James Cantonwine
@jcantonw.bsky.social
District administrator located in Gig Harbor, WA.
Do your grades do a good job of representing how well you know the material or can perform the skills from your classes?
Do your classmates' grades do a good job of representing how well they know the material or can perform the skills from your classes?
Do your classmates' grades do a good job of representing how well they know the material or can perform the skills from your classes?
November 19, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Do your grades do a good job of representing how well you know the material or can perform the skills from your classes?
Do your classmates' grades do a good job of representing how well they know the material or can perform the skills from your classes?
Do your classmates' grades do a good job of representing how well they know the material or can perform the skills from your classes?
AI has an impressive ability to further justify whatever someone already thought about education, schools, the economy, or the world in general.
November 19, 2025 at 6:30 PM
AI has an impressive ability to further justify whatever someone already thought about education, schools, the economy, or the world in general.
Yes. I get so many emails from vendors selling roughly the same AI tool for teachers with a subtly different wrapper.
They don't like it when I mention not wanting to pay for moderately well-written prompts, and they get flummoxed when I mention our open-source project.
psd401.ai/aistudio
They don't like it when I mention not wanting to pay for moderately well-written prompts, and they get flummoxed when I mention our open-source project.
psd401.ai/aistudio
psd401.ai
November 19, 2025 at 6:27 PM
Yes. I get so many emails from vendors selling roughly the same AI tool for teachers with a subtly different wrapper.
They don't like it when I mention not wanting to pay for moderately well-written prompts, and they get flummoxed when I mention our open-source project.
psd401.ai/aistudio
They don't like it when I mention not wanting to pay for moderately well-written prompts, and they get flummoxed when I mention our open-source project.
psd401.ai/aistudio
Certainly some of them believe that anything other than performing a calculation is a demonstration of "conceptual understanding."
November 6, 2025 at 8:36 PM
Certainly some of them believe that anything other than performing a calculation is a demonstration of "conceptual understanding."
I wonder if there are thresholds below which additional compensation matters more than working conditions. Because salary-to-cost of living comparisons vary across (and within) states, is there some point where teacher preferences flip?
That seems intuitive to me but I've not seen data.
That seems intuitive to me but I've not seen data.
November 6, 2025 at 7:03 PM
I wonder if there are thresholds below which additional compensation matters more than working conditions. Because salary-to-cost of living comparisons vary across (and within) states, is there some point where teacher preferences flip?
That seems intuitive to me but I've not seen data.
That seems intuitive to me but I've not seen data.
3) Hanushek and Rivkin found working conditions play a larger role in teacher retention between sites. They note a few areas of potential investment that would be more effective than salary increases: behavior supports and improved leadership to start.
hanushek.stanford.edu/publications...
hanushek.stanford.edu/publications...
Pay, Working Conditions, and Teacher Quality | Eric A. Hanushek
Eric Hanushek and Steven Rivkin examine how salary and working conditions affect the quality of instruction in the classroom. The wages of teachers relative to those of other college graduates have fa...
hanushek.stanford.edu
November 6, 2025 at 6:22 PM
3) Hanushek and Rivkin found working conditions play a larger role in teacher retention between sites. They note a few areas of potential investment that would be more effective than salary increases: behavior supports and improved leadership to start.
hanushek.stanford.edu/publications...
hanushek.stanford.edu/publications...
2) If early-career earnings for credentialed teachers are higher for those hired into teaching roles, it suggests that those who pursued other options were wooed by something other than salary.
caldercenter.org/publications...
caldercenter.org/publications...
Out of the Gate, but Not Necessarily Teaching: A Descriptive Portrait of Early-Career Earnings for Those Who Are Credentialed to Teach | CALDER Center
caldercenter.org
November 6, 2025 at 6:21 PM
2) If early-career earnings for credentialed teachers are higher for those hired into teaching roles, it suggests that those who pursued other options were wooed by something other than salary.
caldercenter.org/publications...
caldercenter.org/publications...
1) If teachers leaving the profession are typically earning less than they were in the classroom, that working conditions > compensation. Certainly this is complicated by some percentage of leavers who were going to leave no matter what.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
journals.sagepub.com
November 6, 2025 at 6:21 PM
1) If teachers leaving the profession are typically earning less than they were in the classroom, that working conditions > compensation. Certainly this is complicated by some percentage of leavers who were going to leave no matter what.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
Data on compensation vs. working conditions are mixed, as this excerpt from @aefpweb.bsky.social Live Handbook notes, but there are three studies that I find more persuasive on compensation vs. working conditions.
livehandbook.org/k-12-educati...
livehandbook.org/k-12-educati...
livehandbook.org
November 6, 2025 at 6:20 PM
Data on compensation vs. working conditions are mixed, as this excerpt from @aefpweb.bsky.social Live Handbook notes, but there are three studies that I find more persuasive on compensation vs. working conditions.
livehandbook.org/k-12-educati...
livehandbook.org/k-12-educati...
Absolutely. We are still in a world where any assignment that can be worked on away from immediate supervision could represent something other than the student’s own work or thinking. This was always true (helicopter parents, essay writing services, etc.), but it’s going to be more pervasive.
November 5, 2025 at 4:53 AM
Absolutely. We are still in a world where any assignment that can be worked on away from immediate supervision could represent something other than the student’s own work or thinking. This was always true (helicopter parents, essay writing services, etc.), but it’s going to be more pervasive.
I don't know that it's strange: the literature already points to working conditions playing a larger role than compensation in teachers' decision to change employers or leave the profession.
November 4, 2025 at 10:23 PM
I don't know that it's strange: the literature already points to working conditions playing a larger role than compensation in teachers' decision to change employers or leave the profession.
Increased use of lockdown browsers and network whitelists are probably in our future. Neither are perfect, but the cost:benefit calculation is changing.
November 4, 2025 at 10:20 PM
Increased use of lockdown browsers and network whitelists are probably in our future. Neither are perfect, but the cost:benefit calculation is changing.
I am inundated with claims about AI-resistant assignments. To date, I've seen no digital assignment that can't be pretty easily defeated by a frontier model. Today's claims mostly boiled down to "Kids will be so motivated by this they won't want to use AI!" 🙄
November 4, 2025 at 10:18 PM
I am inundated with claims about AI-resistant assignments. To date, I've seen no digital assignment that can't be pretty easily defeated by a frontier model. Today's claims mostly boiled down to "Kids will be so motivated by this they won't want to use AI!" 🙄
WA has had a mandatory kindergarten readiness screener for over a decade tied to funding for full-day kindergarten. It's called WaKIDS but is really the TS-Gold screener underneath the hood. Results could be disaggregated by student or school group.
ospi.k12.wa.us/data-reporti...
ospi.k12.wa.us/data-reporti...
Data Portal
Data for Public Use The data portal is a repository for data from OSPI that is available for public use. Here you can find data about PreK-12 students, transportation, school facilities, school accoun...
ospi.k12.wa.us
November 4, 2025 at 9:19 PM
WA has had a mandatory kindergarten readiness screener for over a decade tied to funding for full-day kindergarten. It's called WaKIDS but is really the TS-Gold screener underneath the hood. Results could be disaggregated by student or school group.
ospi.k12.wa.us/data-reporti...
ospi.k12.wa.us/data-reporti...
If someone likes Visible Learning's tables, the EEF's work is more defensible, while still being easy enough to digest by folks out in schools. It's one that I refer people to after my disdain for meta-meta-analyses slips out. (I don't try to hide it anymore, so that's a low bar.)
October 16, 2025 at 11:45 PM
If someone likes Visible Learning's tables, the EEF's work is more defensible, while still being easy enough to digest by folks out in schools. It's one that I refer people to after my disdain for meta-meta-analyses slips out. (I don't try to hide it anymore, so that's a low bar.)
In my district it's a topic of discussions about enrollment and budgets for next year. In the vein of everything being local, we're seeing different trends than our neighbors: our high school enrollment is actually up (mostly transfers from a neighboring district).
October 1, 2025 at 9:08 PM
In my district it's a topic of discussions about enrollment and budgets for next year. In the vein of everything being local, we're seeing different trends than our neighbors: our high school enrollment is actually up (mostly transfers from a neighboring district).
Are you aware of any work that takes potential changes in birth rates into account when looking at post-pandemic trends? In my region, that's a question I hear but haven't seen analyzed.
October 1, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Are you aware of any work that takes potential changes in birth rates into account when looking at post-pandemic trends? In my region, that's a question I hear but haven't seen analyzed.
I love how in his demand for longitudinal data he shows his ignorance of how NAEP works and reveals a belief that SAT/ACT data would somehow improve sampling concerns. It's a really interesting intersection of Gell-Mann amnesia and the Dunning-Kruger effect.
September 30, 2025 at 5:14 PM
I love how in his demand for longitudinal data he shows his ignorance of how NAEP works and reveals a belief that SAT/ACT data would somehow improve sampling concerns. It's a really interesting intersection of Gell-Mann amnesia and the Dunning-Kruger effect.
For the SAT: reports.collegeboard.org/sat-suite-pr...
This has a whole different sampling problem, as your tested population is, almost by definition, not representative of all students.
This has a whole different sampling problem, as your tested population is, almost by definition, not representative of all students.
SAT Suite of Assessments – Reports | College Board
Download and review student participation and performance results for the tests that make up the SAT Suite of Assessments.
reports.collegeboard.org
September 29, 2025 at 10:52 PM
For the SAT: reports.collegeboard.org/sat-suite-pr...
This has a whole different sampling problem, as your tested population is, almost by definition, not representative of all students.
This has a whole different sampling problem, as your tested population is, almost by definition, not representative of all students.
I think NAEP has value and am not discounting the work that continues to go into it, but I strongly disagree that it's the best assessment to use to motivate or measure improvement at the student, school, and district levels. The samples are too small and the test just isn't designed for that.
September 29, 2025 at 9:29 PM
I think NAEP has value and am not discounting the work that continues to go into it, but I strongly disagree that it's the best assessment to use to motivate or measure improvement at the student, school, and district levels. The samples are too small and the test just isn't designed for that.
At the state level, NAEP scores are something you could potentially optimize for, but to really do so at secondary would require 1) giving up the autonomy on standards-writing that your voters presumably like and 2) agreeing that the way NAEP measures achievement is "better" than your other options.
September 29, 2025 at 9:26 PM
At the state level, NAEP scores are something you could potentially optimize for, but to really do so at secondary would require 1) giving up the autonomy on standards-writing that your voters presumably like and 2) agreeing that the way NAEP measures achievement is "better" than your other options.
"Impossible" is too strong, but the idea is directionally correct for a host of reasons. At the district or school levels, NAEP scores are something you cannot optimize for. In my own district of ~9,000 students, exactly zero 8th graders were selected to be tested in 2026.
September 29, 2025 at 9:23 PM
"Impossible" is too strong, but the idea is directionally correct for a host of reasons. At the district or school levels, NAEP scores are something you cannot optimize for. In my own district of ~9,000 students, exactly zero 8th graders were selected to be tested in 2026.
And consistent over time!
September 29, 2025 at 5:54 PM
And consistent over time!