What Counts, or What Is Counted?

By Michael K. Stone

Accountability—who could be against that? Basing policy on real data—isn’t that crucial? Evaluating government programs and private initiatives by their results—how else? Teaching students to draw conclusions from facts, figures, and research—that’s part of our job as educators, isn’t it?

I want to know if my school is doing its job, the shape the economy and my finances are in, how humans are affecting the environment, if I’m doing what I should to maintain my health. I depend on test scores, sales figures, lab reports. Data guide my decisions, and I hope that they guide the agencies and organizations around me. And yet, the appeal of numbers can also be a trap. Numbers inform; they also distort. They’re not the whole picture.

We think a lot about that at the organization where I work, the Center for Ecoliteracy. That’s probably because we’re committed to helping students understand the implications of the connections between individual “things” (plants, people, schools, watersheds, economies) and the larger systems...