Imagine a group of aliens from Mars has descended to Earth. They are peaceful, non-threatening, very smart, and have come to help us.
They hear we want to improve our system of education and tell us they have exactly the answer. They had the same problem over on Mars, they explain, and they solved it with math.
We decide to hear what they have to say. After all, there have been decades of concern over test scores, and especially over the achievement gap, which is the difference between test scores of the rich and the poor. The achievement gap is seen as a threat to our international competitiveness, and an injustice in its own right. We’d like to solve this problem efficiently and fairly, and both we and the Martians want to find a way to assess student performance equally between rich and poor districts, because the infrastructure of the whole system is biased toward the rich. Numbers, say tests scores from the same test given in all districts, should (shouldn’t it?) be the best way to cut through the inherent bias. We accept the offer, and the Martian scoring systems start pushing out results. We pay close attention.
[For more of this story, written by Cathy O'Neil, go to https://psmag.com/alien-algori...a2fd209e4#.jusrzwieu]
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