Re: SWAT TEAMS!

[Laura VaN <abrilmackenzie@HOTMAIL.COM>]

> From: Erwin Morton <e-morton@WORLDNET.ATT.NET>
from an article:  Dr. McAdams, the Houston professor, said there are a
variety of things school districts do to save poorly performing schools.
Sometimes changing principals or teachers makes the difference. Some
districts, such as Houston's, have replaced entire school staffs.
Erwin:  With what effect?  (I want to hear about *all*
the cases, not just selected success stories.)

Excellent point.  As you probably already know, data collection is critical.
 If the rocket scientists that worked for NASA (directly or through
contracts) only knew how to collect data  the Challenger disaster would
never have happened.  But instead of collecting data about when the "o-ring"
failed, and when it didn't fail - they only plotted data on when it failed.
When the scientists plotted just the failures, they couldn't find a clear
pattern to the failure.  However Once Feynmann was brought in - after the
disaster - and told them they had to plot ALL the data (the failures and
non-failures), it was clear at what temperature the "o-ring" became
vulnerable!  The engineers had a feeling the Challenger shouldn't go up, but
they couldn't clearly articulate why to the political powers, and so it went
up against advice and with the engineers holding their breath and not sure
why.

We need to collect data and not just what doesn't work, but also on what
does work! - and when and where and with whom.
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