A metric is only useful as a metric when it isn't used as a metric

What will happen when teachers are systematically rewarded or punished based on standardized tests? asks Eduardo Porter in The New York Times. The design of any system must be carefully thought through to avoid sending incentives astray, since people -- wittingly or unwittingly -- goose numbers once a measure is set up. The phenomenon is known as Goodhart's Law, though one economist calls it the Heisenberg Principle of incentive design, after the defining uncertainty of quantum physics: A performance metric is only useful as a performance metric as long as it isn't used as a performance metric. Some hospitals in the United States, for example, will do whatever it takes to keep patients alive at least 31 days after surgery to beat Medicare's 30-day survival yardstick. Last year, the Chicago Police Department achieved declining crime rates simply by reclassifying incidents as noncriminal. American education has embarked on a nationwide experiment in incentive design, with most states instituting teacher-evaluation systems reliant in some part on student gains on standardized tests. Studies that measured the efficacy of this evaluation method did so when test scores carried little weight for teachers' future careers. What happens when scores determine teacher bonuses or job retention? More

Source:  Public Education News Blast

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