at will benefit their company or clients. State laws are unlikely to be so responsive and agile.
Both data and algorithms should be an important part of the process of making and implementing education policy, but they need to be employed as inputs into reasoned judgments that take other important factors into account. The last thing we need are accountability policies that undermine education as a profession or erode the elements of community and teamwork that mark and make good schools. But when law and policy outrun knowledge, the results are likely to be unanticipated, paradoxical, and occasionally perverse.
The opinions expressed in Rick Hess Straight Up are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.