Dr. Phil Downs: Language is an Imperfect Model

In 1949, my parents were 10 years old, Harry Truman was president, the Mann Gulch fire revolutionized the study of forest fires, the Berlin Blockade ended, Mao Tse Tung became the premiere of the People’s Republic of China, the Geneva Convention was signed, Lucky Lady II performed the first non-stop circumnavigation flight of the planet, 1984 was published, NATO was established, Newfoundland joined Canada, the world's first commercially available computer, The Ferranti Mark 1, was released, and the first ISBA/IAPSS conference was held.

Indiana Education Spending

Here is a fact: from 2009 to 2018 the Tuition Support budget used to pay Indiana’s public and charter school teachers has grown by 13% while inflation has grown by 17%, and the total Indiana General Fund Budget grew by 21%. There is money in the General Fund to bring Education funding up to inflation. Our elected officials made a choice to move money away from public and charter educators and are failing to live up to the responsibility to fund public education they took on in 2009.

Came across this in Michael Lewis' The Fifth Risk.

"The only thing any of us can do completely on our own is to have the start of a good idea." -Kathy Sullivan

It takes a network or team to build something great. A leader has to let their vision adjust to that of the group.

Recently there have been a lot of stories and opinion pieces written about the Indiana voucher program and school funding. There appears to be a misconception about how the voucher program works as well as its impact on public schools.

“Applying simple solutions to complex problems creates more complex problems." -Ronald Heifetz

Recently Indiana released the A-F grades for its schools. Each year there is a chance any given school’s ISTEP+ scores and A-F grades may go up or down. This is because ISTEP+ fits statistical models and “regression to the mean” is a real thing.