The need for a new kind of accountability, not a new test
Metrics-driven accountability systems absent context will always fail. Big statement, I know, but there’s lots of evidence for this fact, including the history of how school accountability has been done for the past 20-30 years. The fact is that metrics are technical tools that require expert interpreters and context, and that crude interpretations absent expertise is a recipe for invalid conclusions. Let me show you why. Take one of the simplest metrics I know: graduation rates. Which school is better at graduating kids: a high school that graduates 99% of its kids, or one that graduates 65%? The prevailing wisdom says that goes to the school that graduates 99% of its students. But is that actually true? The answer: you can’t know absent expertise and context. And if you think you can you are flat out wrong. Take the 99% school. Imagine what that school probably looks like: middle or upper middle-class incomes, parents who are highly educated, minimal violence on the streets, most kid...