HOWEVER — data only tells you what you did not know when you understand how to dig into that data. Data mining involves shoveling large quantities of numbers and people get lost in those numbers. Sometimes they choose to go astray, trying to bend the numbers to support what they intend to do anyway.

Of more importance, when you already know something, adding more data merely wastes time and money.

Eduhonesty: I could measure my height every day for a month. I wouldn’t grow any taller nor would I shrink. I know this before I pull out the tape measure.

A state test in the spring makes sense. But I believe a state test on top of two benchmark tests, both administered multiple times throughout the year, should be considered educational malpractice, except in the rarest of cases. Because every test sacrifices instructional hours that can never be recovered.

I’ve written this too many times. One more time into the breach, though, because many educational decision makers remain overly enamored of adding and analyzing data. Rather than learning the minutiae of learning gaps, we should be filling the gaps. We can’t fill those gaps while testing.

And we have to watch out for enthusiastic exhortations about the advantages of data.