Campbell's Law

Campbell's Law - The more any quantitive social indicator is used for social decision making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it was intended to monitor." Dontald T. Campbell (pg. 186)

Campbell's Law Defined:
What campbell's law states is that as the importance of test scores or quantitive data becomes increasingly more relevant so does the likelyhood that students will cheat in order to compensate for this imprtance. - Since students know that their social and acedemic placement revolves around this aspect.

The problem is Campbell's Law is that it exists. Students have become so aware of the importance of scores in relation to their own wellbeing that they've resorted to mass cheating in order to compenate for this drawback. It's sad when students have to resort to such means in order to have a safeguard against the same educational system that claims to have their own best interest. It's hard to believe that this "Law" is overlooked so often, and not seen as an indicator to the perils of failed standardized testing procedures. Therefore Standardized Testing should be dropped from classrooms and replaced with other forms of authentic assessment or non-discriminitory means of assessment, to both student and teacher.

Combating Campbell's Law

• Reducing the importance of Standardized Testing
• Replacing Standardized Testing with authentic assessment
• Priming students to understand that high scores don't equate to higher intelligence
• Reducing the importance of "Scoring" on tests. Instead use tests to collect data for future inquiries regarding effectiveness of certain teaching styles, etc.