Hi David- How about "No child left behind"?
-Don. ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Hogberg" <dhogb...@albion.edu> To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu> Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 2:26:46 PM Subject: Re: [tips] Goodhart's Law and education Not quarreling, but an example of Campbell's Law might help. On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 3:38 PM, don allen <dap...@shaw.ca> wrote: > This sounds a lot like Campbell's Law as well: > > Campbell's law is an adage developed by Donald T. Campbell:[1] > "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social > decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the > more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is > intended to monitor." > > -Don. > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Christopher Green" <chri...@yorku.ca> > To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" > <tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu> > Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 9:15:41 AM > Subject: [tips] Goodhart's Law and education > > > > > > > > > > > > Someone was asking about mandated graduation rates of 100% the other day. > > > > Here's a little Sunday-morning insight that I thought you might find > interesting. I just ran across this > thing called Goodhart's L aw, the popular form of which is "When a measure > becomes a target, it ceases > to be a good measure." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law > > > Although it is usually applied to business and gov't, it occurred to me that > it applies to all kind of issues in > education as well. For instance, when the gov't starts measuring the "success > "of universities on the bases of > retention and completion, most of what then happens is that universities > start retaining and graduating > people who would not have been retained before (and the value of grades and > degrees is thus debased). > We don't talk about it that way, of course; we spend a lot of time and money > developing systems (both > physical and social) that are claimed to help those who would not have stayed > and finished otherwise, but this > ignores t he ugly but undeniable fact that university is hard and some people > decide that it is not for them. But > it is hard for them to know that it is not for them before they have done it > for a year or two. So, to summarize, > the gov't sets t argets, and we set up systems to meet the ta rgets. Some > students may be truly helped, but to > the exact degree that those systems fail to bring EVERYONE up to level, we > retain and graduate students we > wouldn't have before in order to meet the targets anyway (otherwise we are > considered "failures"). T hat is, as > per Goodhart's Law, as soon as passing the test ( the retention and > completion quotas) becomes the chief aim, the > test fails to measure whether t hings are actually g etting better or worse. > It becomes just another part of the > system to be navigated. > > Chris > > ....... Christopher D Green > Department of Psychology > York University > Toronto, ON M6C 1G4 > > > chri...@yorku.ca > http://www.yorku.ca/christo > > > --- > > You are currently subscribed to tips as: dap...@shaw.ca . > > To unsubscribe click here: > http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13157.966b795bc7f3ccb35e3da08aebe98f18&n=T&l=tips&o=23793 > > (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) > > or send a blank email to > leave-23793-13157.966b795bc7f3ccb35e3da08aebe98...@fsulist.frostburg.edu > > > > > > --- > You are currently subscribed to tips as: dhogb...@albion.edu. > To unsubscribe click here: > http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13152.d92d7ec47187a662aacda2d4b4c7628e&n=T&l=tips&o=23801 > or send a blank email to > leave-23801-13152.d92d7ec47187a662aacda2d4b4c76...@fsulist.frostburg.edu -- David K. Hogberg, PhD Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Department of Psychological Science Albion College Albion MI 49224 Tel: 517/629-4834 (Home and mobile) --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: dap...@shaw.ca. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13157.966b795bc7f3ccb35e3da08aebe98f18&n=T&l=tips&o=23802 or send a blank email to leave-23802-13157.966b795bc7f3ccb35e3da08aebe98...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=23808 or send a blank email to leave-23808-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
