Illusion of Validity

Teachers often believe that they can accurately predict how well a student will do in their course based on their past performance at the school. While a teacher might be very confident in their predictions about a certain student, there may be things going on behind the scenes that lead to drastically different outcomes. For example, if a student with a pristine record begins to develop symptoms of a mental illness, such as depression, or suddenly finds themselves in the midst of their parents’ messy divorce, they may no longer make straight-As, and may even begin to act out. On the other hand, a student who typically gets lower grades may realize that the college program they want to get into is quite competitive, and therefore decide to pull their act together and double-down on their studying. In both cases, a teacher might have predicted the student’s performance in their class based on a pattern that ended up wrong.