The Washington Post Challenge Index is the most egregious example of nonsensical oversimplification of educator data. It boasts its simplicity, as if it’s laudable to reduce the 370-year-old pursuit of excellence in American public education to an algebra problem so simple a third grader could do it at any school on the list. The index takes the total number of Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) tests that are administered, divides it by the number of graduating seniors, and generates an index. The idea is that a school is “more challenging” if it administers more AP and IB tests. If every child at the school takes one test, the index is the “baseline” of 1.0.

Let me do some oversimplifying of my own: That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.

Firstly, neither AP nor IB tests are terminal degrees, friends. They’re not the ultimate aim of public education, and they are certainly not the benchmark for appropriately challenging coursework for the average student. The index does not take into account one iota the specific, appropriate needs of the individual child. It doesn’t matter if a child strives tirelessly, benefits from tremendous instruction created by rigorous faculty members, and passes a self-contained, modified course of Algebra I, even if that is immensely challenging for the child. Secondly, many schools do not have the capacity to offer certain AP tests and very few schools offer IB programs. What about those schools? Do we disenfranchise entire school districts, simply because they have not opted to develop AP and/or IB programs? What about schools that offer rigorous curricula without administering those tests? What about schools that instead focus on intense internship and workplace partnership programs? Are they “less challenging?”

Worst of all, however, are schools – and I’ve taught at a school like this… – that consciously administer as many tests as they can, with no regard for passing. That’s right, kids. No surprise, like every other nonsense statistic, losers game the system. I listened to an assistant principal, for whom I have the total respect I have for  pocket lint, explain in detail the desirability of having every child take every possible AP test, and stated carte blanche and straightfaced that it didn’t matter how the kids did.

The school shot up on the Challenge Index. Kudos, O Captain, My Captain. Kudos.

The Challenge Index is a lie. Like so many other educational statistics that have nothing to do with meaningful formative and summative assessment data gathered over time using effective indicators – do I sound like a broken record yet? that’s because people still aren’t listening - the Challenge Index uses garbage data to generate a meaningless number, and we ought to ignore it outright.

The U.S. News Best List is more complicated, but no better.

Firstly, the methodology has changed regularly over the years, so one cannot compare one year to another, making meaningful measurements over time nigh-impossible without creating an index for the index. Nice: more snapshots in time without meaningful over-time analysis.

The methodology itself is tripartite, each with its massive flaws:

Step one is to take reading and math scores from standardized tests (we could stop right there; this is unreliable data, but let’s pretend for a moment that we care about standardized test scores), and compare these scores to the state average, with an allowance to bump up scores for economically-disadvantaged households. Notice I didn’t say socioeconomically. Ever wonder why we teachers never talk just about economics? Because a child’s learning has everything to do with social, emotional, psychological, and physiological development, and economic factors are generally tied intimately to social factors. No allowance is made for a social factor, so long as the kid’s family isn’t below the statistically-ridiculous, utterly-unrealistic poverty line. So we’re starting only with reading and mathematics scores, with no allowance for language or social factors, as measured by tragically-unreliable standardized tests.

You want to keep going? Let’s not and say we did. Oh, fine. Next:

Step two is to perform step one again (no, I’m not kidding), only this time we’re only going to look at black, Hispanic, and poor kids. Big surprise: We’re going to discriminate against people of color! Now, U.S. News would probably say “oh, no, we’re doing the opposite by seriously considering how important this is.” Nonsense. You make step two a non-step for white, suburban schools. You give a little bump to a predominantly black, poor school in step two, but we know from every meaningful measurement ever done on the subject that a predominantly black, poor school is already starting off disadvantaged. If a school like that can keep pace with an average white, suburban school, doesn’t that make it a vastly better school? Yes. Yes it does. It does for those of us that understand relativity, and believe that growth over time and comparisons to individual benchmarks are far more meaningful and statistically-relevant than overgeneralized, overbroad categorizations like this.

Step three, as if we hadn’t already had enough, looks a lot like the Challenge Index, so insert all of my previous lambasting here as a copy-paste job, only U.S. News does include performance as a consideration. The U.S. News calculation takes the total number of AP and IB tests that are “passed,” and divides it by the number of seniors (not graduates), to develop their so-called “College Readiness Index.” The CRI gives 75% of its weight to AP, the rest to IB.

To “pass” an AP test – which means you get a 3 or better – you need to answer about a 51% of the test correctly. That’s right. Just over a 50 is “passing,” and can lead to college credit. Welcome to our world.

Oh, by the way… College is not the end game for many of America’s children. This disgusting notion that every child, regardless of circumstance, must go to college immediately after graduation is helping to kill our schools, is hurting children, and I believe might be contributing to socioeconomic problems nationally. (I’m not an economist.)

That’s how we’re going to rank our schools? By measuring only reading and math scores on standardized tests, giving affluent schools a pass on the second part of the test, and then ramping up for the number of kids that get just over 50% of an AP test right? That’s quality? No. No it’s not. No part of these two figures is meaningful to the daily practice of teaching children. The very best AP teachers I’ve ever known in my life, who teaching with astonishing rigor and excellence, will never appear on an index like this, nor will the unparalleled improvements in performance that many students experience under the tutelage of gifted professional educators that choose to work in challenging, needy schools.

The U.S. News & World Report Best List is a lie. Garbage in, garbage out. Noneducator laypeople using unreliable, irrelevant data in oversimplified, meaningless analysis continue to drive public education policy by brainwashing the public into thinking that this crap matters. It doesn’t.

To be clear about my position on this, I know and have worked with exceedingly-mediocre schools that get medals and accolades on the list, and with some of the finest high schools in the nation that are nowhere on the list. Either list. I’ve no personal investment in these figures. Indeed, I don’t believe any professional educator should put any stock in any of these things.

Teaching children is complicated work, and measuring how effectively students learn is immensely complicated. Oversimplifying it for the convenience of non-educators is a constant distraction from the true revolution in the design of our schools and teaching children effectively. The research tells us what to do, our common experiences tell us how to do it, and these silly exercises should be pushed aside and flatly ignored by everyone.

Especially educators.

1. Power your computer down entirely
2. Shut off the WiFi adapter by moving the switch on the front of your computer to the red (off) position.
3. Dock your computer in one of the docking stations in one of the teacher work areas.
4. Power your computer on.
5. At the log-in screen, use your latest password. Your computer will look at the APS hardwired network, which leads directly to the servers at central office, and will correct your machine’s local passwords to match the proper password on the Arlington servers.
6. Once you see your desktop, undock your computer from the docking station, and turn your WiFi adapter back on by moving the switch on the front of your computer to the no-red-showing (on) position.
7. In the lower right hand corner of your screen, next to the clock, you should see three icons, the center of which should look like five bars. (There may be an orange dot over the top of the bars. That’s okay.) Click on the five-bar Wireless icon, and click APS.
8. If you see two buttons appear that say “terminate” and “connect,” click connect. You may need to do this twice.
9. If you receive the message “unable to connect,” reboot your machine and try again.

1. Open the Outlook client software.
2. Click the orange File tab in the upper left.
3. Near the bottom of the menu on the left, click Options.
4. Click the second options,  Mail.
5. Under the third heading, “Message arrival,” locate “Display a Desktop Alert.”
6. Uncheck “Display a Desktop Alert.”
7. Click OK.

Step One: Copy Video Files from Flip Camera to Hard Drive

1. Insert the Flip Camera into your computer. If you’ve never done this before, a program will launch to install the necessary software so the Camera and Computer can talk to one another.
2. Click the round Start button in the lower left-hand corner of your screen.
3. Click Computer.
4. Double-click the Flip Camera, acting as if it is another drive.
5. Double-click the DCIM folder.
6. Double-click the VIDEO100 folder.
7. Select all of the videos you want to use. You can click on one video, or hold down CTRL on your keyboard and click multiple videos to select them.
8. Right-click the last video you selected, and click Copy.
9. Minimize all windows until you see your desktop.
10. Right-click on an empty area on your desktop.
11. Click New.
12. Click Folder.
13. Name the folder something specific, like “Entry 2 Video.”
14. Double-click the folder you just created.
15. Right-click on an empty area of the folder window that appears.
16. Click Paste.

This step requires the Pazera Free MP4 to AVI Converter program. To download it, click the “Direct Download Link” underneath the green button (do not click the green button) on the Pazera download page on C-Net. (Clicking this link will open a new tab.) When you install Pazera, read the screen carefully at each step to avoid installing programs you don’t want. When the screen says “Get any website or document translated…” click “Decline” in the lower left-hand corner. Click “Decline” on the next two screens as well. Then click “Finish.”

1. Launch the Pazera converter.
2. In the upper left-hand corner, click Add Files.
3. Navigate to the Desktop, then into the folder you created in Step 1.
4. Select the video files you want to convert. (Probably all of them.)
5. Click Open.
6. Two items to the right from where you clicked Add Files, now click CONVERT.

If you recorded your videos precisely as you want to burn them, skip this step. If you need to trim your video to a specific length, such as “I want to use the portion of this video between 2:45 and 17:45,” then follow these steps.

This step requires Windows Movie Maker 2.6. To download it, click here. (Clicking this link will open a new tab.) You must be using Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8 to use this program. Click “Download” on the page that opens, and install the software.

1. Launch Windows Movie Maker 2.6.
2. If you see the “Show Timeline” button in the bottom right area of your screen, click it. If you see the “Show Storyboard” button there, leave it alone. The bottom of your screen should look like a light blue film strip that says “Drag media to the timeline to begin making a movie.
3. Click File then click Import into collections
4. Navigate to the Desktop, then into the folder you created in Step 1.
5. Select the video files you want to edit. (Probably just one entry’s converted video.)
1. Note: It’s important you select the AVI file you created in Step 2, not the original MP4 file you downloaded in Step 1. They may have the same name, but when you mouse over the files, only one of them will say “MP4.” That is the wrong file.
6. Click Import.
7. From the drop-down menu in the top center of your screen, find and click the Collection containing the imported video file you want to use.
8. Click and drag the video clip from the center Collection window to the light blue Timeline at the bottom of the screen
1. Note: For the next steps, you may need to use the Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons on the left hand side of your timeline. They look like small magnifying glasses with + and – icons.
9. Place your cursor over the video clip that you just added to your timeline. You will notice when you keep your cursor still that a timestamp appears. Locate the timestamp you want your finished video to start with. In our example, that might be 2:45, so you’d move your cursor until you were hovered over 2:45. Left click once to place your cursor, which will add a black vertical line to your clip.
10. Click Clip at the top of your screen.
11. Click Split.
12. Repeat Step 9 for the timestamp you want your finished video to end with. In our example, that might be 17:45, so you’d move your cursor until you were hovered over 17:45. Left click once to place your cursor again, which will add a black vertical line to your clip.
13. Click Clip.
14. Click Split.
15. Use the horizontal scrollbar along the bottom of your screen to go back to the beginning of the timeline, all the way to the left.
16. Click on the video clip at the beginning (leftmost) of your timeline. This is the beginning of the original video, which you do not want included.
17. Press the Delete key on your keyboard to remove it.
18. Use the horizontal scrollbar along the bottom of your screen to go to the end of the timeline, all the way to the right.
19. Click on the video clip at the end (rightmost) of your timeline. This is the end of the original video, which you do not want included.
20. Press the Delete key on your keyboard to remove it.
21. You are now left with a finished video of the length that you desire, starting and stopping in the correct place.