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In education, you're effectively looking for long-term financial success of your students, and you search for proxy metrics that predict it. Most of the things
by geocar 9y ago
In education, you're effectively looking for long-term financial success of your students, and you search for proxy metrics that predict it. Most of the things you need to control for are the same socioeconomic factors behavioural scientists are working on in other fields. Also: Since almost everyone goes to school, there's a lot of easy-to-anonymise data.
In medicine, I don't think there's a clear long-term metric (lifespan? financial success? happiness?), and there's at least two nasty selection bias that people generally only see a doctor when (self-report) something is wrong, and that doctors specialise. But let's say you solve those problems: What kinds of questions[1] are you going to ask that are supposed to predict satisfaction with the doctor?
[1]: https://londoncalling.co/2013/02/simple-customer-feedback-idea-seen-at-heathrow-airport/ https://londoncalling.co/2013/02/simple-customer-feedback-id...
- Steuard 9y agoI don't see "long-term financial success" as being obviously the right metric for judging education at all. It's worth considering, absolutely! But people choose to forego maximum wealth for other priorities all the time, and often for very desirable reasons (both individually and socially). Why shouldn't the metric have something to do with long-term personal fulfillment and happiness? Why shouldn't it have something to do with long-term contributions to society? I agree with you that the more abundant data (and reduced selection bias) available for schools makes measurements easier for them than for medicine, but I don't think that it's any easier to define an appropriate metric for judging them.
- StudentStuff 9y agoHN really likes to talk money over everything, in spite of how money is merely a means to an end. I think a better metric would take into account overall health history, years paid into Social Security (as a proxy for income), and food/housing stability. Look at those three factors, and you can get a grip on how a person's life has gone in a way you can compare to others.
- avip 9y agoI sure hope my kids` teachers don't share your views of their success metric.