Scared Sleepless
When quantitative social indicators are used for social decision-making, corruption arises; that's Campbell's Law. So where do we go from there in terms of testing?
“My son can’t sleep at night,” his mother (and a friend of mine) said.
Why, I asked?
“Because his teacher told him that he had to do well on the tests this week or she would be fired. He’s worried sick.”
That conversation, which occurred almost exactly one year ago, continues to haunt me. What kind of teacher would say that to kids? Or, digging deeper, what were the circumstances made the teacher feel so desperate that she would say that?
It doesn’t matter where that 3rd grader and his family live, because that sort of pressure seems to be everywhere. And it seems to be increasing, as scores on state/city exams become the single most important measure of a teacher’s performance — and as pressure grows to publish the test scores of every individual teacher’s students.
Everyone is familiar with Campbell’s Law, developed by social scientist Donald Campbell: