Seeing Like a State: Efficiency, Calculability, Predictivity, Control, Testing Regimes, and School Administration

Abstract

“Seeing Like a State” is a concept that was developed by James Scott who pointed out that

… state simplifications, the basic givens of modern statecraft, were, I began to realize, rather like abridged maps. They did not successfully represent the actual activity of the society they depicted, nor were they intended to; they represented only that slice of it that interested the official observer … they were maps that, when allied with state power, would enable much of the reality they depicted to be remade (Scott 1999, 3).

Or put into the language of schools, it means that the simplifications, especiallythe standard tests bureaucrats use, represent only that slice of schooling,?which is important to people sitting in the state capital or WashingtonDC, and not necessarily what happens on the ground. As Scott goes on to?note though,

The lack of context and particularity is not an oversight; it is the necessaryfirst premise of any large-scale planning exercise. To the degree that the?subjects can be treated as standardized units, the power of resolution in theplanning exercise is enhanced. Questions posed within these strict confines?can have definitive, qualitative answers [needed by planners].

Our statistics reflect … the values that we assign things … Treating these as objective data, as if they are external to us, beyond question or dispute, is undoubtedly reassuring, but it’s dangerous because we get to the point where we stop asking ourselves about the purpose of what we are dong, what we are actually measuring, and what lessons we need to draw… . We begin to march ahead blindly while convinced that we know where we’re going

(Sarkozy in Stiglitz et al 2010, viii)