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How about this, then: Each school gets a share of the economic benefit it generates. That is, every year after leaving the school, every student is graded by wh

How about this, then: Each school gets a share of the economic benefit it generates. That is, every year after leaving the school, every student is graded by what they paid in taxes, earned in income, contributed to social security, or whatever scheme you can make up. This grade then goes back to the school. This should be arguably the best and most relevant test one can conceive. Do you see anything wrong with that?

marshmallow_12 6y ago
yes. High income is more to do with where you are born, not how well you did in school. though there may be a gigantic gray area, this holds true in general. You will be throwing money where it's needed the least and will help the least.
JackFr 6y ago
Reducing humans to hedonic consumption machines where life satisfaction is measured by consumption and value is measured by production is easy and terrible.
powersnail 6y ago
Yes, it's quite problematic. First, it's obviously not a fair measure; tax contributed is not a direct reflection of education quality. Parents, background, accidents, moving abroad... You can't possibly clean the statistics enough to get rid of all those factors. Second, it's not the business of the school to know my tax information and employment status. You can't measure something based on a number that you can't know.
lawtalkinghuman 6y ago
Determining how well a school did at teaching people subjects like literature, foreign languages, science, mathematics and history now depends on how many of their graduates became stockbrokers and business executives, not on whether the school actually did a good job at educating their students. Assessing the quality of education by economic output means the engineer who declines a job at Google or Facebook to take a job at a human rights non-profit is a "worse" engineer, and their education must be considered substandard compared to one who goes and takes a Big Tech job. Same with doctors who volunteer to run free HIV clinics in sub-Saharan Africa when they could get a job doing buttlifts for movie stars in Los Angeles, or lawyers who become public defenders or represent asylum seekers and other public interest clients rather than doing extremely well-compensated corporate work. In as much as it reduces all of human life and values to numbers on a spreadsheet, yes, there is almost certainly something wrong with it.

marshmallow_12 6y ago

yes. High income is more to do with where you are born, not how well you did in school. though there may be a gigantic gray area, this holds true in general. You will be throwing money where it's needed the least and will help the least.

JackFr 6y ago

Reducing humans to hedonic consumption machines where life satisfaction is measured by consumption and value is measured by production is easy and terrible.

powersnail 6y ago

Yes, it's quite problematic. First, it's obviously not a fair measure; tax contributed is not a direct reflection of education quality. Parents, background, accidents, moving abroad... You can't possibly clean the statistics enough to get rid of all those factors. Second, it's not the business of the school to know my tax information and employment status. You can't measure something based on a number that you can't know.

lawtalkinghuman 6y ago

Determining how well a school did at teaching people subjects like literature, foreign languages, science, mathematics and history now depends on how many of their graduates became stockbrokers and business executives, not on whether the school actually did a good job at educating their students. Assessing the quality of education by economic output means the engineer who declines a job at Google or Facebook to take a job at a human rights non-profit is a "worse" engineer, and their education must be considered substandard compared to one who goes and takes a Big Tech job. Same with doctors who volunteer to run free HIV clinics in sub-Saharan Africa when they could get a job doing buttlifts for movie stars in Los Angeles, or lawyers who become public defenders or represent asylum seekers and other public interest clients rather than doing extremely well-compensated corporate work. In as much as it reduces all of human life and values to numbers on a spreadsheet, yes, there is almost certainly something wrong with it.