Beyond the Spec

What information matters when you’re buying a new cell phone? What about deciding what school to send your child to? Or picking where you want to apply for a teaching job? If you do research for your cell phone purchase at places like Consumer Reports or at shopping sites like Amazon.com, what you’ll find first is a list of statistics and measurements. How many megapixels is the camera, how long does the battery last, how many songs does it hold, etc. If you’re researching a school on a website like greatschools.com or many district webpages, you’ll see information on things like test scores, student/teacher ratio, and the percentage of special education students. Making a choice is then pretty easy, right? You weigh the objective evidence and decide you want the phone with the most memory for your money or want the school with the best combination of low student/teacher ratio and high test scores. Problem solved and you’re back to playing Angry Birds in no time.

But we know that’s not true. While stats and objective data are vital, they aren’t everything. MG Siegler at TechCrunch makes just this point, arguing that the age of the “spec” (short for specification) in technology is over. No longer are consumers simply looking at the technical specifications of competing products, whether this information is on an Amazon page or the little placards on the shelves at Best Buy. It’s not about the amount of RAM in a laptop or the megapixels in the camera, it’s about the feel of the software, how fast you can set it up, or how well the app store integrates with your other devices. While the specs may be easy to measure and to boil down to a number, that doesn’t mean they are the most important pieces of information. Look at the iPhone. There are phones that have longer battery life or more memory or a fancier camera. But no other phone has the intuitive ease of use, the seamless integration with iTunes on your computer, or the speed with which it can switch between apps. All of which contribute to the iPhone being the most popular phone in the world.

The important question in technology is no longer what, but how. Smart consumers don’t ask, “What features does this phone have?” but “how well does this phone work?” At the core, this is really an argument for the limitation of data, the necessity of making subjective judgments, and importance of digging below the surface. There are lots of important things that you can measure, but not everything important can be reduced to a number, score, or simple answer.

Since this is an education blog and not a technology one, let’s make the pivot to schools. In the last 20 years, the amount of data that schools have to work with has exploded. Virtually every school in America talks in some way about being “data-driven”. Parents and community members also have access to way more information than they did in the past, ranging from websites like Greatschools.com to tables in the newspaper showing which schools made AYP. But just like in tech, if we only look at the data, we’re missing much of what’s important.

An example: as a school leader, I want to know how strong our student culture is. One way to do this is for me to look at the number of students sent to the office each day or track the number of students who get a “red” on their behavior report, which is our language for a “bad” day. This would give me helpful information for sure. But the best way for me to get a feel for student culture is to walk around the building, pop into classes, and talk to teachers and students. Doing this doesn’t give me a score or a number, but I can tell when we’re having a strong morning, when the kids seem a bit off, or when teachers seem tired and less patient, just like I can tell that my iPhone is easier to use than a BlackBerry. It’s not that plotting the number of students sent to the office over two weeks doesn’t give me useful information; simply that it’s not enough. If I’m making decision based solely on data and not combining it with my subjective impressions, I’m not doing a good job.

A second example plays out when we host visitors at KPEA. We have lots of people who come through our doors to check out what we’re doing, ranging from community members to prospective teachers to school leaders from other states. I love having visitors (I never say no to someone who wants to visit) and always make time to answer any questions that folks have. Often, these questions are focused on what is measurable or objectively answered. Things like, what math curriculum we use, how many minutes we have for reading, or how many students are in a class. These questions aren’t bad, but they’re the educational equivalent of asking how big a hard drive a laptop has. My answer will tell you something about KPEA, but nothing really important. The better questions take that measurable information and dig deeper. Why did you choose to use Everyday Math? How did you decide that first grade students should have an hour for guided reading and literacy centers? How do you structure your instruction so you reach the individual needs of all 25 students in a class?  

Let’s close the circle and come back to that TechCrunch article. In it, Siegler cites a tweet from Dustin Curtis advocating that technology review websites stop organizing information into buckets like battery, screen, hardware, and other specs, but review the functions of the device, like making calls, sending emails, or playing movies. Let’s start doing the same in education. Greatschools.com should have student-teacher ratio, but they should also have the school’s instructional vision right next to it. Prospective teachers should ask how much prep time they’ll have each day (at least 60 minutes at KPEA BTW), but they also need to ask how we create a staff culture where teachers collaboratively plan and teach off each other’s lesson plans. Teachers and school leaders need to analyze assessment results, but we need to make sure we’re including our observational “data” from when we’re working with kids in math small groups too. To make good decisions about what is best for our kids, where we want to work, or what school is best for our child, we’ve got to move beyond the spec too.