Measurement Matters Perspectives on Education Policy from an.pdf

Measurement Matters: Perspectives on Education Policy from an Economist and School Board Member Kevin Lang No.143 April2010 /working_papers © 2010 by Kevin Lang. Any opinions expressed here are those of the authors and not those of the Collegio Carlo Alberto. Measurement Matters: Perspectives on Education Policy from an Economist and School Board Member Kevin Lang Kevin Lang is Professor of Economics at Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts. He is also a Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Research Fellow, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn, Germany. His e-mail address is lang@. One of the potential strengths of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act enacted in 2002 is that the law requires the production of an enormous amount of data, particularly from tests, which, if used properly, might help us improve education. As an economist, I have been appalled by the limited ability of districts to analyze these data. As someone who was first elected to the School Committee (called the School Board or Board of Education elsewhere in the United States) in Brookline, Massachusetts in May 1996 and served until May 2009, I have been equally appalled by the cavalier manner in which economists use test scores and related measures in their analyses. When it comes to these newly available data on education, the idea that “measurement matters” can be interpreted in at least three ways, and each of these is correct. Measurement may be used as an adjective: this paper is principally concerned with matters of measurement. I have chosen to address this topic because the act of measuring changes behavior, which is another way in which measurement matters, and the conclusions we reach depend on how we measure outcomes,