My son goes to a wonderful elementary school – all his teachers have been terrific. His county school board produces the worst report cards ever (so far).
The report cards are ‘growth-based’, meant to measure progress from competency levels exhibited at the beginning of the school year. Fair enough. But there are 40 ‘essential learnings’ in language, and 26 in math. And the parent has no guide as to which of these ‘essential learnings’ have been emphasized in class, or as to which are most important for general progress. My older children now attend a school where they are simply given letter grades, and I – and surely most parents? – find a ‘B+’ in a subject more informative about how they are doing than bar graphs for 40 different kinds of finely-grained definitions of skills within a single subject.
Arts organizations take note: in choosing metrics, or KPI‘s, remember the ‘K’: what is truly key to what you are trying to achieve. Too many metrics, with no sense of how to weigh their relative importance, is less informative to your stakeholders than a short list of measures closely tied to prioritized goals.
A “short list of measures closely tied to prioritized goals”? Are you mad? What would foundation program officers do with their days?
Good post, Michael. I’m increasingly coming to believe that MOST performance metrics spinning around the nonprofit arts are untethered from prioritized goals for the organization, the funder, or any other constituency. Seems to be more of a ‘credential cloud’ to protect against looking unprepared should an authorizor ask a pointed question. Oh, that we could all agree to stick to short lists of measures closely tied to prioritized goals.
Thanks for the comment! Any organization can present a lot of data on outcomes (how many red-haired 36-year olds attend our Sunday matinees in June?), but those interested in the organization want to know: what have been your priorities? which series matter the most? Over-reporting of data hints at an organization not really sure how to answer either of those questions.