Campbell's Law and the Malaysian education system

Campbell's Law, named after psychologist Donald Campbell holds that "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures..."

I've seen this up close as an education officer, when the Ministry of Education decided to stop ranking schools. Schools used to be ranked for operational and practical purposes. It helped district and state education departments determine the ones that needed intervention, be it coaching and mentoring or other resources, financial or otherwise. I remember being instructed to draw up a list of languishing or low-performing schools in the now abolished UPSR examinations, with the express order to visit and assist those who have taken semi-permanent residence at the bottom of said list. I would then have to develop intervention approaches and report these to my higher ups, whether at state or federal level.

I can recall how this scenario played out at school level. There were reports of efforts to game the system, filtering in from other districts and states. Rumours of teachers teaching to the test abounded, with students asked to memorise vast tracts of model essays in order to pass, the net result of which was near zero gains in literacy, proficiency and learning. As an inexperienced, young teacher, I was requested by school management to practice the same, which I refused. Instead, I gamified the learning of vocabulary, which incensed my headmaster at the time. While my colleagues crowed about the As their students attained, my students had passing marks to show for their efforts. However, I was equally proud of them, for these were commensurate with their skills and level at the time, as well as being a reflection of my teaching methods, which sorely needed improvement. It provided valuable feedback for the students, the school and myself.

As a quantitative researcher, I am guilty of fetishizing data as much as at the next quant, and this could be the result of my doctoral training, wherein data and its visualisation were central to my survival in a viva voce situation. However, I also acknowledge a purely quantitative view may not be the only answer in a complex school situation. It will do well to heed lessons from posterity. Kennedy's government in the 60s was staffed with some of the youngest and most educated civil servants ever seen at that point in time. That did not stop them from committing mistakes in Vietnam, Cuba and elsewhere.