Today I read a fascinating article from Education Next talking about Quality Counts and Chances for Success Indicators (CFSI). The article started out discussing the challenges in measuring success in education, especially being consistent across the United States. With increasing pressure and interest from various groups, no doubt, there is a lot of interest to have a nation wide comparison model. And the CFSI based rankings suggested in the article are reasonable ones.
I particularly like their measures that are not a single number (for example: % high school graduates). Instead they use a basket of 13 indicators ranging from parental income to steady workforce employment. Despite these indicators that bring in regular inputs to the index every year, I was left with this question about what can be meaningful and easy.
First we need to understand that definition of success varies highly. Tech industry is filled with numerous examples of college drop outs who went on to succeed significantly in business (Steve Jobs of Apple, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Jan Koum of WhatsApp). And I know of several top class graduates from top standing universities work hard at making others businesses succeed.
Second we know that there is a lot of diversity from city to city, school to school, let alone state to state. So any measure that uses state wide metrics is challenging to compare directly for ranking purposes. I am naïve to all sorts of interesting statistical methods. Perhaps there is a solution in statistics. Still I am not sure how one can control for regional difference in cost of living, earning levels, etc. As Malcolm Gladwell will explain in David & Goliath: Underdogs, misfits, and the art of battling the giants, there are a few examples where seemingly inadequate education still can produce wonderful people who succeed in life.
Perhaps we will never agree on a single measure. What may be universally true is that an indivudal who strives consistently will go on to succeed in his/her chosen endeavor. As Thomas Edition famously said "Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration".
I particularly like their measures that are not a single number (for example: % high school graduates). Instead they use a basket of 13 indicators ranging from parental income to steady workforce employment. Despite these indicators that bring in regular inputs to the index every year, I was left with this question about what can be meaningful and easy.
First we need to understand that definition of success varies highly. Tech industry is filled with numerous examples of college drop outs who went on to succeed significantly in business (Steve Jobs of Apple, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Jan Koum of WhatsApp). And I know of several top class graduates from top standing universities work hard at making others businesses succeed.
Second we know that there is a lot of diversity from city to city, school to school, let alone state to state. So any measure that uses state wide metrics is challenging to compare directly for ranking purposes. I am naïve to all sorts of interesting statistical methods. Perhaps there is a solution in statistics. Still I am not sure how one can control for regional difference in cost of living, earning levels, etc. As Malcolm Gladwell will explain in David & Goliath: Underdogs, misfits, and the art of battling the giants, there are a few examples where seemingly inadequate education still can produce wonderful people who succeed in life.
Perhaps we will never agree on a single measure. What may be universally true is that an indivudal who strives consistently will go on to succeed in his/her chosen endeavor. As Thomas Edition famously said "Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration".
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