What people misunderstand about these metric-based systems in the US is that their purpose is not to reform systems or improve performance. It's to create a layer of interference that either channels control into a new managerial class or to wrest it back into the hands of higher-level administrator from whom it was somehow ceded.
The purpose of business consultants is to make money for business consultants. Pushing for standardized testing regimes is to pursue political goals and profit (for-profit charters, low-quality online education, re-segregation of schools). It's the same in academia. The question is always, "cui bono?"
I'm fairly anti-capitalist, and even I can see this is a bit of a stretch. The way managers are taught is that you can't improve upon a process unless you know exactly what to improve. They look for something definite like metrics because a change in those can actually mean something and it's more definite than "they're doing good work." The drive to use metrics actually kind of revolutionized how we improve work. The problem now is that managers use it a bit too much and use the wrong metrics sometimes.
I don't disagree that in some contexts, metric-based management and reform can be well-intentioned/beneficial (many Japanese companies use these tools to good effect).
But I don't think this true in the context of the modern US economy(why I qualified my statement as such). The political/economic situation is such that the efficacy of a given model is secondary to the viability of abstractions that make reference to it. How it performs in the meta-context of "salesmanship," re-inforcing acceptable political narratives, and social media, supercede its actual utility. The implosive (and false) model of finance, where the derivative of some object or system possesses more value than the thing which it references, has pervaded every aspect of our economy and culture.
There is a more subtle wrinkle to it. One of the reasons managerial culture in the US leans so heavily on 'objective' metrics is because we have a history of racial discrimination that rewards people from certain demographic backgrounds while punishing others.
Charitably, metrics are supposed to be a way to introduce objectivity and minimize implicit/unacknowledged biases in decision making, especially where performance is concerned. Even less charitably, it gives companies and managers cover for discriminatory practices by giving them objective standards to point at as justification for their decisions.
We'd all probably be much more comfortable with a less metric dependent world if we didn't also have the nagging feeling that it would lead to the same-old types of people scratching each others' backs.
I don't think using objective metrics is racist, which is what we were talking about. If you have any data that proves me otherwise, I would appreciate it very much. It would be unexpected to me.
I think you might have misunderstood my point. I said our management culture leans on metrics so heavily as a way to mitigate the effects of racism (and sexism) in managerial decision making. Not that the metrics are racist.
It's harder for us to rely on systems that leave more room for personal judgement without oversight because we worry that decisions not attached to hard metrics are more likely to be subject to invidious biases. The charitable take is that the drive for metrics is motivated by a sincere attempt to mitigate these biases. The more cynical take I offered was saying that people use it as a way to cover their tracks against charges of discrimination.
The purpose of business consultants is to make money for business consultants. Pushing for standardized testing regimes is to pursue political goals and profit (for-profit charters, low-quality online education, re-segregation of schools). It's the same in academia. The question is always, "cui bono?"