ABSTRACT

Leaders from both New York City public schools and a large philanthropic organization gathered in 19th-century townhouse blocks from city hall and south of the Brooklyn Bridge. Enthusiasm for data in education reached fever pitch in New York City during the early 2000s when both mayor and schools chancellor injected 'data-driven' decision making and instruction into schools and administrative culture. Reforms that prioritize accountability, standards, and data necessarily rely on different kinds of instruments to translate the complexity of lived experience into data. Analogue technologies refer to the paper-based instruments used in institutions to generate and gather data. Digital technologies are those technologies that are created with software, hardware, and information systems. Software studies draw on related fields like code studies and platform studies to offer researchers a rich trove of concepts and methods that expose just how little one tend to know and address about the current educational technologies, most of which are powered by software.