Trending
The No Child Left Behind Act was meant to be a turning point in the U.S educational system. The intention was sound: to improve educational outcomes by holding schools and teachers accountable for student performance. However, tying school funding and teacher evaluations directly to student scores on the tests had a profound impact.
Standardised test scores became the dominant measure of success, influencing everything from school rankings to teacher pay. Under immense pressure to boost these scores, many schools shifted their focus away from holistic learning and toward test preparation. This “teaching to the test” phenomenon narrowed the curriculum, focusing heavily on the specific content and skills that would appear on the exams. Subjects like social studies, arts, and music, crucial for developing creative individuals, were often sidelined in favour of endless drills and practice tests.
The emphasis on memorisation and test-taking strategies squeezed out opportunities for critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity.
Students were taught what to think, not how to think.
This phenomenon has become known as Campbell’s Law and was developed by Donald T. Campbell, a social scientist and psychologist.
Campbell observed that when such standardised test scores became the primary metric for evaluating schools and teachers, the focus shifted away from actual learning and towards improving those scores. This led to unintended , and often detrimental, consequences.
Campbell saw that this phenomenon wasn’t limited to education. He observed that whenever a quantitative social indicator (like test scores, crime rates, or economic data) is used to make important decisions, it becomes subject to “corruption pressures.” People will try to manipulate the indicator to look good, even if it means distorting the very thing the indicator was supposed to measure.
Campbell’s Law builds on earlier ideas, notably Goodhart’s Law, which states: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Campbell extended this concept to social indicators, emphasising the systemic distortions that can arise when metrics become too central to decision-making.
In his book The Tyranny of Metrics Jerry Z. Muller puts Goodhart’s Law into very simple terms:
“Anything that can be measured and rewarded will be gamed”.
He describes how hospitals, under pressure to reduce patient wait times in emergency departments, might instruct ambulances to queue outside, keeping patients technically “off the clock” until a bed becomes available. This practice improves the hospital’s reported wait time statistics but doesn’t actually improve patient care and can even delay critical treatment.
Whilst Muller doesn’t reject the use of metrics, he highlights a key concern about their overuse or misuse. When performance is evaluated solely based on quantifiable measures, individuals and organisations may prioritise improving those specific metrics, even if it means sacrificing other important aspects of their work or engaging in unethical behavior.
One of the challenges we’ve experienced in the early days of our shift to place based working is the pressure to provide metrics. And worse, the pressure to apply pre-existing metrics to what is emergent practice. Innovation.
The overuse of metrics can get in the way of successful place-based working.
Metrics often prioritise easily quantifiable outputs, which might not capture the nuances of place-based work. This can lead to neglecting qualitative aspects like community engagement, relationship-building, and long-term impact, which are crucial for successful place-based initiatives.
Standardised metrics might not be suitable for the diverse contexts and challenges of different places. Applying the same metrics across different communities can lead to overlooking local needs and priorities, hindering effective place-based solutions.
Metrics often encourage a focus on short-term goals and quick wins to demonstrate immediate progress. However, place-based work often requires long-term commitment and sustained efforts to address complex issues and achieve meaningful change. Some things will take years, even decades, to move the dial on.
And, from my perspective, the most damaging effect can be found in discouraging innovation. Strict adherence to metrics can stifle creativity and experimentation, which are essential for place-based approaches that need to adapt to unique local circumstances and evolve over time.
People often bemoan the lack of bigger picture thinking in organisations but it’s often the use of narrow short term metrics that encourage acting within the box. If you add in financial reward to a metrics framework you are entering a dangerous territory where ‘in the box’ thinking will permeate.
The work I’m almost solely interested in – and the work our world badly needs – requires emergent practice. This is a way of working that prioritises flexibility, adaptability, and learning in response to complex and evolving situations. It’s about allowing solutions and practices to rise organically from within the specific context, rather than imposing pre-determined plans or structures.
I was recently listening to a talk by Katriona O’Sullivan, author of Poor, who said that one of the biggest influences in her remarkable rise from poverty was a teacher at secondary school.
“I really believe that when I was ready, and the supports were in place, the things that I’d experienced in secondary school from him, and in primary school, were part of the reason why I was able to participate in higher education in the way that I did.”
She wasn’t able to activate what he’d passed on to her until years after he’d retired: how would the school measure the impact of that?
Measure by all means. But in measuring know you are changing human behaviour.
So if your end goal is creating better relationships, maybe consider how you’d measure your own relationships, and consider whether that’s possible or desirable.