

Freakonomics: Fish Gotta Swim, Teachers Gotta Cheat? - cwan
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/fish-gotta-swim-teachers-gotta-cheat/

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lmkg
Goodhart's Law rears its ugly head, yet again. Standardized testing does not
incentivize the sort of performance that we want it to, from students or from
teachers.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodharts_law>

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cwan
What would be a better way to measure performance? (It's a sincere question
and one that I've long been wondering about). Or is there even a cost
effective measure?

I realize that many teachers unions are against standardized testing and any
form of performance testing in general, but what's the alternative?

Could the problem instead be how the tests are structured or how cheating gets
controlled? I note that at least with respect to SAT's the SAT is only one
measure, albeit a significant high stakes benchmark that can change a
student's life depending on their admissions. Given limited spots and limited
resources, how else should universities be choosing who gets in?

