By Emily Talmage for Save Maine Schools - Across the country, teachers are being asked to collect, record, and slog through mountains of data that “experts” insist is meant to improve their practice. There are pre-assessments and post-assessments, habits of work rubrics, writing prompts, social and emotional screeners, standards-based grading systems, RTI data, student learning objectives, professional growth goals, student surveys, self evaluations, administrator evaluations, office discipline referrals, results from progress monitoring programs …the data demands go on and on, and all of it must be entered and stored in learning management systems. Recently, a few brave teachers have begun to publicly state the obvious: that we don’t need all of this data to do our jobs well. Unfortunately, no one seems to be listening, as there is a far more powerful entity that does need all this data: Wall Street. As Pay for Success schemes – also known as Social Impact Bonds – sweep the country, data collection in schools is reaching new heights. “[It’s] an approach that has come of age,” Andy Sieg, Managing Director and Head of Global Wealth and Retirement Solutions at Bank of America Merrill Lynch said of Pay for Success contracts.
