An electronic assessment newsletter
Springfield College in Illinois
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November 2006 Vol. 7 No. 4
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Editor's Note. Over the holidays, I hope to reconnect the assessment pages to SCI’s website. Until that time, I am publishing the assessment newsletter by email to faculty and staff and archiving it on my personal weblog at http://www.teachinglogspot.blogspot.com/. -- Pete Ellertsen, assessment chair
Classroom assessment forms
Sometime this week, if the disruption from this month’s move of faculty offices permits it, I hope to have Classroom Assessment Questionnaires in the faculty mailboxes at Dawson Hall.
This semester’s questionnaires will give us important data that will help us devise ways to assess for the Common Student Learning Objectives we derived from the SCI mission statement in 2004, so it’s important for everyone to fill them out and document any changes in instructional methods. I
f you have questions, comments or suggestions, please contact me by email at pellertsen@sci.edu. As my phone is hooked up and I learn my new office number, I will post other contact information to the newsletter.
Feds still push standardized tests?
Speculation over mandatory standardized testing on the order of the federal No Child Left Behind program refuses to die down. Even though both houses of Congress are about to change party leadership, it now appears the U.S. Education Department may push for it through the process of negotiating federal regulations.
We’ll know more early in December, but The Chronicle of Higher Education reported Nov. 24, “Margaret Spellings, the education secretary, has decided to focus on accreditors as part of her ‘action plan’ to begin the most urgent changes proposed by the commission. … Next week Ms. Spellings will meet here with a few dozen accreditors, higher-education officials, and business leaders in what is being called an Accreditation Forum to discuss ways to make the measurement of student learning central to accreditors' oversight of colleges and universities.”
What’s ominous about this, the Chronicle notes, is “[i]n the wake of the Democratic takeover of Congress, the accrediting system is one of the few vehicles Ms. Spellings almost totally controls to drive her agenda.”
The Chronicle’s headline sums up the story’s tone: “Spellings Wants to Use Accreditation as a Cudgel.”
“Many accreditors and college officials view next week's one-day gathering with varying degrees of suspicion, especially since several of them were never formally invited,” reports Chronicle staff writer Burton Bollag. “Some fear that in the name of increased accountability Ms. Spellings will try to use the forum to promote solutions they think are simplistic, like comparing institutions on the basis of a few easily quantifiable indicators.”
That sounds like federally mandated standardized tests. Perhaps more troubling, at least for those of us who do assessment, is what appears to be an assumption on the part of the Bush administration that, well, we aren’t doing assessment. The Chronicle’s discussion of the issue is worth quoting at length:
In particular, the agenda circulated for next week's meeting has caused an uproar among the accreditors, who say it contains certain incorrect assumptions. For example, the day is set to kick off with "a panel presentation by leading experts who will build a case for change from inputs to outputs."It’s hard to figure out what all this may mean for us at SCI, since, as so often happens, the politicians are speaking in code words, hints and whispers. But it all still bears watching.Critics say that ignores a major shift in accrediting standards that has been under way for more than a decade, as accreditors have moved from examining elements like curricula and the portion of faculty members with terminal degrees to looking at indicators of what students have learned.
In 1992, as part of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, Congress required accreditors to take into account student achievement. In 1998, in another edition of the Higher Education Act, lawmakers made it the most important factor for accreditors to consider.
"I'm offended," Steven D. Crow, executive director of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools' Higher Learning Commission, says of the panel on outputs. "I'm doing that already."
Mr. Crow leads the largest of the six regional accrediting groups, which together accredit nearly 3,000 institutions.
"There is a perception — Secretary Spellings and [commission] chairman [Charles] Miller have expressed it in recent speeches — that is over 25 years old, that assumes we're just counting books and square feet."
Reference:
Bollag, Burton. “Spellings Wants to Use Accreditation as a Cudgel.” Chronicle of Higher Education 24 Nov. 2006. http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i14/14a00101.htm