[nickbarone]

Success metric fail.

Then again - What is the success metric for education? Attendance is (IMHO) pretty terrible, and standardized testing hasn't worked out the best - so what is it?

A classic answer (but still, probably not all that great of one) is jobs upon graduation - but that doesn't help in elementary school.

So, how would you go about turning such long-term metrics as "employment in ten years" into short term metrics, to figure out what to do next week?

[Caballera]

Unfortunately, the school get their money based on how many kids go to their school. They have to keep track, if they don't or if students aren't showing regularly, they lose funding.

[nickbarone]

What I'm saying is that using attendance as the metric to determine funding sucks and we should find a better way.

Success metrics are how you determine whether a change has worked, and they are how you determine where to put more resources. So if your success metric is attendance, you're going to maximize attendance, not quality of education.

[tzs]

I don't think they are using attendance is a success metric. They are using it as a cost metric.

[rhizome]

The success of the US education system is measured by the highly squishy terms of "perception."