Educational data mining

I either agree with most of Obama's educational agenda or can accept it if he's careful with how he goes about it. (Early childhood education: good. Increased charter schools: good if done right. Merit pay: be very, very careful about how it's implemented).

But I have real concerns about what seems to be the next big thing: Education Data Systems, which is one of Obama's proposals. (Note: the Education Week article is subscription only.) I fear data mining is the new standardized testing.

The idea sounds good. It says, let's keep close track of students' progress over the years so we can tailor their education to fit their individual needs. And let's use all those numbers to improve educational research, which will improve education.

My problem is, I don't think it'll work out that way.

I'm concerned about two things. All that data mining has a sinister tone to me. Courtesy of the huge storage capabilities of today's computers, which will probably grow exponentially, it's possible to preserve obscene amounts of information about students that could eventually come back to haunt them. Take the Bush wiretapping orgy as an example of the way surveillance can be misused.

Second, the idea that data mining will yield significant results that will help students and improve education is based on the "everything can be reduced to a number" theory of humans. Economists love the idea. If their predictive fiascos haven't debunked the wisdom they pretend to gain from crunching huge quantities of numbers to arrive at conclusions, we're in trouble. And compared to the human spirit, that unquantifiable essence inside each of us, the study of the economy is a 2+2 arithmetic problem. Relying on quantifiable numbers in education leads to very simplistic — and often very wrong headed — solutions to very complex problems.

But if you have some money to invest, go with stock in data mining corporations. I would have said the same thing about testing companies at the start of No Child Left Behind. It promises to be a growth industry, sucking up scarce education dollars with very little benefit as a result.