questions of science and health, CEOs and businesspeople are not medical experts and they have no place in this conversation.
2. Focus on the right question.
We must focus on one question: When is it safe for teachers, students, and auxiliary staff to return to face-to-face on-campus school? Other questions, while compelling, are not germane to the primary question. That is, our concerns about employment and the economy do not address the health safety question that must drive the conversation. When we engage these peripheral topics, we lose focus on the primary question. Consider a dangerous scenario: If a school building were to catch on fire, we would evacuate everyone. And we wouldn’t allow anyone to enter the building until the Fire Marshall deemed it safe. No one would even think of saying: I know the school is still on fire, but having the kids out of school is putting the economy in peril, so let’s all go back inside.
3. Resist distraction by peripheral issues.
Let’s agree that students and teachers are best served in brick and mortar school buildings. Let’s agree that schools provide a sort of day care that allows parents to go to work to earn the money they need to provide for their families. Let’s agree that the ability of adults to go to work is critical for reviving the economy and saving many restaurants and small businesses from collapse. Let’s agree that children need socialization, that not all families have the technology or Internet access required for online learning, that teachers and counselors and school nurses provide important services to children and families. Let’s agree that all of these issues are critically important. But let’s resist the temptation even to entertain these questions when we’re trying to answer the one question that is, without hyperbole, a matter of life and death: When is it safe for teachers, students, and auxiliary staff to return to face-to-face on-campus school?
4. Set benchmarks; collect and report reliable data.
Working with scientific and medical experts, set benchmarks that we can agree are indicators for safe return: number of cases, number of new cases, number of hospitalizations, positivity rate, death rate, 14 consecutive days of decreasing numbers, etc. At the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC — and even the White House — published such benchmarks; states didn’t follow them and it didn’t work out well. Let’s try again.
5. Bring educators to the table.
The advisory panel for these questions must be composed of teachers, principals, superintendents, school counselors, school nurses, custodians, bus drivers, and cafeteria workers. If you’re going to make decisions that affect educators, you’ll need to conduct the conversation with educators. You’ll need to ask good questions and listen carefully to teachers’ answers and concerns. This is a cardinal rule in fostering buy-in. It’s also the foundation of American democracy that those whose lives are affected by policy are adequately represented in the decision-making process.
6. Don’t treat Texas like a monolith.
No one knows better than you that Texas is a huge and diverse state. We like to boast that over 221 Rhode Islands would fit inside the borders of Texas. We have mega cities and sparsely populated areas. Harris County has nearly five million inhabitants; Loving County has fewer than 200 residents. With regard to the coronavirus pandemic, each area is unique, with one-third of Texas counties reporting fewer than 100 cases while the counties of the Rio Grande Valley have recorded some of the highest per capita rates in the nation, requiring a field hospital to be set up in the McAllen Civic Center. You simply can’t treat us all the same. You must allow local officials to make local decisions to best serve the needs of the local citizens.
7. Let the data drive.
When agreed-upon metrics have been established to answer the question When is it safe for teachers, students, and auxiliary staff to return to face-to-face on-campus school? we will all be able to watch the news and see the metrics; we’ll all know when it’s safe. And we’ll all be more than ready to return to a school life that’s more like the familiar normal.
And if we’re not going to use a data-driven approach, if we’re not going to let the data drive, please do us a favor: please retire the phrase “data driven” from the lexicon. If we don’t let the data drive in this, the most critical school decision of our lives and careers, teachers will forever understand that “data driven” is an empty phrase, kind of like “sending good vibes” or “as we continue this fight, the State of Texas is working alongside local hospitals and community leaders to reduce the spread of this virus and keep Texans safe here in the Rio Grande Valley and across the state.”
Are our school re-opening plans safe and reasonable? That’s not what the data say.
Yours in good health,
Scott Hollinger, EdD
National Distinguished Principal of Texas 2003