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The fundamental premise of Moneyball is that the labor market of sports is inefficient, and that many teams systematically undervalue particular athletic skills that help them win. While these skills are often subtle – and the players that possess them tend to toil in obscurity - they can be identified using sophisticated statistical techniques, aka sabermetrics. Home runs are fun. On-base percentage is crucial.

The wisdom of the moneyball strategy is no longer controversial. It’s why the A’s almost always outperform their payroll,

However, the triumph of moneyball creates a paradox, since its success depends on the very market inefficiencies it exposes. The end result is a relentless search for new undervalued skills, those hidden talents that nobody else seems to appreciate. At least not yet.

A few years ago, a student at my high school was having a terrible time passing one of the exams needed to earn a Regents Diploma.

Mary has a learning disability that truly impacts her retention and analytical thinking.

Because she was a special education student, at the time there was an easier exam available, the RCT, which she could take and then use to earn a local high school diploma instead of the Regents Diploma.

Federal education law now requires one non-academic measure of school progress, which has led some districts to consider including students’ social and emotional growth as a performance measure.

She writes that even the researchers who popularized terms like “grit” think using it to measure school effectiveness is a bad idea:

Students in hybrid classrooms outperformed their peers in traditional classes in all grades and subjects, according to the newest study from two organizations that work with schools in establishing hybrid instruction.

The results come out of those classes where students either took the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests or Keystone Exams to measure academic achievement.

In one example, hybrid learning eighth grade math students at Hatboro-Horsham School District (PA) passed the PSSA tests and Keystone Exams at a rate10 percent higher than their non-hybrid peers in five schools.

Most educational policy elites, whether in government or in the nonprofit sector, mean well.

Yet policymakers tend to come from a relatively privileged slice of American society.  And they tend to possess a set of beliefs and assumptions distinct to their background. 

But in most cases, the fact that decision-makers inhabit a different world from students—and particularly, poor students—is a matter of great significance.

 A brand-new study on the academic effects of homework offers not only some intriguing results but also a lesson on how to read a study — and a reminder of the importance of doing just that:  reading studies (carefully) rather than relying on summaries by journalists or even by the researchers themselves.

First, no research has ever found a benefit to assigning homework (of any kind or in any amount) in elementary school.  In fact, there isn’t even a positive correlation between, on the one hand, having younger children do some homework (vs. none), or more (vs. less), and, on the other hand, any measure of achievement.  If we’re making 12-year-olds, much less five-year-olds, do homework, it’s either because we’re misinformed about what the evidence says or because we think kids ought to have to do homework despite what the evidence says.

Second, even at the high school level, the research supporting homework hasn’t been particularly persuasive.

Your teachers were not allowed to teach, but were required to focus on preparing you for those all-important standardized tests.

Your teachers were held responsible if you failed, and expected to show that they had tried hard to avoid that dreaded result.

First, I am your professor, not your teacher. There is a difference.

Assessments should give us loads of information about what our students understand, what they don’t understand, and how well we’ve taught them.

It took me years of teaching before I realized I was using my tests and quizzes to sort out, reward and punish my students, rather than measure and inform my teaching. I needed to make my assessments work harder for me.

I could identify specific misconceptions students had about the material and get better at addressing those the next time around. I also became a much better test maker.

Yet in actual schools, curiosity is drastically underappreciated.

The power of curiosity to contribute not only to high achievement, but also to a fulfilling existence, cannot be emphasized enough.

When Orville Wright, of the Wright brothers fame, was told by a friend that he and his brother would always be an example of how far someone can go in life with no special advantages, he emphatically responded, “to say we had no special advantages … the greatest thing in our favor was growing up in a family where there was always much encouragement to intellectual curiosity.”

Compare your school district with its neighbors