Standardized Testing in Education
Title
Overview
Sample Prompt
Prompt
Campbell's Law
Campbell's Law in standardized testing states that the more a quantitative metric is used for social decision-making, the more likely it is to be manipulated and distorted, causing the measure to lose its value as an indicator of underlying performance. This phenomenon leads people to optimize for the metric itself, such as "teaching to the test," rather than addressing the actual issue, like general learning and competence.
Wikipedia Page on Campbell's Law
Goodhart's Law
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"
In the context of educational testing, Goodhart's law states that when a measure of performance—such as a standardized test score—becomes a target for policy, it ceases to be a good measure of genuine learning. When schools, districts, or teachers are pressured to meet specific performance goals, they find ways to improve the metric without improving the actual outcome it was meant to represent.