Training for the data mines
I’m on training, today and tomorrow. With a gang of happy go lucky administrators from our schools. We’re preparing the way for a new regime of paper pushing.
You see, we keep copious files on our student body. Enough tidbits that secretaries are employed year round to keep up. And now it’s time to harvest the crop. It turns out that there is yet another software doodad available, that will allow the administrators to act in a predictive manner; they’ll let the computer watch for trends, in a stock-market sort of way, so that a student who has started to “slide dangerously” (that’s admin-speak for a decline in productivity) can be red-flagged. Or yellow-flagged, or green-flagged. The software is really versatile that way.
We’re learning to generate letters to Mom and Dad, with serious boilerplate, to let them know that Johnny has a) been tardy b) disrespectful c) fraudulent d) inattentive e) all of the above on a basis that must give us pause. We’ll be able to create even larger student dossiers and keep the information current for years to come with access to past seasons. Kind of like hockey players or something.
Since I’ll be supporting all this data mining, I get a ringside seat. Oh joy!
