Richard C. Seder

“Nothing pleases people more than to go on thinking what they have always thought, and at the same time imagine that they are thinking something new and daring: it combines the advantage of security and the delight of adventure.” - T. S. Eilliott

@mpolikoff There is a certain retired professor of higher education that I believe suggested just that on Facebook…doughnuts solve all problems and conflicts.

Launch of a new report: How do we define and demonstrate value from continuous improvement in the NHS? @HelenBevan

@Dr_ConstanceL It would actually be fair to say that a lot of it is bad.

Are we allowed to say some of this “research” is bad? I’m about to lose my mind

In a re-analysis of Tennessee STAR, “if the 29% of highly sensitive schools [to class size reduction] had been omitted from the experiment, 2SLS would have failed to detect any causal effect of class size on test scores.” Interesting… nber.org/papers/w32338?…

WestEd reception always far, far better than the @USCRossier reception at #AERA. One, the food is appreciably better (it’s not even close). Two, I always see friends at the WestEd reception with tons of conversation vs @USCRossier could care less if I was there even as an alum.

@mpolikoff AERA stinks (said as an an intentional non-attendee). Philly food is great.

@mpolikoff Can I petition that it be your forever Workday picture? 😁

@dpeurach joining us live at the Sharjah International Summit on Improvement in Education from Michigan. (It’s 3:15am in Ann Arbor Michigan…what a trooper!)

@dpeurach addressing the Sharjah International Summit on Improvement in Education hosted by the Sharjah Education Academy and the Sharjah Private Education Authority together with the @CarnegieFdn.

@mpolikoff As I told someone who was remarking on the same dynamics you described, some of it is uncontrolled narcissism…people wanting to be recognized and loved for their outstanding work as they believe they are the best and anything that isn’t that is viewed as threat.

@mpolikoff The pettiness and actions on perceived fears and the amount of time & energy spent on non-work were many reasons I did not go the academic route. With that said, these same behaviors pervade the profit and nonprofit sectors, too.

@mpolikoff I’ll share my opinion: good riddance. They were slow and unresponsive to make changes to online content. With that said, it doesn’t solve the fundamental problems with the EdD program.

Not so hot take: anybody that drafts #CalebWilliams will be drafting another Kyler Murray — undersized, small hands, quick enough to evade in college but not the NFL, always throwing off his back foot while going backwards because he’s not tall enough to step up in the pocket.

@mpolikoff But…but…I thought homework doesn’t matter.

@FarleyRipple Bad-faith argument.

@spencerideas Moreover, treating metrics like RBI w/o understanding contex loses meaning…just like any metric. Did/do I ever compare RBIs of lead-off hitters and clean-up hitters? No. The context and an understanding of the game tells me not to. Interpretation requires understanding context.

@spencerideas Would be nice if didn’t straw-man test scores/value-added. And, just as baseball metrics have improved to provide more information, so too does work of educators, paychometricians, researchers, etc. to improve education/learning metrics.

In baseball, there's an entirely useless statistic called Runs Batted In (RBI). When I was a kid, we would often hear about the RBI leaders and I immediately noticed two trends in RBI leaders. 1. They nearly all played for teams with a really good offense. 2. They nearly all hit at the 4th or 5th spot in the line-up. I was a nerdy little kid who didn't know anything but I knew this was a bogus statistic. See, RBI measures how many runners a batter knocks in. Sounds important, right? Definitely something worth measuring. But it turns out that it's highly skewed. Not every batter is in the position to knock in a run. If you are the lead-off hitter (batting #1 in the line-up) you often bat with no runners on. Also, if you're on a crappy team, you run into the same challenge. So it turns out that RBI count doesn't really tell you how well someone hits for power. For that, you need a stat called slugging percentage. If you want to see how consistent a batter is, go with on-base percentage. If you're looking for balance, go with OPS (on-based plus slugging percentage). In pitching the equivalent is a win-loss record or an ERA compared to WHIP. Total wins is a metric based on a team's overall performance. But the things is, our world is full of seriously flawed statistics. BMI is useless compared to measuring one's actual vitals. Plus, BMI has a really negative history connected to eugenics. Go look it up. It's disgusting. And even today, it's often weaponized against perfectly healthy people when they don't fit the stereotype of "average" that doesn't actually exist. I run 5 days a week. I eat healthy food. My body fat percentage is low to moderate but based on BMI I'm obese. I share all of this because the same thing exists in education. When we use standardized test scores to measure a student's learning (or worse, still, a teacher's effectiveness) we're often running into the same trap as the RBI. We're measuring privilege and positionality while ignoring the data that actually matters. We're running into the BMI trap and failing to embrace neurodiversity. And, like BMI, there's a dark side of psychometric history rooted in eugenics. I'm not opposed to data. I love data. But my love for data is precisely why I hate bad data. My love for data is precisely why I am so opposed to nearly every policy that uses standardized tests to measure learning.

“It seems to maybe be trending in the right direction, but it’s still basically flat.” Ummm…ok.

@mpolikoff @USCRossier @UAS_CESR 👏👏👏

And only gets worse. Gate agents start boarding process. But everyone on plane says it’s not ready to be boarded because catering still doing their thing. They push everyone that started boarding off plane again. It’s almost as if this is the first day of @united operations!!!