Muller, Jerry Z. The Tyranny of Metrics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018).
This book offers a balanced and insightful analysis of how measurement criteria are used and misused in efforts to hold public institutions accountable. The author’s major thesis can be summarized with his contention, “There are things that can be measured. There are things that are worth measuring. but what can be measured is not always what is worth measuring; what gets measured may have no relationship to what we really want to know. the costs of measuring may be greater than the benefits. The things that get measured may draw effort away from the things we really care about. And measurements may provide us with distorted knowledge–knowledge that seems solid but is acutally deceptive.” Muller’s argument is not against measurement per se, but against an over-reaching use of data metrics in the absence of professional judgment and experience. His chapters on higher education and public education serve as cautionary tales for all ethical professionals; it is a call to think carefully about how, when, and why numeric data are used to assess student learning, teacher performance, and school accountability. Although the subject may seem somewhat dry, Muller’s style of writing makes a complicated subject both readabe and understandable. His use of examples makes the tyranny of dysfunctionally used metrics all to real.