Simone Ispa-Landa (Northwestern Sociology)

"Metrics that Mislead: How Accountability Policy Undermines School Community"

For decades, the dashboards, test scores, attendance rates, and accountability “report cards” that have proliferated across public education have promised an authoritative, bird’s-eye view of how students are doing and where to invest resources. Metrics that Mislead takes you inside the hallways, cafeterias, classrooms, and administrative offices of a modern high school to uncover the mechanisms through which accountability metrics designed to measure school progress impair school functioning and undermine school leaders’ capacity to respond to students’, teachers’, and community members’ needs.  Drawing on five years of participant observation and over 170 intensive interviews with safety officers, administrators, teachers, and students, my forthcoming book shows that the problems facing young people and their schools - including social isolation, racialized discipline, and muted concern for the safety and well-being of girls and LGBTQ+ students - are not simply a matter of bad actors or bad decisions, but rather an institutional system in which well-intentioned, deeply caring school and community leaders become trapped in a metrics-based false confidence in their knowledge of the challenges facing the school community and how best to invest in solutions.