Data driven to distraction

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day blog is, I have frequently found, an excellent source of great links to useful teaching sites. Recently, though, there was a post that caught my eye for another reason - it is so completely true.
In it, he comments on one of the things that I often complain about in education, they current trend to make everything data-driven. He makes the distinction between data-driven and data-informed. He's right to do so. It's important to know as much about your students, and their abilities and pass rates as possible. On the other hand you can't, and shouldn't, allow the data to become the master. As soon as you start teaching with an eye to improving your data you have lost sight of the most important thing in the whole system - the students. And that's endemic in the system nowadays. Course funding is dependent on data so you do everything you can to maximise the data, regardless of whether or not it's in the best interests of the students. No colleges or schools are at fault in this, it's how the system is designed. The funding system itself is what's really at fault.

Let me give you an example from my own current class. It's a beginners' level class, and I've had them for two weeks. Two weeks is enough for me to get a fair idea of who is who and what is what. There are a couple of students who I think would cope well at the next level. There are a couple of students who I think have very little chance of achieving at this level. The great mass of the middle ground should achieve something though a fair number of them may not get the full qualification. This is entirely typical of the classes we teach and nothing to be especially remarked upon.
However it presents me with a dilemma. I could move up the two strong students and fill the gap with weaker students from the waiting list. That would, of course, potentially lower my pass rate. There is nowhere to move the two weak students down to, except out of the college altogether, so I will have to keep them and accept the hit against my pass rate.
If my pass rates fall, especially if they fall below the floor targets set by the funding bodies, then the course becomes a failing course. There are implications for the course, the college and me.

So the way to maximise my results would be to hold the strong students back and callously boot out the weak ones, while the way to minimise my results would be to allow the strong ones to flourish and to keep and support the weak ones.

And this is the fundamental problem with being data-driven all the time. It isn't, and cannot be, in the interests of the students.