It goes “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” How does that work in practice?
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Here’s an example to help explain it:
My wife was a teacher. At some point, her school decided that too many kids were failing. They decided that every time a teacher gave a failing grade, they’d have to write out an explanation of why they did that, what steps they’ve taken to help the kid learn the material, what contacts they had with the parent, how everybody responded to their attempts, and their plans going forward to see that the kid learned the material.
Instead, teachers would just change the grades to D-, which is a passing grade. So the kids were passing, but they still didn’t know the material, and were not prepared for the next grade. Next year, of course, the kids would still receive passing grades, and would still not have learned the material from the previous year, let alone the current one.
The measure (kids failing) became a target (don’t fail kids), and it ceased to be a good measure (it no longer measured whether the kids had learned the material.)
The reason the school decided to do that was another level of Godhart’s Law. The administration was being penalized based on the number of kids who failed, so they were trying to reduce the number of kids failing. At another time, they simply declared that the lowest grade a teacher could give was a D. My wife had a few kids who would simply never do any work at all, would turn in blank tests, and who knew very well that they’d still pass, even if they skipped half of their classes.
This is part of why she retired from teaching.
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