Recently I found a memo in my mailbox asking me and my grade partners to do some data analysis and pass it along to our coach and our principal. Without getting into the specifics, this was data analysis for which neither Acuity or ARIS would be any help and would probably take the better part of a week--if I did no other grading, lesson planning, or data analysis for that week. I was about to take a deep sigh, gird my loins, and get ready to dig into the data when I saw the deadline on the memo.

It was the same day.

THE SAME DAY.

Surely someone had made a mistake. Yes. I would go to my coach and get this straightened out...

Or not.

No, my coach said, the deadline was correct. So could we get that now?

I tried to explain, nicely, on behalf of my colleagues, that to complete this data analysis would require us working with 100+ writing samples and that it was not the kind of thing where we could just copy data we already had. I think my coach on some level understood this. She pledged to get back to us.

But still. Does no one think things like this all the way through? Is there no sense, on the part of the administration, of how long things like this take? Does anyone understand that, if you are asking teachers to put something like this that is not going to directly, immediately benefit the children on the front burner, you are in effect asking us to back-burner that which will?

I don't know. You tell me. But leave a message. Apparently I'll be doing data analysis until Christmas.