So yesterday I spoke about how I built an app. It releases today. It’s a free download in the Apple App store called The Nerd Girls Game.

And to be clear, there are no gimmicks, it really is free and I do hope lots and lots of people download it. Why? Because basically, as an author I feel like I am operating with a very dim flashlight in a very dark forrest and I have no real idea what I ought to do to better support my new book and what I ought to avoid.

And so, I took a chance. Of course, taking this chance has been like going to college to earn a Masters. I can’t even tell you how many new skills sets I’ve had to sharpen.

I’ve had to work with programmers, artists, lawyers, and so on in a face-to-face, online, txt message, email manner. Literally, I had to learn how to be a foreman. And a financier, also. I paid for the development of this app entirely. Was it expensive to develop. Yes? Was it more expensive than I first thought it would be? Yes. Do I regret it? No. Does it represent a way for me to actually make any money? No. Would I still do it all over again? Yes.

So what was my goal?

1) To learn.
2) To stretch.
3) To exercise creativity.
4) To have fun.
5) To test the waters of the “new frontier”.

How will it all shake out? Perhaps one day all books will simply be apps – and this experience will have certainly proven to be of fantastic value if this is what the future holds.

Perhaps I will lay an egg and no one will download the free game. That would really stink considering I’ve got months and months of time, effort, energy and cash poured into it.

Perhaps, I will start an educational app studio to collaborate with some folks in the future.

Who knows where this will go, what fruit it will offer (if any). But life is about venturing and so, this app to me represents a new venture and I can live with that because really, at the end of my days, I just don’t want to have too many couldda, shouldda, woulddas in my heart.

Maybe I couldda, wouldda, shouldda built an App back when Apps were really starting to take off. And so I did.

If you download it (easily findable in the app store: THE NERD GIRLS GAME), I do hope this behind the scenes discussion of the how, what, why has proven to be somewhat illuminating. After all, every app has a story, right?

I am not sure why more attention was not paid to the news that the federal gov is trying to re-shape assessment… AWAY FROM BUBBLE TESTING. That’s right, the game of assessment overhaul is afoot.

For me, this brings up bittersweet feelings.

I loathe the bubble tests and think they stink. I’ve said so a zillion times over. I also abhor the fact that those who make the bubble tests have been feeding us the company line that “we offer penetrating, objective insight into our nation’s classrooms” when really bubble testing has more shortcomings than Tiger Woods has mistresses.

However, I will be sad to see them go as well. Why? For the same reason that so many late night comics were sad to see George Dubya Bush leave the White House.

There is just so much professional mileage I have been able to glean out of mocking bubble tests that really, what’s going to fill my comedic gap?

Michelle Rhee? Hmm… not much humor there.

Arne Duncan? Not self-righteous enough to make for a sustainable target of perennial funny-bone tickling.

Mindless administrators who act like they know what they are doing when really, it’s clear to all of us that they don’t have a clue? Sure, but more than enough admins are actually quite good at their jobs so the bulls-eye isn’t always that big or that fair.

And whenever I stereotype people, I always strive to be fair.

Well, lucky for me that the bubble tests will be in full effect this year… even though as Mr. Duncan says…

The No. 1 complaint of teachers has been that “bubble tests pressure teachers to teach to a test that doesn’t measure what really matters.”

Hmm… where have I heard that before?

Bubble Tests, I am gonna miss ya.

I love sports. I love hoops, football, baseball, boxing, soccer, hockey, tennis and so on. And when I mean “and so on”, I mean, I can watch table tennis, badminton, lacrosse, rugby and golf.

Yep, I can watch golf.

But I only like to watch when there is level competition. If a game is a blowout, it’s off. If a team has a 35 point lead heading into the 4rth quarter, a 3 goal lead late into the second half, an 11 run lead in the bottom of the seventh, I am usually gone. Got other things to do and if I miss the comeback of the century I’ll catch the highlights on ESPN.

See, for me, there is no pleasure in watching sports when there is no element of a fair, heated competition between the players. If there is extreme competition though, the kind that calls on all opponents to reach deep down to give their best, I am all with it.

So, here’s an idea… what if we handicap our much discussed upcoming teacher/student/school evaluations like we do the game of golf? I mean we all realize that some schools have such a built in advantage before we ever tee up the school year that if we simply go head up (as we currently are), our score vs score comparison is going to make the competition a blowout.

So unexpected, too, right?

Almost without fail the upper-socioeconomic educational institutions in the U.S. are kicking butt and taking names. And despite the occasional “feel-good” anomaly (the kind which I strive to create in my own classroom), the low socio-economic schools are getting trounced.

But if we take into account mitigating factors such as English Language Learners, students living at or below the poverty level, degree of transience in the student body, special ed populations, and so on, suddenly there might be a way to really get a true glimpse into which teachers/schools/kids are really making strides.

Of course, from this point on, it’s all conjecture and academic with little need for me to draw up the “how we can do this” because, though I am no cynic, I see almost no way in the world whereby the parents who send their kids to schools like Beverly Hills High are ever going to allow a system of data to be implemented whereby the kids at inner-city schools like mine at Lynwood High will be able to actually outperform them.

Not when they pay those kind of property taxes, live in those kind of houses and support political candidates with those kind of fundraisers.

Nope, not a cynic… but not a naif either. Those parents would have heads a rollin’ if they saw their weighted test scores in the newspaper showing them to be getting whooped like a Greek mule on Crete during high tourist season.

Yet, to handicap the competition would level it out? Or would it?

See, now I don’t know. On one hand I think yep, applying a true growth model whereby we use baseline measures and then end-of-year evaluations to the data in order to show true achievement over the course of the year makes a lot of sense. But if we take mitigating factors like poor academic history, non-English speaking homes, lack of internet access, ability to hire private tutors to remediate under-performance, and so on into account (there’s gotta be a mathematic formula for this, right?) then, on one hand we are creating a level playing field whereby my kids can go up against any kids in the country. (And we’d LOVE to do that!) Yet, by handicapping our schools accordingly are we sending a mixed message?

Or even a wrong one?

Are we saying that “since you come from less, we expect less”?(And are therefore “lesser”?) See that troubles me deeply.

In my own class in Los Angeles, I tell my kids “no excuses” and we work to beat the metaphorical Beverly Hills High kids from day 1… cause I know that’s how the real world works.

But when I see my school get the “data” back from the state, I realize that to not take into account mitigating circumstances such as all the urban challenges we face, I realize, we’ve been set up for slaughter like a junior league baseball team taking on the New York Yankees.

Sure, the Yankees may give up a game now and then, but over the course of a season, the Yankees are gonna absolutely steamroll the junior leaguers time and time again.

And if I am the Yankees, I am not sure where the fun is in that. Yankees want to play the Red Sox. Ali wants to fight Frazier. The USC Trojans wants to kick Notre Dame’s butt… not Akron Community College’s butt.

At the end of the day, golf is ultimately a game you play against yourself and the course. You can only control what you can control — your own effort, preparation, practice time and so on. But if it rains, there’s wind, someone plays at 8 am when there’s no wind and another person tees off at 3:p.m. when a tsunami-like gusts are howling… what can you do?

You play the round that is on front of you. Some schools have kids where 98% of the parents went to college. And some have an 18% parent attended college ration… complicated by high truancy numbers and less resources cause there’s no real PTA out there raising a few hundred grand a year to make sure that the arts haven’t been killed off for their kids.

Yet the thing for all players to remember is, you gotta remember to love the game. Otherwise, you’ll never be the best you can.