Quotes from Jerry Z. Muller

Improving numbers by lowering standards. One way of improving metric scores is by lowering the criteria for scoring. Thus, for example, graduation rates of high schools and colleges can be increased by lowering the standards for passing. Or airlines improve their on-time performance by increasing the scheduled flying time of their flights.

Since many impoverished students would inevitably be absent when the annual test was administered, or would fail the test itself, he predicted that the net effect of the proposed reform would be to reduce the funding of schools for the poor.

students ingested mountains of facts and arithmetic, but were bereft of analytic ability and utterly incapable of understanding sophisticated prose or poetry. They were taught not to reason but to cram.

The suspicion of authority was intrinsic to the post-1960s political left: to rely upon the judgment of experts was to surrender to the prejudices of established elites. Thus, the left had its reasons for advancing an agenda that professed to make institutions accountable and transparent, using the purportedly objective and scientific standards of measured performance.

I wonder which is the more useful to a nation, " he asked rhetorically, "a well-powdered nobleman who knows exactly at what minute the King gets up and goes to bed, and who gives himself grand airs while playing the part of a slave in some Minister's antechamber, or a business man who enriches his country, issues orders from his office to Surat or Cairo, and contributes to the well-being of the world.