How Should the Success of Schools Be Measured?
The success of schools, per se, cannot be the primary concern of education. Schools, after all, are only a means to an end. The center of the proverbial target is simpler, but even more difficult: prepare EACH child for adulthood.
EACH
The effort to provide opportunity for each student is a costly undertaking, and public education is its biggest component. Spending on universal K-12 education in California adds up to about $65 billion annually when all the sources (state, local and federal) are counted. To put this number in human context, taxpayers in California invest on the order of $121,000 in each student’s thirteen years of K-12 education - roughly equivalent to paying a little over minimum wage for every hour a student spends in class.
California education spending per student is somewhat lower than middle-of-the pack, and has been so for a long time. (2012 data) Additional charts like this one can be found on EdSource.org (look for States in Motion)This investment is important in lots of ways that have little to do with money. As with any sustained investment, however, success must also be measured in terms of Return on Investment (ROI). Measuring success on these terms requires long-term data about each student’s long-term success, viewed broadly and over a time frame spanning decades, not just school years.
What is the long-term economic payback on that $121,000 investment for each California student? Today, we don’t really know. Evaluating the return requires estimating both value produced and costs avoided. Education produces value by helping each student find his or her place in the world, including work that earns enough to pay taxes. Education avoids costs by helping students grow into self-supporting, resilient and law-abiding adults. Our system is set up to track neither.
The [now-defunct] Academic Performance Index (API) for about a decade stood as the dominant tool for summarizing a school’s performance in California. This score, distilled annually from a changing assortment of annual tests, serve[d] as a shorthand metric of academic achievement at the school and district levels by grade level. Unfortunately, measures like the API can only measure the academic success of those who show up. If every struggling student in a school were to drop out, the score for that school would, perversely, rise.
The state’s system of measurement for education should be built online, in a manner that allows students to show what they know regardless of their nominal grade level. If this seems like whimsy, take a look at the coaching module of Khan Academy for an early example of what the future of measurement may look like, at least in math.
Bringing us up to date
The public has grown accustomed to the idea that products and services should be evaluated, rather frequently, and that evaluation should lead to action. In order to sustain public support for investing in education, California needs to make a set of serious investments to systematically provide everyone involved with better, more personally useful information over a more meaningful arc of time. We rely too much on summary numbers partly because that is all we have at present. California should do better.
For starters, California should invest in modern data systems to track and support investments in human development including education. In the age of Facebook, it is no longer OK for California’s education system to operate with outmoded data systems. California needs a platform that usefully connects parents, students and teachers, including accurate data to inform the work they do together. This is not an investment that each district can or should pursue on its own; it is far too difficult, much too important, and frankly its implications extend beyond education.
A version of this post first appeared in answer to the question "How should we measure our schools?"
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