The Metric-Centric Culture of Education: Standardly Deviating from the "Nope"

[DISCLAIMER: This is an opinion piece. I am not an educational diagnostician, nor do I have official licensure for statistical analysis of academic records. I am simply an armchair educator hoping to give a relational take.]

Hello again everyone,

I've spent the first part of August giving my takes on the individual mandate and the institutional shortcomings on financial planning on education. But for this entry, I'd like to come a little bit closer to the classroom. To expand on my "resume" from my first article, I taught at an inner-city high school for 6 months in the fall of 2014 and early spring of 2015. There were many circumstances that led to me not making it in the classroom, but one of the biggest was how impersonal everything was. There are so many takes on why overemphasizing data in education, including this great number by Ryan Fan on Medium, and you could probably find something more engrossing elsewhere, but I'm here to provide my story, and maybe a unique perspective on this.

Metrics are all over; there's no denying that. As a scientist, I am aware that data is a key piece to any conclusions made. An appropriately-girded statistical analysis can be a career-changer for scientific conclusions, publications, funding, and even impact someone's career. However, even in science, we are told time and time again not to overemphasize statistics, because they can often lead to incomplete or downright erroneous conclusions. This is every bit as, if not even more true in, education. The primary difference being this: science is relatively objective in that the goal is to get decisive conclusions based on sets of variables, some largely set by the same people doing the analysis. However, in education, not only are these variables almost never set by those doing the analysis, many analyses don't take into account every single variable. But it's not like they can. In education, everything from the economic situation to the experience of the teachers normally factors in. Suffice it to say, it's a very complicated situation, and it's even worse in "inner-city" <erm>, I mean "at-risk" <erh>, I mean schools with a "low opportunity index" (that makes it sound like a stat, but that's fine this time, right?). Allow me to explain by using my experience.

I was a school teacher in one of these low opportunity index schools, and the student body reflected it. There were students involved in gang activity, drug abuse, serial class cutters…the class clowns would clown the teeth right out of your mouth. It was a jarring experience for a rookie teacher. In fact, that school year, our first teacher quit on September 19th. But the kids weren't my problem; that's what I signed up for. The metrics weren't even my problem; the culture that came with the metrics was my issue. There was no context behind the metrics. I just talked about how the students are a mitigating factor, complete with "non-traditional" challenges. Many students were opted-out of learning from the get go, and even pop culture references weren't swaying most of them. I met 10 parents out of 120+ students during Open House. My first encounter with my principal was her coming into my worst class and mandating I call parents every night (to put this in perspective, this class was rowdy enough to ignore at least four specialists, one having eventually opted-out of coming to the school). But this article isn't about mentor failure in education, but that one may be coming soon.

The students themselves were tough, but authentic. They were rowdy because of their circumstances; they didn't want the Doug Lemov teaching methods; they wanted investment. But only a handful of teachers were good enough to balance the investment with the metric-centric learning, especially with the high student-to teacher ratio in schools like this. As for me, I found myself on the wrong side of the metrics for classroom assessments, class grade averages, and even my attendance (my stepfather died of cancer in November 2014, and I lost a week). And all of these were brought to my attention time and time again, including the aforementioned lost week. I can still remember hearing "Your absences are a red flag; we get it, but you have to be here for the students." No context. Just like when parents didn't answer the calls, and just like when students didn't perform. And to note, this post isn't to knock teachers, administrators, diagnosticians, or those who interpret statistics. This is an indictment of the system they are all bound by. After all, numbers never lie, but the people in charge of keeping them, at the core often use them to deceive.

I've spent most of this article complaining, so what's the real solution? The answer is simple. Put more emphasis on context and relatability. In education, the staffing is so short, and the system mandates so much content be taught in so little time, that the system simultaneously advertises "blended learning groups" and "get as much done as possible". This leads to teacher burnout, and many educators bumping refusing to be slaves to metrics (which you know, are key determinants in whether they get raises or even keep their jobs). And yes, you need these on some level because objectivity has its place. But when the data is not just test performance, but the test performers, context and relatability have to come into play. Why is the student underperforming? How do we partner with counselors? How do we appropriately train counselors? How do we reach the students? Their families? Their communities? While this honestly can't fall squarely on school systems, I still don't think they do their part; the strategies simply aren't there. After all, if it did, there would be sweeping education reforms every couple of years that benefitted teachers: teacher incentives, teacher support, building relatable teachers, community involvement, grassroots movements. There's a lot that can be done, but those aren't in the budget right? But we can give teachers compensation for "other initiatives", right?

Don't get me wrong; I love teachers. I love teaching. It's just that a lot of the systems we have in place are not only not designed to authentically educate, but they are not even designed to authentically empower educators. Nevertheless, I hope you read something worthwhile in this take, and await your feedback in the comments. See you next time!