Imagine finding a paper, like a paper you wrote
30 years ago, outlining the absolute biggest,
most fundamental crisis in your entire profession.
Oh wow, yeah. That sounds stressful. Right. And
then realizing that today, not only has the crisis
not been fixed, but it has somehow become the
gold standard. I mean, you'd probably question
everything about the industry you work in. It
is a deeply unsettling realization. You kind
of assume that over the course of three decades,
any field will evolve. Right, you'd think so.
You expect the glaring flaws of the past to be
ironed out through research, innovation, or just
plain common sense. Yeah, but that is the exact
opposite of what Dr. Gary L. Ackerman experienced.
So today we are taking a deep dive into a brilliant
and frankly unnerving critique. He published
on hack science education It really is a fascinating
piece It came out in April of 2026 and the whole
mission of this deep dive today is to explore
why our modern hyper optimized data -obsessed
schools might actually be systematically eradicating
true curiosity. Yeah, that's the core of it.
Dr. Ackerman found a graduate paper he wrote
way back in 1997. And in it, he pointed out that
an inquiry -based science curriculum, specifically
one that includes authentic assessment, was largely
unfamiliar to most teachers. Which was a massive
red flag in 1997. I mean, it was an urgent call
for reform, pointing out a critical gap in how
human beings were basically being educated. Fast
forward to April... 2026, like almost 30 years
later, Ackerman looks around and notes that his
1997 observation is still entirely true. It's
wild. 30 years of new educational philosophies,
billions of dollars in EdTech funding, endless
policy shifts, and we are stuck in the exact
same spot. OK, let's unpack this. How is it even
possible that nearly three decades of evolution
have left us right where we started? Well, to
understand that stagnation, we have to recognize
that it isn't an accident. Wait, really? Yeah,
we aren't looking at institutional laziness or
like a mere failure to adopt new methods. What
Dr. Ackerman's piece points to is a deliberate
systemic abandonment of complex learning. Deliberate.
Wow. Yes. The system just walked away from it
because complex learning is wildly incompatible
with the one thing modern education values above
all else, which is clean, manageable data. So
the system didn't just fail to figure out how
to teach better. they actively chose a lesser
form of teaching just because it fits neatly
into a spreadsheet. Essentially, yes. And we
can see exactly how this happened by looking
at the specific concept Ackerman highlights,
which is the inquiry -based curriculum. Right.
He notes that across the board, inquiry has been
functionally abandoned. And the justification
for this, which even Ackerman acknowledges is
supported by certain research, you know, is that
inquiry -based learning is, quote unquote, inefficient.
Let me play devil's advocate here for a second,
though, because if we are looking at this from
the perspective of an administrator or a teacher,
efficiency isn't just a corporate buzzword. I
mean, it's a survival tactic. Sure, absolutely.
If you have a classroom with 35 kids, stretch
45 -minute class periods, and this massive list
of state -mandated standards you are legally
required to hit by May inefficiency, sounds like
a total disaster. It does. It sounds like you'll
lose control of the room. Right. Data -driven,
highly structured instruction scales across millions
of students. Messy, wandering inquiry doesn't.
So aren't schools just doing the only thing they
logistically can do with the resources they have?
It is a super compelling defense, and frankly,
it is exactly the logic that built the current
system. When you have massive scale, you crave
predictability. Yeah, you want to guarantee.
Exactly. You want a straight, highly efficient
line from the curriculum to the teacher's mouth,
straight to the student's standardized test score.
What's fascinating here is the tension between
that efficiency and true learning. How so? Well,
The fatal flaw in that logic, and this is Ackerman's
central counterpoint, is that by optimizing entirely
for efficiency, you basically engineer out the
friction required for actual learning. Because
genuine inquiry, like the process of asking your
own questions, testing a hypothesis, failing
completely and having to start over is inherently
full of friction. It's totally unpredictable.
Precisely. You cannot easily schedule an epiphany.
Right. You can efficiently mandate that a student
memorizes a scientific formula by Tuesday at
noon. That generates a highly measurable data
point. But you can't efficiently measure the
moment a student develops a genuine internal
curiosity about how that formula governs the
physics of the real world. Right. There's no
bubble to fill in for curiosity. Exactly. By
prioritizing the easy -to -measure tasks, we
have effectively stripped the actual education
out of the instruction. Without that messy inquiry,
it becomes nearly impossible to cultivate critical
thinking or complex problem -solving skills because,
well, those skills require a really high tolerance
for ambiguity. You know, it makes me think about
learning, like exploring a brand new city. Oh,
like that. Yeah, so if the education system's
only goal is efficiency, they basically just
build a massive elevated highway right through
the middle of town. You get on point A, you drive
straight to point B, and you arrive in 10 minutes.
Highly efficient, highly measurable. Exactly.
But if you take that highway, what do you actually
learn about the city? You bypass the culture,
the architecture, the local interactions. You
see absolutely nothing but concrete barriers.
You just get the destination, not the journey.
You learn nothing about the landscape at all.
If you actually want to understand the city,
you have to get off the highway. You have to
wander down side streets, you have to take a
wrong turn, you know, get a little lost and figure
out how to navigate your way back. Which is a
terribly inefficient way to travel. Yes, but
education is supposed to be about the exploration
itself, not just the destination. And when schools
optimize exclusively for that highway, they are
prioritizing the logistical schedule over the
cognitive discovery. Dr. Ackerman is essentially
pointing out that we've paved over the entire
educational landscape with these multi -lane
highways of easily measurable tasks. We traded
depth for speed. I want the listener to really
think about this. Think about the last time you
actually retained a complex skill in your own
life. You probably didn't learn it by silently
reading a rubric and checking off a multiple
-choice box. Definitely not. You likely stumbled
through it. You failed a few times, got really
frustrated, and finally pieced it together yourself.
The friction was the catalyst. But if the system
refuses to tolerate that friction because it
doesn't scale neatly, it really begs the question,
what exactly are they measuring? And that right
there is the pivotal transition in Ackerman's
argument. If you remove the complex inquiry,
you completely alter the definition of success.
And this leads us directly to the second major
casualty of the last 30 years. Which is authentic
assessment. Yes. And he uses that term very specifically.
Authentic assessment isn't just a buzzword for
him. No, he defines it quite rigidly. Right,
it has a strict definition in this context. Ackerman
characterizes authentic assessment as activities
created by students to demonstrate their learning
that would be of interest to those outside of
the classroom. That distinction outside of the
classroom, that changes the entire dynamic, doesn't
it? Like, why a student is doing the work in
the first place? Oh, totally. If we connect this
to the bigger picture, it alters the fundamental
psychology of the learner. Okay, unpack that.
Let's look at the traditional method. Normally,
a student writes a research paper or completes
a project strictly to meet a single teacher's
specific standards. The teacher is the sole audience,
and the grading rubric is the ultimate boundary
of the work. You just follow the rules. Right.
Authentic assessment completely dismantles that
dynamic. Instead of writing merely to satisfy
the teacher, the student produces work that meets
industry standards. Like, Ackerman uses the example
of a student writing a report designed for a
potential publication in an actual journal. Here's
where it gets really interesting. When your only
audience is the teacher, your primary psychological
motivation is just compliance. Yes. Box checking.
You're just sitting there asking yourself, uh...
Did I use the right font? Did I hit the word
count? Did I format the bibliography exactly
the way Mr. Smith likes it? You are engaging
in a transactional relationship. You are literally
just trading compliance for a grade. But when
you create something intended for the real world,
an audience that actually cares about the utility
and accuracy of the content, not just the formatting,
the motivation shifts from mere compliance to
actual contribution. Exactly. You want it to
be good, not just graded. It's like playing a
video game, where the only person watching you
play is the programmer who built the game. Oh,
that's a great way to put it. Right. You aren't
playing to explore or to have fun. You are just
trying to hit the exact sequence of buttons the
programmer designed at the exact right moment.
just to prove you can follow their hidden rules.
Right. You are just reverse engineering the authority
figure's expectations. You aren't creating anything
new. You are just echoing their parameters back
to them. But authentic assessment is like stepping
out of that game and deciding to actually build
a game that real people want to play. Suddenly,
you have to care if your creation is engaging,
if the mechanics work, if it provides real value
to a stranger. If our schools rely solely on
having students echo a teacher's expectations,
it seems like we are just training millions of
kids to be professional people pleasers instead
of independent thinkers. And that is a dangerous
precedent for a society to set. I mean, in a
professional setting or in civic life, there
isn't always a teacher standing over you with
a rubric telling you exactly what a successful
outcome looks like. Definitely not. You have
to possess the internal capacity to identify
a problem, design a solution, and create value
on your own. But according to Dr. Ackerman's
piece, these authentic real -world assessment
activities are so rare in today's classrooms
that they are practically a myth. He actually
takes that point a step further, and this is
where his critique gets genuinely chilling to
me. He observes that these authentic activities
are so scarce now, he genuinely doubts the educational
system even has the capacity to introduce this
type of education anymore. Yeah, it is a profound
and damning observation. He's not just saying
they prefer not to do it. No, he isn't saying
that schools simply choose to focus on standard
tests today, but could easily switch back to
authentic learning tomorrow if they wanted to.
He is suggesting that the institutional muscle
memory for this kind of teaching has completely
atrophied. I really want to dig into the mechanics
of that atrophy. How does a massive institution
literally lose the capacity to teach authentically?
Well, it happens systematically over generations
of educators. Think about the 30 -year timeline
from his 1997 paper. Okay. The veteran teachers
who intuitively understood how to guide messy,
unstructured inquiry eventually retire. They
are replaced by newer teachers who have been
trained both as students themselves and in their
university teaching programs under the strict
regime of standardized, data -driven instruction.
So they never even experience it themselves.
Exactly. And the curriculum materials provided
by the districts are these highly scripted pacing
guides designed to maximize test scores. The
administrative oversight is entirely focused
on benchmark data. There's no room to deviate.
None. So even if a rogue teacher wants to implement
an authentic long -term project, the surrounding
ecosystem actively crushes it because it doesn't
yield immediate, comparable data points. The
capacity is lost because the environment has
been engineered to reject it. Wow. So the system
has just walled itself off from reality. Which
brings us to the root cause of this entire structural
failure. Why is the system so utterly obsessed
with the data? that it would literally sacrifice
its own capacity to teach. Dr. Ackerman points
to a very specific concept here. Yes, he identifies
the core culprit as Goodhart's Law. Goodhart's
Law. That's the idea that when a measure becomes
a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Exactly.
And to really grasp the gravity of Ackerman's
critique, we have to look at how Goodhart's Law
physically manifests in a school district. Walk
us through that. Well, decades ago, test scores
and basic task completion metrics were introduced
merely as measures. They were simple proxy metrics,
just a quick temperature check to give administrators
a rough idea if learning was generally heading
in the right direction. Like a way to spot a
failing school before it completely collapses.
Like a warning system. Yeah. But over the last
30 years, largely driven by policy and funding
models, those measures transformed into the absolute
targets. The ultimate goal. Yes. Schools, districts,
and state education boards stopped aiming for
the abstract goal of creating well -rounded citizens
and started aiming entirely at moving metric
itself. And Goodheart's law dictates that the
moment you optimize your entire system strictly
to hit a metric, people will find ways to hit
that metric that have absolutely nothing to do
with the original goal. Right, so you teach to
the test, you lower the passing grade threshold,
you push students into easier classes to just
inflate the graduation rate. You manipulate the
environment to serve the data. The data is no
longer a good proxy for learning. It is just
a reflection of how well the system can game
its own rules. We end up with massive servers
full of fantastic data but very little actual
learning taking place in the minds of the students.
So what does this all mean? It's like we are
all passengers in a car and the entire educational
leadership team is in the front seat obsessively
staring at the speedometer. Great analogy. Right.
And at some point they figured out how to rig
the dial so it constantly reads 60 miles an hour.
The data looks incredible to everyone in charge.
We are making fantastic time. But if you stop
staring at the dashboard and actually look out
the window, the car isn't moving. Not an inch.
The engine is dead. And we are parked on the
side of the road. And this is where the mechanism
of the stagnation becomes so painfully clear.
Because all the funding, the school rankings,
the property values in the district, and the
superintendent's performance reviews are entirely
tied to what that rig speedometer reads. Nobody
wants to look up from the dashboard. Exactly.
Nobody has any incentive to look out the window.
Acknowledging that the car is broken would threaten
the entire structure? Which perfectly explains
the most frustrating line in Dr. Ackerman's entire
post. He notes that educational leaders seem
completely content with this arrangement. Yeah,
that's the kicker. We have plenty of data, very
little learning, and leadership is fine with
that. It sounds cynical, but when you lay out
the incentives of Goodhart's law, it makes perfect
sense. They aren't necessarily evil villains.
They are just rational actors responding to a
terribly designed incentive structure. That is
the inescapable tragedy of his critique. If you
are a principal or a district leader whose job
security and budget rely entirely on demonstrating
measurable year -over -year improvement, well,
Goodhart's law works wonderfully for you. It's
doing its job. You become perfectly content with
the illusion of learning. High standardized test
scores, flawless attendance records, beautifully
charted task completion rates, because that illusion
satisfies the demands of the state. But the real
learning is lost. Yes. Because the leadership
has become so deeply invested in this illusion,
they have lost the ability to even recognize
actual unquantifiable learning when it happens.
Because actual learning looks like a failure
on their spreadsheets. Like, if a student spends
three weeks wrestling with a complex problem,
failing repeatedly, but ultimately developing
a profound new understanding of the scientific
method, the data shows three weeks of failed
tasks. Exactly. The messy inquiry and the authentic
assessment that Ackerman advocates for do not
generate the neat, tidy, upward -trending graphs
that leadership requires for their board meetings.
So they throw it out. Therefore, they are discarded.
The system traded the messy, brilliant reality
of human cognition for the clean, predictable
illusion of data management. And we have been
living inside that illusion for so long that
the institution has genuinely forgotten what
the reality looks like. 30 years out from his
1997 paper, and the trap has only clamped down
harder. The metrics have only gotten more granular.
Synthesizing this entire journey, what Dr. Ackerman
is really documenting, is a 30 -year trajectory
of systematic loss. In the relentless pursuit
of easily measurable data, classrooms have been
stripped of the very friction that makes education
meaningful. The unpredictable, inefficient process
of genuine inquiry was swapped out for highly
structured, data -friendly instruction. And the
authentic assessments were lost too. Right. The
real -world assessments that transform a student
from a compliant rule follower into a valuable
contributor were replaced by standardized rubrics
that serve no audience but the system itself.
We optimized for the spreadsheet. and the cost
was our critical thinking. And while it is incredibly
easy to sit back and point fingers at the bureaucracy
of the education system, this deep dive should
force us to hold up a mirror to our own lives.
That is so true. Think about how you navigate
your own career or your creative pursuits or
even your personal goals. Are you living your
life governed by good heart's law? Are you gaming
your own system? Right. Are you optimizing your
daily routines for the quote unquote easy to
measure metrics, obsessing over follower counts?
constantly checking off trivial to -do lists,
or hitting arbitrary productivity targets just
to feel like you are moving forward? It is a
vital question to ask yourself. There is a massive
difference between looking like you are making
progress on a dashboard and actually making meaningful
progress in reality. Precisely. Are you willing
to look out the window and admit the car is parked,
or are you just going to keep tapping the rig
spinometer? True growth requires you to embrace
the messy, inefficient deeply authentic inquiry
that simply cannot be tracked on a spreadsheet.
The friction is the point. You have to seek it
out because the institutions around you are actively
trying to smooth it away. And as we wrap up this
deep dive into Dr. Ackerman's fascinating critique,
I want to leave you with one final lingering
thought to mull over. We've established the very
real possibility that our formal educational
institutions have completely lost the capacity
for authentic learning. We've seen how leadership
is heavily incentivized to remain content with
this facade of data. If the system is truly incapable
of reversing course, what's the future look like?
Will the next generation's greatest innovators
The real critical thinkers and problem solvers
who actually push society forward be those who
actively opt out of the traditional education
system entirely. Wow. A highly provocative question.
If the modern school is just a highly efficient
data factory, is the only way to save your own
curiosity? to refuse to step onto the assembly
line in the first place. And that is a question
that a system obsessed with its own metrics is
wholly unprepared to answer. Something to seriously
think about the next time you find yourself prioritizing
clean efficiency over messy exploration. Thanks
for joining us on this deep dive. Keep wandering,
keep asking the difficult questions, and we'll
catch you next time.