What Bernie Madoff Can Teach Us About Accountability in Education

By Walter M. Stroup

Mindful of H.L. Mencken's observation that "there is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong," let us urge the new Obama administration to avoid making the mistake of previous administrations in equating accountability in education with high-stakes test scores. There is increasing evidence that flaws in current test design should all but disqualify their continued use as metrics of accountability, especially in science and mathematics education.

To help us head off a potential collapse of trust in public education comparable in scale to the collapse of trust in our financial system, we might look to draw parallels from what we are learning with the economy. In particular, the closure of Bernard Madoff's fraudulent investment firm stands to teach us at least four basic lessons we might use in reflecting on the role high-stakes testing has in driving current education reform.

A first lesson is that the most compelling evidence for something's being wrong is often hidden in plain view . Consistent investment returns of 10 percent or more can’t be real, and in Mr. Madoff's case, they weren't. Similarly in education, there is mounting evidence in plain view that our current approach to high-stakes-test design can’t tell us what we need to know in order...