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There is a moment in Mismatched where evaluators discover entire data departments that could not build a pivot table. Not would not. Could not. Decisions about students got made on gut feeling while the answers sat in a spreadsheet.

The quiet punchline: pivot tables take about a minute to learn.

Select your data. Insert a pivot table. Drag three fields into place. That is it, no formulas, no code, and suddenly you can see totals by school, by quarter, by program, by whatever you need.

Watch the walkthrough in our Excel Tips series: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKQ6KcvXIo06jP8u5FESg21WVuCvhWzz0

North Carolina had to pass a law to get its own top math students into advanced math.

Here is why. When we analyzed North Carolina middle schoolers, fewer than half of the students predicted to succeed in 8th grade algebra were actually placed in it. About 35,000 kids were held out, and more than 25,000 of them went on to earn top algebra scores anyway. The gatekeeper was the teacher recommendation, which was right about 60 percent of the time. The state's own predictive model was right 95.9 percent of the time.

So in 2018, the state made it automatic: earn the top score, get the seat.

Did it work? For the students it covers, yes. But a year later the state changed its scoring system, and far fewer students now reach the top level at all. The law protects a shrinking group, and for everyone below that line, the old gatekeeping is still in place.

Dr. Janet Johnson tells the full story in The Algebra Gatekeepers: https://www.educationprogress.org/p/the-algebra-gatekeepers

Watch The Math Opportunity Gap: https://youtu.be/-Ok0onb5MNY

A school missed its testing targets, so it launched free after-school tutoring for low-income students. Sounds reasonable, right?

Then the evaluators looked at the data. Most of the students sitting through remedial phonics drills were already reading at or above grade level. Straight-A students. Top scorers. Their achievement data was never consulted. Poverty alone decided who got pulled in.

When the evaluators raised the alarm, the district misunderstood entirely: "they thought we were telling them the students were not poor." The idea that a child could be both poor and high-achieving simply would not compute.

Chapter 8 of Mismatched names this "institutional blindness": the total fusion of two ideas that should have stayed distinct. As Dr. Janet Johnson puts it, it was as if hospitals administered chemotherapy based on patients' zip codes rather than medical tests.

Watch the Chapter 8 summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFCKx3uhjbk&list=PLKQ6KcvXIo068Cl7pDLpr3ErSeAnz5Z7r&index=9

Teachers, this one's for you.

Deep Dive 5 just got a complete rebuild: self-paced enrichment for curious kids, from math puzzles to Greek mythology to the solar system. The interactive units now come with full teacher kits, including standards-aligned lesson plans, answer keys, and printable worksheets.

Best part: no student accounts, no data collection, no privacy paperwork for your district.

Find your next lesson: https://deepdive5.sparc37.com/

Every color on your screen is really just three tiny lights: red, green, and blue.

This short visual explainer follows one color on its whole journey. From the glowing pixels you are looking at right now, to the hex codes programmers type, to the ink that hits the paper when you print.

Simple math, no coding needed. The STEM and STEAM hiding inside a single color.

Watch it here:

How Colors Work on a Computer--The Math Behind the Art Every color on your screen is really just three tiny lights — red, ...

What does a panicking KFC manager have in common with a frozen grant writer? Both confronted basic arithmetic and blinked in confusion.

Chapter 7 of Mismatched finally names the pattern that has been building all book: the Lotta Chicken Principle. Institutional authority meeting basic quantitative reasoning and freezing up.

A few of the moments it traces:
- A KFC manager named Dave, stunned that numbers could solve a real problem: how much chicken a Little League order needs.
- A head grant writer who called enrollment projections impossible, until a simple spreadsheet modeled student flows and secured 10 million dollars in federal funding.
- PhDs summing columns by hand on paper printouts. Computers sitting on desks as expensive electric typewriters.
- Data departments where no one could build a pivot table, write a formula, or run a query, making decisions in an evidence vacuum while surrounded by unused data.

The solution was almost always trivially simple. The blindness was the problem.

Dr. Janet Johnson conclusion: the taxonomy that sorts students also sorts educators, rewarding credentials over capability at every level. The sorting machine doesnt just sort students. It sorts everyone.

Watch the Chapter 7 summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdbNlZNp1jk&list=PLKQ6KcvXIo068Cl7pDLpr3ErSeAnz5Z7r&index=10

EDSTAR Analytics has a new look.
The work behind it has not changed. For more than 32 years we have helped schools, community colleges, and grant-funded programs turn educational data into better decisions. Program evaluation, grant writing, data management, and technical assistance, every engagement led by senior consultants who stay with you from proposal through reporting.
Refreshed brand. Same standard: evidence you can use, not just report.
See what we do at edstaranalytics.com

You spent years in art class learning that red, yellow, and blue make every other color. Then you bought a printer and discovered it runs on cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. So which "primary" colors are actually primary?
In her latest video, Dr. Janet Johnson unpacks why screens, printers, and elementary school paint sets all disagree, and what that reveals about how light, ink, and the human eye actually work.
https://youtu.be/X2BXOlirNxw?si=fs2X8sEykbIQ-tmR

What happens when you finally see how the system actually works?

In Chapter 5 of "Mismatched," Dr. Janet Johnson returns as a math teacher in the 1980s. The same gatekeeping that once blocked her path is now visible to her every day — a counselor telling her that brilliant students from the wrong neighborhoods "aren't the kinds who take advanced math." A certification system that turned her degree and experience into nothing without the right piece of paper. And then one phone call to "Bill's wife" handed her three certifications instantly.

It was, as the chapter puts it, a social network dressed up in bureaucratic clothing.

Watch "Shifting Foundations" — Chapter 5 of Mismatched with Dr. Janet Johnson:
https://youtu.be/tcySi0aodck

Shifting Foundations (Summary) | Mismatched Chapter 5 From blocked student to insider witness—what happens when you finally see how the gatekeeping machinery works?In the 1980s, Janet Johnson became a mathematic...

What does a Kentucky Fried Chicken kitchen teach us about leadership in America?

In Chapter 4 of "Mismatched," Dr. Janet Johnson shares the moment a fast-food manager froze at a simple math problem — and what it revealed about authority, competence, and the systems that promote people.

A Little League coach ordered fifty boxes of chicken. The assistant manager panicked. A napkin calculation solved it in minutes.

The real lesson wasn't about chicken. It was about how institutions reward credentials and connections over actual capability — and what that costs us in education, in business, and in the people we hand authority to.

Watch Chapter 4 — "Lotta Chicken, Lotta Boxes":
https://youtu.be/j316S9eWyk8