by Kenneth Black

Created on: August 01, 2008   Last Updated: June 17, 2010

Numbers drive the world. In a work environment, we are all judged by our production numbers, error rates or money brought in. At schools, grade point averages and national test scores are the standards. But in the process of crunching numbers, are we losing sight of something even more important? There is one equation numbers cannot reflect - the human equation.

As education becomes more data driven and less personal, American schools continually run the risk of alienating the most vulnerable in their student populations. Most school boards say there are other things that should be considered, but their hands are tied by the federal government. Numbers cannot tell you that a student found so much encouragement from a mentoring program that, after his brother died, he threw himself into his school work, instead of remaining despondent and turning to alcohol, drugs and gangs. Numbers cannot tell you about a young man who finds so much of his self worth through an after-school sport that he stays in class until graduation, instead of sentencing himself to a lifetime of poverty by dropping out. Numbers cannot tell you about the teenage girl who makes a decision not to get pregnant and has the tools at her disposal to keep that from happening.

Numbers cannot tell these stories; only people can. For years, we've been taught as a society that school is about learning reading 'riting and 'rithmetic. But for so many students who do not have a firm support structure at home, or who find that school is simply where they feel most comfortable, school is so much more. Yes, school teaches them the skills they need to make a living, but more importantly it teaches them life skills.

If a politician truly wants to leave no child behind, then test scores are a flawed assessment. By default, some students will automatically get left behind in a testing environment. As long as there are tests, there will be winners and losers. But a test resulI is just a tiny view of how the school is doing and how it may be impacting the lives and learning habits of its students. And often tiny views are inaccurate ones, when not compared against the bigger picture.

So what can schools do to change this? Very little, it seems. Local control in education is a myth. Federal money, which is where the majority of a school district's funding comes from, is tied to test scores. It is tied to standard curriculum models. In order to get the money to operate, school boards have become nothing but "yes men" to bureacrats and congressmen, most of whom have absolutely no idea what it takes to run a succesful school system.

For those who who fail the time to really look at an issue, numbers and data prepared neatly on a spreadsheet gives a snapshot. But what those decision makers really need is the video, not a still photo from one moment in time - the video that shows not everything is accomplished with a piece of paper and a pencil. Real progress is only measured when you study individual students, not individual numbers.

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