Here is yet another example of creative tactics that have nothing to do with educating our kids. My district just open a new elementary school. They did some very interesting shifting of school populations from the surrounding four elementary schools, divided neighborhoods, and on the surface it seemed like just some real stupidity regarding efficiency in bus routes. So as I sat with my colleagues and discussed these irregularities and entertained the possibility that these might not just be random inefficiencies within a large school district struggling with a rapidly changing population. One interesting observation surfaced...could the school district be attempting to redistribute children among the 5 schools in a way that would keep various sub-groups just below the threshold that would require the district to break out and report the detailed data on these groups. Now this was just a hypothesis so I cannot say if is valid or not. But I can tell you, the general consensus of the group was... money and creative reporting were trumping common sense and efficiency. None of the plausible hypotheses related to quality of education or better services for the surrounding community.