Measurement Matters: Perspectives on Education Policy from an Economist and School Board Member

Kevin Lang

No 143, Carlo Alberto Notebooks from Collegio Carlo Alberto

Abstract: From the perspective of someone who is both an economist and a former school board member, this paper assesses the use of test-score data by policy-makers and academic researchers. The absence of interval scales often makes the interpretation of test-scores and the indicators derived from them highly problematic. Economists have both been deficient in alerting policy-makers to the inherent difficulties in using such data and cavalier in their own treatment of them. Test score data often merely confirm what administrators already know. Nevertheless they can be useful if used as a trigger for further investigation, and, in particular, as a lever for encouraging principals and other administrators to act on information about teacher (or school) quality.

Keywords: NCLB; No Child Left Behind; value-added-measurement in education; accountability; high-stakes testing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H75 I21 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.carloalberto.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/no.143.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Measurement Matters: Perspectives on Education Policy from an Economist and School Board Member (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cca:wpaper:143

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Carlo Alberto Notebooks from Collegio Carlo Alberto Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Giovanni Bert ().