{"id":4269,"date":"2012-02-07T20:13:46","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T01:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/?p=4269"},"modified":"2016-11-16T20:13:17","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T01:13:17","slug":"measuring-creativity-in-the-public-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/measuring-creativity-in-the-public-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Measuring Creativity in the Public Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days back, Education Week<\/em> ran a story<\/a> about the rise of state-sponsored efforts to encourage the inclusion of creativity skills in public education.\u00a0 The topic deserves some attention.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The old debate about what role creativity ought to play in public education often stumbles upon the basic question of what creativity is, and of whether it can be measured\u2014or even defined\u2014in a meaningful way.\u00a0 Though there may be much to be said for the axiom that creativity can\u2019t be quantified, at least three states have been working to develop something akin to an objective measure of imagination. \u00a0The efforts have been modest and are still in embryo, but they seem to constitute an emerging development in the ongoing effort to review the priorities of American public education.<\/p>\n

Leading the way is Massachusetts, which since 2010 has had legislation calling for the development of a so-called \u201ccreativity index.\u201d\u00a0 The aim of the Massachusetts legislation<\/a> is to develop an index capable of rating every public school in the state according to how effective it is at \u201cteaching, encouraging and fostering creativity in students.\u201d\u00a0 In explaining how creativity is to be measured, the Massachusetts scheme emphasizes \u201cinputs\u201d rather than \u201coutputs,\u201d pointing out that:<\/p>\n

\u00a0The index shall be based in part on the creative opportunities in each school as measured by the availability of classes and before-school and after-school programs . . . that provide creative opportunities for students including . . . arts education, debate clubs, science fairs, theatre performances, concerts, filmmaking and independent research.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note, first, that the Massachusetts scheme leans towards an especially inclusive notion of creativity; the idea seems to be that any academic program that encourages non-systematic thought processes can be counted on to \u201cfoster\u201d creativity.\u00a0 Indeed, the Massachusetts legislation resists the temptation to equate creativity with the arts (however one defines them, after all, it would be odd to contend that the skills that constitute creativity can\u2019t be developed through training in, say, pure math or the natural sciences).\u00a0 Note also that, in describing the mechanisms by which creativity is supposed to be generated, the Massachusetts legislation emphasizes the role of scalable academic programs rather than of individual teachers.\u00a0 The focus is less on training educators to imbue their students with modes of thought deemed imaginative, and more on exposing children to particular kinds of events or experiences.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Massachusetts\u2019 interest in weighing creativity has not gone unnoticed.\u00a0 Last month, the California Senate approved a bill<\/a> that calls for the establishment of a \u201cCreative and Innovative Education Index.\u201d\u00a0 The language of the California bill is almost identical to that of the Massachusetts legislation, except that California\u2019s measure points out that the state\u2019s index is to be voluntary.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Oklahoma, whose governor announced in November her plan<\/a> to partner with the private sector in order to create an \u201cinnovation index.\u201d\u00a0 Like\u00a0those proposed in Massachusetts and California, Oklahoma\u2019s index would operate by assessing the number of creativity-fostering programs available to the state\u2019s public school students.\u00a0 Again, the focus is on inputs, not outputs.<\/p>\n

By the look of it, state-level efforts to develop indices of creativity have only just begun to get off the ground.\u00a0 But it isn\u2019t too early to begin asking whether and under what conditions such efforts can be expected to produce meaningful benefits.\u00a0 At any rate, even at this initial stage, at least two potential problems present themselves.<\/p>\n

First, insofar as human creativity is a sui generis phenomenon, one not amenable to replication, there may be something more than a little ironic about relying on systematic, scalable programs<\/em> to develop creativity in young people.\u00a0 If creative thinking is the sort that seeks alternatives to existing or well-defined modes of reasoning, it seems that, by definition, the programmatic is the enemy of the creative.\u00a0 Why not also invest in efforts to identify and train teachers who seem most likely to be able to generate creative thought patterns in the children they teach?<\/p>\n

Second, it\u2019s worth noting that there\u2019s a kind of tautology in the indices being mulled by Massachusetts, California, and Oklahoma: the states define creativity as the thing that results when students are given access to \u201ccreative opportunities.\u201d\u00a0 Perhaps the way to move forward would be by attempting to establish a clear definition of what kinds of mental capacities are supposed to constitute imagination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though there may be much to be said for the axiom that creativity can\u2019t be quantified, at least three states have been working to develop something akin to an objective measure of imagination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":4270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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