Surveys are common currency in data-driven improvement. The allure of surveys is easy to understand. Thanks to mobile technology, surveys are more easily designed and deployed now than ever before. They offer the veneer of scientific objectivity. Results can be auto-generated in colorful graphs and pie charts. However, the apparent ease of survey design does not necessarily mean that surveys are always the best option for gathering data nor does it guarantee that surveys will be well designed to elicit the information...

My name is James Noonan, assistant professor of education at Salem State University and Associate Director of Research for the MA Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment. But I’m speaking tonight as the father of two BPS children and someone who strongly supports the new exam school admissions proposal. 

In 1971, before court-ordered desegregation introduced a 35 percent “set aside” for students from under-represented subgroups,...

My daughter is losing her computer teacher to a budget cut. Well, maybe. The principal tells us that the teacher is okay with it. The district tells us that in fact there is no cut. But explanations ring hollow when you’re upset and looking for someone to blame, and so the question became: in a funding fight, in a system as complex as education, who is to blame?

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For 35 years, Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences (MI Theory) has reassured us that people are more than the sum of any intelligence test. MI Theory has found special resonance among educators, who every day see tremendous variation in what students do well and where they struggle.

In addition to helping us understand individuals, MI Theory may also be instructive for how we understand schools. After all, schools...