False measures

The exercise was to define success.  The audience was a group of adults who had never attended public schools with one exception.  They all defined success in terms of performance, determination, or hard work with the exception of the person who had attended public school.  That person defined success in terms of high grades leading to success in the workplace.

That's very troubling to me, not because I think that those who make high grades aren't successful but because the correlation between high grades and success can't be made statistically unless there is a clear definition for the term.  If something can be defined, it can be measured, and if it can be measured, then some conclusions can be drawn.  I suppose a person could survey a large number of people and find out what factors surface most often in their definitions of success, but that would still pose problems in measuring it since the factors would have to be weighted according to their frequency in the surveys.  As it stands, it's just as likely that drinking sodas is a factor in success as it is that grades or anything else are a factor.

If success can't really be defined, then it leads to another question about the message public schools are sending with their grading systems.  If grades led to success, then I would say, "Grade away."  But if success is some nebulous idea, then I say that grades don't show progress toward anything except the percentage of retention in the short term for a subset of skills.  If stamina is a contributing factor to success, then measure stamina.  If determination is a factor, measure it.  If ability to solve problems is a factor, then students need to develop that ability.  If oral communication is a factor, then measures should include that.

Giving an average of grades taken over a subset of skills disconnected from the package called success doesn't measure what is contained in the definitions I received for the word.  It's high time to halt the practice of equating grades with success.  Even if grade averages accidentally were the right measure  of academic success in some explainable way, a quantum leap still exists in correlating academic success to what adults define as success. 

If we want more successful people in society, we need to define that concept and reshape what we tout as paramount in our schools.  What IS measurable in the business world is the amount of money it takes to reeducate young people in what businesses expect people to know.  They could use some help from those in charge of educating our youth in the first place with teaching and measuring what counts in the workplace.