In his latest New York Times article, David Brooks described a constant tension in the education reform movement.  As Brooks explains, success requires measurement and accountability.  But an outsized focus on standardized testing can counter-productively warp curricula and lead education stakeholders from students to school leaders to policy to lose sight on the broader picture what success in education looks like and how it is achieved.

Through our work with education clients over the years, one thing has become increasingly evident.  Measurement is just a tool.  Diane Ravitch is right to suggest that simply doing more testing will not lead to better results.  But neither will significantly scaling testing back, as she also suggests.  The debate over how much or how little to test misses the point.  No amount of measuring the wrong things will lead to good outcomes.  And doing little or no measurement leaves you without an understanding of where you are on the roadmap to success, unable to move forward with confidence that you’re headed in the right direction.

For schools to succeed, measurement must be part of the picture.  But it has to be measurement of the elements that truly indicate progress towards the educational goal we value.  And it has to produce data that can be (and is) used by strong school leaders and passionate teachers to make informed decisions.  Schools that set the right goals and measure the right things, the right way, for the right purpose will be the ones that continue to lead the way in the school reform movement.  And we’re thrilled to be helping schools get moving in the right direction.