The Most Misleading Number in Education

“Proficient” on a state test is a college-ready bar, not a passing line. What the scariest headline of testing season actually counts.

I Built an ABS Challenge Tracker. Here’s What the Data Shows.

I used to be a baseball purist, but I really love the innovations the game has added in the past few years. The pitch clock has made baseball much more enjoyable to watch.…

The Model vs. March Madness: The Bracket Breaks

The machine learning bracket model went 5-for-8 in the Sweet 16 and 2-for-4 in the Elite Eight. Then Duke’s championship prediction died on Braylon Mullins’ three-pointer…

Notes on public failure

"Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died." - George R.R. Martin from A Storm of Swords That quote has been rattling…

Trust Us With the Screens

A couple of weeks ago, I walked through one of our elementary schools during math block. Half the kids had pencils in hand, working through problems on paper. The other…

I Let a Machine Fill Out My Bracket

Every March, I fill out a bracket with the same strategy: gut feeling, a vague memory of who looked good in February, and the unshakeable belief that this is finally the…

TN Letter Grades: An Unsupervised Learning Clustering Approach

One of the more interesting ways to look at data is to use machine learning to sort your data into clusters. The particular tool I used for this is called K-Means…

TISA Dashboard

I decided to build a TISA Dashboard to keep track of funding coming in the next year. I wanted to also keep track of numbers that inform the dashboard in order to spot…

What do you tell teachers about AI?

I have spent the past year and change exploring the possibilities, limitations, and risks of Large-Language-Model AI, especially ChatGPT. In my role at work, I haven’t…

Fourth Grade Adequate Growth Explained

Here is my video presentation.

TN Letter Grades: A Machine Learning Approach

This blog continues the series on TN School Letter Grade data. You can find the first post here . The same dataset applies. Having looked at some of the preliminary…

A preliminary look at TN School Letter Grade Data

Summary I analyzed the statewide school letter grade data and found that poverty and race significantly impact the letter grades schools receive. The disregard for…

TN School Letter Grades Explained

Introduction Whenever you write something, you’re always supposed to have audience in mind. I do not have one in mind for this blog. It can be for educators or laypeople.…

Creating GPTs and the future of EdTech

ChatGPT plus users now have the ability to make their own GPTs. Think of these like personalized ChatGPT bots that have specific parameters. For example, the first one I…

Josh Heupel's Penalty Rates

Despite Josh Heupel’s success as a football coach at both the University of Central Florida (UCF) and the University of Tennessee (UT), and also despite perennial gaudy…

Indian Trail Presentation

ChatGPT AI: What teachers need to know. by Jason Horne

Niswonger Day of Learning 2023

What I learned talking Calculus at 44 years old. by Jason Horne

Greeneville TechBlitz Presentations

Tennessee TN Ready/EOC Rankings and Average Proficiency

I wanted to see where my county ranked annually with other school systems in the state in terms of TN Ready/EOC proficiency. I also wanted to compare our county with other…

TETA Summer Institute Presentation

Building an Artificial Intelligence tool to predict test scores

You can find the tool here. Using different variables, about how reliably can we predict test scores? For this project, the answer was around 40% reliable. Project…

Three Months of ChatGPT Part III: Learning

Of all the uses that ChatGPT has, how it has helped me learn things is my favorite. Currently, I’m working on a second master’s degree in Data Science, and it has proved…

Three Months of ChatGPT Part II: Teaching

Generally, I teach two different classes: MEDA 3570 - Educational Technology for Pre-Service Teachers, and ELPA 5400/6400 - Developing Learners and Instructional Leaders…

Three Months of ChatGPT Part I: Work

Admittedly, I’m not going to use ChatGPT to write this. One reason is that I need as many writing samples of my own writing that I can get in order to train it to write…

ChatGPT Collections

I will add to this when I create more of these: AI Generated Teacher Emails AI Generated 504 Accommodations AI Generated Principal Emails or Letters

ChatGPT Discussion Question

This it the discussion question I’m going to post for my undergrad Educational Technology class. How do you think AI will change education in the future? Play around with…

ChatGPT and Education

ChatGPT is a new tool that has the potential to revolutionize the way we approach education. Developed by OpenAI, ChatGPT is a large language model that is trained to…

Tennessee Investment in School Achievement (TISA) Schools Template

I created this template so that districts could calculate their TISA for individual schools as well as the district using the Department of Education’s TISA Calculator.…

Data Primer

Because of some TikToks I had seen where teachers were complaining about how irrelevant looking at last year’s testing was to their teaching, I thought i’d make a Data…

The State of Education in Tennessee

I wrote this as part of an application package to get into a learning academy. I am sharing it here for posterity and because I think you’ll find it interesting. The state…

Tips for the beginning runner

I’m just now getting into running, but it wasn’t an overnight success. When you’re large, it’s hard to get going. When you’re older, it’s even more difficult. Here are…

Initial Research into Financial, Geographical, and Population Effects on Academic Achievement Part 2

After Part 1, I got a lot of people asking me to give the rankings for the School Systems in TN. I could not find specific financial information for municipal/special…

Initial Research into Financial, Geographical, and Population Effects on Academic Achievement Part 1

I haven’t even done a lit review yet, so don’t look for much here other than some raw data and some preliminary tests on it. I am only using data from Tennessee. Someone…

Changes in attitude: Customer service in schools

Updated for 2026. The customer service mindset below matters more than ever as families weigh public, private, and online school options. In my six years at Tennessee…

What a percentage raise means for most TN Teachers

If you read the headline here , it says Governor Lee is proposing a 4% raise for teachers. When you get down into the text, it actually quotes him more closely which says,…

Synchronous/Asynchronous Learning

I have dishonored myself. I used my résumé to support an argument. This is bad behavior, and I don’t condone it, but I do get frustrated when people who have done online…

Five Things I Wish I'd Known When Starting a Virtual High School

In 2012, I was the leader of a team of teachers who developed (before COVID) a successful online school, Tennessee Online Public School (TOPS). While we ended up creating…

Let's hear it for online teachers

I’m not writing this to be mean to anyone. I’m just writing it to get these thoughts out of my system. When I was principal of Tennessee Online Public School , most of the…

First Post

Well you have to write something for your first post. I hope to keep a blog about everything I'm interested in here. Whether it's education, music, pop culture,…

Inbound Marketing

Even though this site isn't designed to be Inbound Marketing for myself, it's something I've been thinking a lot about because of my job. I am the principal of public…