Wish I had already taken Educational Finance class!

I think what struck me most about Sunday's class was my lack of knowledge of school funding and how that made looking at some of the numbers in the data exercise difficult. I know as there is talk of turning the Western program into a cohort this may be remedied; my colleagues and I currently in the program will unfortunately not be able to enjoy the planned sequencing the cohort model will have. Sadly, however, I feel that our brief exposure to two data sets from the IIRC is more than many principals already on the job for many years have had until recently. In this case, I'm glad Dr. Closen listened to his wife and decided to have us work with the data. I must admit, I found myself a bit lost with terms like Safe Harbor, being an Iowa educator. Having had to maneuver through data for the marketing plan in 519, I can see a distinct difference between the Iowa and Illionois websites. Some of this I'm sure stems from how each state handles NCLB. I look forward to working with more data in this class and getting a better handle on 'things that aren't quite right,' as well as how to pair up the numbers between various schools. I honestly believe that all of us in education, be we teachers or administrators, need to keep a serious handle and eye on the data--especially test scores and finances!