Earlier this fall, Dr. Kathryn Joyce, Program Director for the Civil Discourse for Citizenship initiative, was invited to deliver the formal keynote response at the 2025 conference of the North American Association for Philosophy & Education (NAAPE).

 

The annual NAAPE conference gathers scholars exploring the intersections of philosophy, education, and ethics in modern public life. This year’s keynote topics focused on the ethical and epistemic aspects of educational practice. The keynote address, “Scoring Education,” by C. Thi Nguyen, argued that  institutional scoring systems tend to direct attention to aspects of education that can be easily quantified and scaled instead of measuring the most valuable aspects. This tendency creates a gap between what’s being measured and what actually matters, leading to what Nguyen calls “value capture.”  In her response, Joyce critically engaged with Nguyen’s view, by raising questions about the relationship between trust, transparency, and expertise. Joyce also highlighted the relevance of Nguyen’s account to evidence-based educational practice and scoring systems used for evaluation and accountability in education.