Governance now leads with metrics to produce the practices rather than measuring established ones.

Evidence

Camp is very clear that the investigation of practices should come first and that the metrics quantifying their effect should come later (ibid., pp. 4–5). However, it is noteworthy that leading with the metrics in order to produce the practices has become an important governance tool. The British REF (Research Excellence Framework) is but one example; almost all the efforts at assessing teaching and educational outcomes in U.S. K–12 education has the purpose of altering pedagogical and curricular practices. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 601

Categorization

• XREF: Core evidence for Brown’s ‘metrics as governance’ thesis — the inversion of measurement into prescription connects directly to her argument that quantification colonizes democratic judgment. — connects to: Governance by incentives and benchmarks replaces top-down law and rule — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 56; Audit targets reshape institutional activity toward whatever is measured — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 93; Agencies evaluate what is measurable rather than what clients get. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 409
• SEED: Article angle: the inversion of benchmarking — how assessment metrics have become the instrument, not the record, of educational governance.

Broader Connections

• Governance by incentives and benchmarks replaces top-down law and rule #expands (0.82) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 56