We're all familiar with the different forms of assessment:

• diagnostic
• formative
• summative

Many teachers spend a lot of time and effort creating "good" assessments that accurately assess what the students know.  I myself have spent copious amounts of time painstakingly creating exam blueprints to ensure that curricular outcomes are assessed -- and I'm not alone. A large amount of professional development days in schools are devoted to improving assessment techniques.

As such, education is becoming more data focused than ever. Everyone I speak with has their own, usually strong, opinion on whether or not this is a path that they want to head down. However, I would argue that there is one thing that most of us can agree on: the results collected do not always translate into a teaching response in the classroom. There are a variety of reasons for this lack of connection -- over-packed curriculum, lack of time, worn out teachers, a misunderstanding of correlation vs. causation, political initiatives with a separate focus -- the list could go on and on.

The following cartoon illustrates this disconnect beautifully -- we spend so much time and energy focusing on how best to collect data that we often forget the most important component is the follow up.