What Gets Measured Gets Fudged

Those in the education sector are under constant pressure to identify metrics--hard numbers that reflect delivery on mission--and then improve those numbers year over year. Borrowing from what is a commonplace practice in manufacturing or retail, we often hear someone in a boardroom say, "That which gets measured gets done." It is as if they cannot believe that schools (and school leaders) perform well unless someone rigorously tracks the numbers that prove the point.

But oversight by numbers comes with problems. We have long held that tying management salaries and bonuses to hard numbers around enrollment or academic performance runs a substantial risk of inadvertently incenting the wrong things. Now, blogger David Perrell, citing an article about grade inflation in the Harvard Crimson, makes this case precisely but with data:

"For half a century, the average GPA at Harvard stayed constant at roughly 2.5. By 1960, it had climbed to 3.0. Today, it's up to 3.8. GPAs aren't rising because students have gotten so much smarter. It's because teachers have lowered their standards. One of my college professors admitted that he secretly inflates his students' grades because it's easier to dish out a few extra points than put up with a nagging student. If nudging somebody from a B to a B+ brings peace of mind by getting the complaining student out of their office faster, it's worth the decline in rigor."

Perrell goes on to say, "Humans who are incentivized to improve numbers on a screen will eventually fudge the data." There are countless ways of fudging education-related data, such as the grade inflation Perrell writes about, allowing deferred maintenance to grow, admitting a narrower student profile, or accepting financial gifts from tainted sources.

Worth thinking about the next time you or the board member next you are tempted to reduce education to a series of numerical targets.