How We Measure

After reading Forget GDP: The Social Progress Index Measures National Well-being, I immediately connected this article with evaluating student achievement in classrooms. Noting the GDP of a country may be a traditional way to measure a nation's well being, just as administering standardized tests is a traditional way of measuring student learning. But does GDP and standardized tests accurately reflect how well or poorly a nation or student is doing? What about other factors and other approaches to solving the same problem?

Future implications of social innovation and education reform will challenge us to measure progress in nontraditional ways. We will see more conversations build around a "social impact index" and socially-minded private sectors. In education, there will be a growing push back against those who only want to use standardized test metrics to evaluate student learning. 

The Da Vinci Schools in Los Angeles, California is one group that believes in measuring student success by alternative means than just testing. For students at Da Vinci, they can expect to immerse themselves in project-based learning and find creative ways to demonstrate knowledge. 

The tricky thing about measuring "success" is that it is relative to who defines what that success looks like. Do we know if a country is doing well if they have a high GDP? Is that because that probably means they have a strong economy? Or can we say that country is doing well if the number of individuals who work to increase social impact in their workplaces is high?

The future of complex topics like social innovation and education will truly be contingent on the way measurement is accepted. As advocates of social innovation and education, it is imperative to challenge the status quo of the way things are currently measured and begin looking at things in a different perspective.