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
Santa has your assessment
questionnaires
A couple of quick reminders to get out in the November
newsletter, with the end of the month and the end of
fall semester classes both coming up this week. Also
an update on ominous developments in Washington, D.C.
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.
If 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."
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."
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.
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
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