Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

Your data… that evidence your interventions work… may well be the Hawthorne Effect.

Hate to break the news, but books, notebooks, chalkboards are all technologies… and teachers rejected them when they were first introduced.

One thing I learned during 30 years in education: teachers vastly underestimate the quality of their tests.

Average is a meaningless measure. Variation is the reality of life.

The problem, of course, is that too much teacher education is about meeting regulations and teaching the latest “next big thing.”

IMO standard tests (which must be improved) give us insight into a small part of “being educated” (how we compare to similar folks). How students create polished products matters more. How students navigate hierarchical social organizations matters more.

Superficiality characterizes a particular approach to teaching. It has been under attack since long before ChatGPT by some educators. If education it threatened, it is that brand.

“Open access” for a limited time isn’t really open is it?

I’m quite certain students’ futures cannot be predicted by a test score.

As a leader, you don’t have to understand how everything works, but you should understand how some things work.

Ya gotta wonder… are apathetic students the result of a system that tells them what to learn all the time and care only about test scores?

Freedom of speech does not mean free from judgement.

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. - W. Edwards Deming

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest. - Isaac Asimov

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. - Isaac Asimov

I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students. - Carl Sagan

What if we just listened? Maybe our burning questions would be answered without asking.

People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. -Isaac Asimov

I accepted a course this fall. It has been wonderful, but I sure am looking forward to having my time back.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. -Carl Sagan