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Gary Brown

Views: The White Noise of Accountability - Inside Higher Ed - 2 views

www.insidehighered.com/...adelman

accountability

shared by Gary Brown on 06 Aug 10 - Cached
  • We don’t really know what we are saying
  • “In education, accountability usually means holding colleges accountable for the learning outcomes produced.” One hopes Burck Smith, whose paper containing this sentence was delivered at an American Enterprise Institute conference last November, held a firm tongue-in-cheek with the core phrase.
  • Our adventure through these questions is designed as a prodding to all who use the term to tell us what they are talking about before they otherwise simply echo the white noise.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • when our students attend three or four schools, the subject of these sentences is considerably weakened in terms of what happens to those students.
  • Who or what is one accountable to?
  • For what?
  • Why that particular “what” -- and not another “what”?
  • To what extent is the relationship reciprocal? Are there rewards and/or sanctions inherent in the relationship? How continuous is the relationship?
  • In the Socratic moral universe, one is simultaneously witness and judge. The Greek syneidesis (“conscience” and “consciousness”) means to know something with, so to know oneself with oneself becomes an obligation of institutions and systems -- to themselves.
  • Obligation becomes self-reflexive.
  • There are no external authorities here. We offer, we accept, we provide evidence, we judge. There is nothing wrong with this: it is indispensable, reflective self-knowledge. And provided we judge without excuses, we hold to this Socratic moral framework. As Peter Ewell has noted, the information produced under this rubric, particularly in the matter of student learning, is “part of our accountability to ourselves.”
  • But is this “accountability” as the rhetoric of higher education uses the white noise -- or something else?
  • in response to shrill calls for “accountability,” U.S. higher education has placed all its eggs in the Socratic basket, but in a way that leaves the basket half-empty. It functions as the witness, providing enormous amounts of information, but does not judge that information.
  • Every single “best practice” cited by Aldeman and Carey is subject to measurement: labor market histories of graduates, ratios of resource commitment to various student outcomes, proportion of students in learning communities or taking capstone courses, publicly-posted NSSE results, undergraduate research participation, space utilization rates, licensing income, faculty patents, volume of non-institutional visitors to art exhibits, etc. etc. There’s nothing wrong with any of these, but they all wind up as measurements, each at a different concentric circle of putatively engaged acceptees of a unilateral contract to provide evidence. By the time one plows through Aldeman and Carey’s banquet, one is measuring everything that moves -- and even some things that don’t.
  • Sorry, but basic capacity facts mean that consumers cannot vote with their feet in higher education.
  • If we glossed the Socratic notion on provision-of-information, the purpose is self-improvement, not comparison. The market approach to accountability implicitly seeks to beat Socrates by holding that I cannot serve as both witness and judge of my own actions unless the behavior of others is also on the table. The self shrinks: others define the reference points. “Accountability” is about comparison and competition, and an institution’s obligations are only to collect and make public those metrics that allow comparison and competition. As for who judges the competition, we have a range of amorphous publics and imagined authorities.
  • There are no formal agreements here: this is not a contract, it is not a warranty, it is not a regulatory relationship. It isn’t even an issue of becoming a Socratic self-witness and judge. It is, instead, a case in which one set of parties, concentrated in places of power, asks another set of parties, diffuse and diverse, “to disclose more and more about academic results,” with the second set of parties responding in their own terms and formulations. The environment itself determines behavior.
  • Ewell is right about the rules of the information game in this environment: when the provider is the institution, it will shape information “to look as good as possible, regardless of the underlying performance.”
  • U.S. News & World Report’s rankings
  • The messengers become self-appointed arbiters of performance, establishing themselves as the second party to which institutions and aggregates of institutions become “accountable.” Can we honestly say that the implicit obligation of feeding these arbiters constitutes “accountability”?
  • But if the issue is student learning, there is nothing wrong with -- and a good deal to be said for -- posting public examples of comprehensive examinations, summative projects, capstone course papers, etc. within the information environment, and doing so irrespective of anyone requesting such evidence of the distribution of knowledge and skills. Yes, institutions will pick what makes them look good, but if the public products resemble AAC&U’s “Our Students’ Best Work” project, they set off peer pressure for self-improvement and very concrete disclosure. The other prominent media messengers simply don’t engage in constructive communication of this type.
  • Ironically, a “market” in the loudest voices, the flashiest media productions, and the weightiest panels of glitterati has emerged to declare judgment on institutional performance in an age when student behavior has diluted the very notion of an “institution” of higher education. The best we can say is that this environment casts nothing but fog over the specific relationships, responsibilities, and obligations that should be inherent in something we call “accountability.” Perhaps it is about time that we defined these components and their interactions with persuasive clarity. I hope that this essay will invite readers to do so.
  • Clifford Adelman is senior associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. The analysis and opinions expressed in this essay are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the positions or opinions of the institute, nor should any such representation be inferred.
  • Gary Brown on 06 Aug 10
     
    Perhaps the most important piece I've read recently. Yes must be our answer to Adelman's last challenge: It is time for us to disseminate what and why we do what we do.
Gary Brown

2 Efforts to Provide Data on Colleges to Consumers Fall Short, Report Says - Administra... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...64433

accountability

shared by Gary Brown on 02 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Higher education will have to be more accountable for its performance and more open to consumers about the actual cost of attending a college, and help people make easier comparisons among institutions, in order to succeed as the nation's economic engine, says a new report from two nonprofit think tanks here.
  • too little information to make informed choices about where they will get the most from their tuition dollars, say researchers at the two organizations, the libertarian-leaning American Enterprise Institute, and Education Sector, which is a proponent of reforming higher education
  • And without a more thorough and open form of accountability, institutions will not have any incentive to make the changes that will improve students' success,
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • "If existing flaws are not resolved, the nation runs the risk of ending up in the worst of all worlds: the appearance of higher education accountability without the reality," the authors say.
  • The two voluntary systems criticized in the study are the University and College Accountability Network, begun in September 2007 by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities to provide information about private colleges, and the Voluntary System of Accountability,
  • it does not obligate institutions to gather or reveal any data that are not already available elsewhere,"
  • associations are beginning to offer workshops and other opportunities for system participants to learn how to use the data they're collecting to improve the college experience for students, she said
  • VSA has the testing lobby written all over it
  • We may all appreciate the cultural context inhibiting public accountability but it is also important to understand that this same accountability is lacking internally where it effectively thwarts attempts to manage the institution rationally; i.e., informed with a continuous flow of mission-critical performance information. With the scant objective information at their command, college presidents and their associates must perform as shamans, reading the tea leaves of opinion and passion among stakeholders.
  • On balance, America's institutions of higher education function in a managerial vacuum.
  • Gary Brown on 02 Mar 10
     
    More of the same and the discussion is familiar--our challenge is to bring this topic to the attention of our points.
Gary Brown

Teacher unions fighting accountability - Leonard Pitts Jr. - MiamiHerald.com - 2 views

www.miamiherald.com/...s-fighting-accountability.html

accountability

shared by Gary Brown on 02 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Teacher unions fighting accountability
  • Enough. It is time teachers embraced accountability. Time parents, students and government did, too
  • this is an argument about the future -- and whether this country will have one
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
  • Gary Brown on 02 Aug 10
     
    Another call for accountability...again from the side of the political spectrum that I think we should consider allies...
Gary Brown

Accountability Effort for Community Colleges Pushes Forward, and Other Meeting Notes - ... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...65168

accountability VSA

shared by Gary Brown on 20 Apr 10 - Cached
  • A project led by the American Association of Community Colleges to develop common, voluntary standards of accountability for two-year institutions is moving forward, and specific performance measures are being developed, an official at the association said.
  • financed by the Lumina Foundation for Education and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is now its second phase
  • The project's advocates have begun pushing a public-relations campaign to build support for the accountability effort among colleges.
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  • common reporting formats and measures that are appropriate to their institutions
  • Mr. Phillippe said one area of college performance the voluntary accountability system will measure is student persistence and completion, including retention and transfer rates. Student progress toward completion may also be measured by tracking how many students reach certain credit milestones. Other areas that will be measured include colleges' contributions to the work force and economic and community development.
  • Gary Brown on 20 Apr 10
     
    Footsteps....
Gary Brown

News: Defining Accountability - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...aei

accountability accreditation

shared by Gary Brown on 19 Nov 09 - Cached
  • they should do so in ways that reinforce the behaviors they want to see -- and avoid the kinds of perverse incentives that are so evident in many policies today.
  • This is especially true, several speakers argued, on the thorniest of higher education accountability questions -- those related to improving student outcomes.
  • Oh, and one or two people actually talked about how nice it would be if policy makers still envisioned college as a place where people learn about citizenship or just become educated for education's sake.)
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • only if the information they seek to collect is intelligently framed, which the most widely used current measure -- graduation rates -- is not
  • "work force ready"
  • Accountability is not quite as straightforward as we think," said Rhoades, who described himself as "not a 'just say no' guy" about accountability. "It's not a question of whether [colleges and faculty should be held accountable], but how, and by whom," he said. "It's about who's developing the measures, and what behaviors do they encourage?"
  • federal government needs to be the objective protector of taxpayers' dollars,"
  • Judith Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, said that government regulation would be a major mistake, but said that accreditors needed to come to agreement on "community-driven, outcomes-based standards" to which colleges should be held.
  • But while they complain when policy makers seek to develop measures that compare one institution against another, colleges "keep lists of peers with which they compare themselves" on many fronts, Miller said.
  • Gary Brown on 19 Nov 09
     
    High level debates again
Gary Brown

Texas A&M's Faculty Ratings: Right and Wrong - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Edu... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...124330

accountability

shared by Gary Brown on 08 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • "Academia is highly specialized. We don't mean to be exclusive. We are a public-serving group of people. But at the same time, that public isn't well-enough aware of what we do and who we are to evaluate us."
  • But the think tank is correct that taxpayers deserve to know how their money is being spent. Public-university operating costs in Texas have gone up more than 60 percent in the last two decades, even after adjusting for inflation, and professors are among the state's highest-paid public employees. The state needs accountability measures, and they must be enforced by a party other than the faculty, who, it could easily be charged, have a conflict of interest. That's what Texas A&M got right.
  • Moosally is right about one thing: The public isn't well aware of what she and many of her colleagues do. But they should be. That is not to say that the public will be able to understand what goes on in all of the chemistry laboratories in Texas. But Moosally teaches English at a college that is not exactly tasked with performing cutting-edge research. Houston-Downtown's mission is to provide "educational opportunities and access to students from a variety of backgrounds including many first-generation college students."
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • No doubt there is useful research coming out of the university system. But plenty could be omitted without a great deal of detriment to students' education. For instance, Hugill's most recent contributions have included a chapter on "Transitions in Hegemony: A Theory Based on State Type and Technology" and the article "German Great-Power Relations in the Pages of Simplicissimus, 1896-1914." Moosally's master's thesis was titled "Resumptive Pronouns in Modern Standard Arabic: A Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar Account," and her current research interests include "interactions between grammar knowledge and writing abilities/interest [and] cross-linguistic patterns of agreement."
  • Only 35 percent of respondents felt it was very important for colleges to "provide useful information to the public on issues affecting their daily lives."
  • According to a 2004 survey by The Chronicle, 71 percent of Americans thought it was very important for colleges to prepare undergraduates for careers, while only 56 percent thought it was very important for colleges to "discover more about the world through research."
  • What Texas A&M officials have also missed is that faculty members must be held accountable for what they teach.
  • Professors receive more credit for teaching higher-level students. But again, that is backward. The idea should be to give senior faculty members more credit for teaching introductory classes.
  • Moreover, the metric entirely ignores teaching quality. Who cares how many "student hours" professors put in if they are not particularly good teachers anyway?
  • Ultimately there needs to be a systemic solution to the problem of teacher quality. Someone—a grown-up, preferably—needs to get into the classroom and watch what is being done there.
  • Gary Brown on 08 Sep 10
     
    Another one in which the comments say more than I might--but the range of these accountability pieces underscore the work to do....
Judy Rumph

Views: Why Are We Assessing? - Inside Higher Ed - 1 views

www.insidehighered.com/...suskie

Assessment

shared by Judy Rumph on 26 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Amid all this progress, however, we seem to have lost our way. Too many of us have focused on the route we’re traveling: whether assessment should be value-added; the improvement versus accountability debate; entering assessment data into a database; pulling together a report for an accreditor. We’ve been so focused on the details of our route that we’ve lost sight of our destinatio
  • Our destination, which is what we should be focusing on, is the purpose of assessment. Over the last decades, we've consistently talked about two purposes of assessment: improvement and accountability. The thinking has been that improvement means using assessment to identify problems — things that need improvement — while accountability means using assessment to show that we're already doing a great job and need no improvement. A great deal has been written about the need to reconcile these two seemingly disparate purposes.
  • The most important purpose of assessment should be not improvement or accountability but their common aim: everyone wants students to get the best possible education
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Our second common purpose of assessment should be making sure not only that students learn what’s important, but that their learning is of appropriate scope, depth, and rigo
  • Third, we need to accept how good we already are, so we can recognize success when we see i
  • And we haven’t figured out a way to tell the story of our effectiveness in 25 words or less, which is what busy people want and nee
  • Because we're not telling the stories of our successful outcomes in simple, understandable terms, the public continues to define quality using the outdated concept of inputs like faculty credentials, student aptitude, and institutional wealth — things that by themselves don’t say a whole lot about student learning.
  • And people like to invest in success. Because the public doesn't know how good we are at helping students learn, it doesn't yet give us all the support we need in our quest to give our students the best possible education.
  • But while virtually every college and university has had to make draconian budget cuts in the last couple of years, with more to come, I wonder how many are using solid, systematic evidence — including assessment evidence — to inform those decisions.
  • Now is the time to move our focus from the road we are traveling to our destination: a point at which we all are prudent, informed stewards of our resources… a point at which we each have clear, appropriate, justifiable, and externally-informed standards for student learning. Most importantly, now is the time to move our focus from assessment to learning, and to keeping our promises. Only then can we make higher education as great as it needs to be.
  • Kimberly Green on 27 Oct 10
     
    Yes, this article resonnated with me too. Especially connecting assessment to teaching and learning. The most important purpose of assessment should be not improvement or accountability but their common aim: everyone wants students to get the best possible education.... today we seem to be devoting more time, money, thought, and effort to assessment than to helping faculty help students learn as effectively as possible. When our colleagues have disappointing assessment results, and they don't know what to do to improve them, I wonder how many have been made aware that, in some respects, we are living in a golden age of higher education, coming off a quarter-century of solid research on practices that promote deep, lasting learning. I wonder how many are pointed to the many excellent resources we now have on good teaching practices, including books, journals, conferences and, increasingly, teaching-learning centers right on campus. I wonder how many of the graduate programs they attended include the study and practice of contemporary research on effective higher education pedagogies. No wonder so many of us are struggling to make sense of our assessment results! Too many of us are separating work on assessment from work on improving teaching and learning, when they should be two sides of the same coin. We need to bring our work on teaching, learning, and assessment together.
Gary Brown

AFT Opens New Web Site as Forum on Accountability and Student Success - The Ticker - Th... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...22299

accountability

shared by Gary Brown on 06 Apr 10 - Cached
  • The American Federation of Teachers is weighing in on the debate over accountability and student success with a new Web site. The site is billed as a "clearinghouse of accountability initiatives" and as a forum for educators to discuss the accountability systems that best help students succeed.
  • Gary Brown on 06 Apr 10
     
    one to be aware of....
Joshua Yeidel

Scholar Raises Doubts About the Value of a Test of Student Learning - Research - The Ch... - 3 views

chronicle.com/...65741

assessment accountability

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 02 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Beginning in 2011, the 331 universities that participate in the Voluntary System of Accountability will be expected to publicly report their students' performance on one of three national tests of college-level learning.
  • But at least one of those three tests—the Collegiate Learning Assessment, or CLA—isn't quite ready to be used as a tool of public accountability, a scholar suggested here on Tuesday during the annual meeting of the Association for Institutional Research.
  • Students' performance on the test was strongly correlated with how long they spent taking it.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Besides the CLA, which is sponsored by the Council for Aid to Education, other tests that participants in the voluntary system may use are the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency, from ACT Inc., and the Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress, offered by the Educational Testing Service.
  • The test has sometimes been criticized for relying on a cross-sectional system rather than a longitudinal model, in which the same students would be tested in their first and fourth years of college.
  • there have long been concerns about just how motivated students are to perform well on the CLA.
  • Mr. Hosch suggested that small groups of similar colleges should create consortia for measuring student learning. For example, five liberal-arts colleges might create a common pool of faculty members that would evaluate senior theses from all five colleges. "That wouldn't be a national measure," Mr. Hosch said, "but it would be much more authentic."
  • Mr. Shavelson said. "The challenge confronting higher education is for institutions to address the recruitment and motivation issues if they are to get useful data. From my perspective, we need to integrate assessment into teaching and learning as part of students' programs of study, thereby raising the stakes a bit while enhancing motivation of both students and faculty
  • "I do agree with his central point that it would not be prudent to move to an accountability system based on cross-sectional assessments of freshmen and seniors at an institution," said Mr. Arum, who is an author, with Josipa Roksa, of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press
  • Gary Brown on 02 Jun 10
     
    CLA debunking, but the best item may be the forthcoming book on "limited learning on College Campuses."
  • Joshua Yeidel on 25 Jun 10
     
    "Micheal Scriven and I spent more than a few years trying to apply his multiple-ranking item tool (a very robust and creative tool, I recommend it to others when the alternative is multiple-choice items) to the assessment of critical thinking in health care professionals. The result might be deemed partially successful, at best. I eventually abandoned the test after about 10,000 administrations because the scoring was so complex we could not place it in non-technical hands."
  • Joshua Yeidel on 25 Jun 10
     
    In comments on an article about CLA, Scriven's name comes up...
Gary Brown

Texas A&M System Will Rate Professors Based on Their Bottom-Line Value - Faculty - The ... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...124280

accountability

shared by Gary Brown on 03 Sep 10 - Cached
  • Under the proposal, officials will add the money generated by each professor and subtract that amount from his or her salary to get a bottom-line value for each, according to the article.
  • the public wanted accountability. "It's something that we're really not used to in higher education: for someone questioning whether we're working hard, whether our students are learning. That accountability is going to be with us from now on."
  • American Association of University Professors, blamed a conservative think tank with ties to Gov. Rick Perry for coming up with an idea that he said is simplistic and relies on "a silly measure" of accountability.
  • Gary Brown on 03 Sep 10
     
    Nothing more to say about this....
  • Joshua Yeidel on 03 Sep 10
     
    I would simply like to note the thoughtless slide from a desire to know "whether we're working hard, whether our students are learning" to revenue measures.
  • Gary Brown on 04 Sep 10
     
    Our colleagues in science disciplines, who had seen this, pointed out that unlike other institutions where this kind of system goes largely unspoken, at least at Texas AM there is some value included in the metric for those who teach undergraduates.
S Spaeth

Seamless Services?: Lowering barriers to adding images to posts - 0 views

scspaeth.blogspot.com/...riers-to-adding-images-to.html

iteams

shared by S Spaeth on 25 Jan 09 - Cached
  • S Spaeth on 25 Jan 09
     
    The Zemanta blogging service helps me reconsider the value of a Flickr account. I established a Flickr account, SCSpaeth, several years ago and added pictures periodically. But I have never made much use of the pictures. While pictures can add to the interest in a blog post, finding images, adding them to the blog and documenting them properly took a lot of effort. So, I only added them when they added enough to compensate for the extra work. The Zemanta service changes the barriers to using more images.
Gary Brown

Views: Accreditation 2.0 - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...eaton

accreditation

shared by Gary Brown on 22 Jan 10 - Cached
  • The first major conversation is led by the academic and accreditation communities themselves. It focuses on how accreditation is addressing accountability, with particular emphasis on the relationship (some would say tension, or even conflict) between accountability and institutional improvement.
  • The second conversation is led by critics of accreditation who question its effectiveness in addressing accountability
  • The third conversation is led by federal officials who also focus on the gatekeeping role of accreditation.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • All are based on a belief that accreditation needs to change, though in what way and at what pace is seen differently
  • The emerging Accreditation 2.0 is likely to be characterized by six key elements. Some are familiar features of accreditation; some are modifications of existing practice, some are new: Community-driven, shared general education outcomes. Common practices to address transparency. Robust peer review. Enhanced efficiency of quality improvement efforts. Diversification of the ownership of accreditation. Alternative financing models for accreditation.
  • The Essential Learning Outcomes of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, the Collegiate Learning Assessment and the Voluntary System of Accountability of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities all provide for agreement across institutions about expected outcomes. This work is vital as we continue to address the crucial question of “What is a college education?”
  • peer review can be further enhanced through, for example, encouraging greater diversity of teams, including more faculty and expanding public participation
  • Accreditation 2.0 can include means to assure more immediate institutional action to address the weaknesses and prevent their being sustained over long periods of time.
  • Judith Eaton is president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, which is a national advocate for self-regulation of academic quality through accreditation. CHEA has 3,000 degree-granting colleges and universities as members and recognizes 59 institutional and programmatic accrediting organizations.
  • Gary Brown on 22 Jan 10
     
    The way the winds are blowing
Joshua Yeidel

News: 'You Can't Measure What We Teach' - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...humanities

assessment accountability

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 27 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 27 Jan 10
     
    "Despite those diverging starting points, the discussion revealed quite a bit more common ground than any of the panelists probably would have predicted. Let's be clear: Where they ended up was hardly a breakthrough on the scale of solving the Middle East puzzle. But there was general agreement among them that: * Any effort to try to measure learning in the humanities through what McCulloch-Lovell deemed "[Margaret] Spellings-type assessment" -- defined as tests or other types of measures that could be easily compared across colleges and neatly sum up many of the learning outcomes one would seek in humanities students -- was doomed to fail, and should. * It might be possible, and could be valuable, for humanists to reach broad agreement on the skills, abilities, and knowledge they might seek to instill in their students, and that agreement on those goals might be a starting point for identifying effective ways to measure how well students have mastered those outcomes. * It is incumbent on humanities professors and academics generally to decide for themselves how to assess whether their students are learning, less to satisfy external calls for accountability than because it is the right thing for academics, as professionals who care about their students, to do. "
  • Joshua Yeidel on 27 Jan 10
     
    Assessment meeting at the accreditors -- driven by expectations of a demand for accountability, with not one mention of improvement.
Gary Brown

Can We Afford Our State Colleges? - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

chronicle.com/...22268

accountability reform

shared by Gary Brown on 05 Apr 10 - Cached
  • xperts do not agree on the precise numbers, but over the past generation we have moved from an environment in which states paid for 70 percent of cost and students paid 30 percent, to a situation in which those numbers have exactly reversed. Increasingly, tuition accounts for the lion’s share of institutional budgets, with state appropriations playing a minority role.
  • The sense I got Friday was that higher-education professionals do not expect the ”good old days” to return
  • the apparent consensus that public education needs to be more productive, because there was no discussion of the definition of productivity. 
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • But even when instruction was (implicitly) assumed to be the measure of productivity, there was no discussion of measurable learning outcomes.
  • 5. It is true that public colleges do not measure learning outcomes. Neither does anyone else. U.S. universities resist this kind of accountability in every way they can think of. Since 1985, when the modern assessment movement gained traction, higher education can only be said to have been temporizing, getting ready to get ready through endless committees that go nowhere.
  • Most institutions continue to invoke apodictic notions of quality and refuse to define quality in modern terms (suitability to purpose; quality for whom and for what purpose) or to address the issue of value added, where career schools and community colleges will generally lead. At this time, there is virtually no institution-wide assessment system in place that would pass muster in a 501 measurement science course.
  • 6. Yes, public institutions need restructuring to make them more accountable and productive. Our independent colleges and universities need the same kind of restructuring and the agenda is rightfully one of public interest. The common perception that taxpayers do not support our private institutions is false.----------------------Robert W TuckerPresidentInterEd, Inc.www.InterEd.com
  • Gary Brown on 05 Apr 10
     
    Tucker's note in the comments again suggests the challenge and opportunity of the WSU model.
Gary Brown

Education Sector: Research and Reports: Ready to Assemble: Grading State Higher Educati... - 0 views

www.educationsector.org/...research_show.htm

accountability higher ed

shared by Gary Brown on 30 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Gary Brown on 30 Jun 09
     
    I note Washington gets a check mark for learning outcomes.
  • Gary Brown on 30 Jun 09
     
    States need strong higher education systems, now more than ever. In the tumultuous, highly competitive 21st century economy, citizens and workers need knowledge, skills, and credentials in order to prosper. Yet many colleges and universities are falling short. To give all students the best possible postsecondary education, states must create smart, effective higher education accountability systems, modeled from the best practices of their peers, and set bold, concrete goals for achievement
Gary Brown

News: Turning Surveys Into Reforms - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...nsse

assessment NSSE Closing the loop

shared by Gary Brown on 26 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education, warned those gathered here that they would be foolish to think that accountability demands were a thing of the past.
  • She said that while she is “impressed” with the work of NSSE, she thinks higher education is “not moving fast enough” right now to have in place accountability systems that truly answer the questions being asked of higher education. The best bet for higher education, she said, is to more fully embrace various voluntary systems, and show that they are used to promote improvements.
  • One reason NSSE data are not used more, some here said, was the decentralized nature of American higher education. David Paris, executive director of the New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability, said that “every faculty member is king or queen in his or her classroom.” As such, he said, “they can take the lessons of NSSE” about the kinds of activities that engage students, but they don’t have to. “There is no authority or dominant professional culture that could impel any faculty member to apply” what NSSE teaches about engaged learning, he said.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • She stressed that NSSE averages may no longer reflect any single reality of one type of faculty member. She challenged Paris’s description of powerful faculty members by noting that many adjuncts have relatively little control over their pedagogy, and must follow syllabuses and rules set by others. So the power to execute NSSE ideas, she said, may not rest with those doing most of the teaching.
  • Research presented here, however, by the Wabash College National Study of Liberal Arts Education offered concrete evidence of direct correlations between NSSE attributes and specific skills, such as critical thinking skills. The Wabash study, which involves 49 colleges of all types, features cohorts of students being analyzed on various NSSE benchmarks (for academic challenge, for instance, or supportive campus environment or faculty-student interaction) and various measures of learning, such as tests to show critical thinking skills or cognitive skills or the development of leadership skills.
  • The irony of the Wabash work with NSSE data and other data, Blaich said, was that it demonstrates the failure of colleges to act on information they get -- unless someone (in this case Wabash) drives home the ideas.“In every case, after collecting loads of information, we have yet to find a single thing that institutions didn’t already know. Everyone at the institution didn’t know -- it may have been filed away,” he said, but someone had the data. “It just wasn’t followed. There wasn’t sufficient organizational energy to use that data to improve student learning.”
  • “I want to try to make the point that there is a distinction between participating in NSSE and using NSSE," he said. "In the end, what good is it if all you get is a report?"
  • Kimberly Green on 26 Oct 09
     
    An interesting discussion, exploring basic questions CTLT folks are familiar with, grappling with the question of how to use survey data and how to identify and address limitations. 10 years after launch of National Survey of Student Engagement, many worry that colleges have been speedier to embrace giving the questionnaire than using its results. And some experts want changes in what the survey measures. I note these limitations, near the end of the article: Adrianna Kezar, associate professor of higher education at the University of Southern California, noted that NSSE's questions were drafted based on the model of students attending a single residential college. Indeed many of the questions concern out-of-class experiences (both academic and otherwise) that suggest someone is living in a college community. Kezar noted that this is no longer a valid assumption for many undergraduates. Nor is the assumption that they have time to interact with peers and professors out of class when many are holding down jobs. Nor is the assumption -- when students are "swirling" from college to college, or taking courses at multiple colleges at the same time -- that any single institution is responsible for their engagement. Further, Kezar noted that there is an implicit assumption in NSSE of faculty being part of a stable college community. Questions about seeing faculty members outside of class, she said, don't necessarily work when adjunct faculty members may lack offices or the ability to interact with students from one semester to the next. Kezar said that she thinks full-time adjunct faculty members may actually encourage more engagement than tenured professors because the adjuncts are focused on teaching and generally not on research. And she emphasized that concerns about the impact of part-time adjuncts on student engagement arise not out of criticism of those individuals, but of the system that assigns them teaching duties without much support. S
  • Gary Brown on 02 Nov 09
     
    Repeat of highlighted resource, but merits revisiting.
Gary Brown

The Ticker - Governors' Association Urges More Accountability in Academic Performance -... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...8779

accountability

shared by Gary Brown on 09 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Governors' Association Urges More Accountability in Academic Performance
  • An issue brief, released today by the bipartisan group, which represents the nation's chief state executives, calls on states to go beyond federal reporting requirements for graduation rates, for instance, and include degree attainment by part-time students and those who transfer among community colleges.
  • Gary Brown on 09 Nov 09
     
    The call for accountability du jour. Note dissatisfaction with provostial measures while suggesting we need more...provostial measures.
Gary Brown

A Real-Life Lesson in Why Accountability Matters - Administration - The Chronicle of Hi... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...49067

accountability accreditation students

shared by Gary Brown on 12 Nov 09 - Cached
  • "Change is in the wind,"
  • "All we have is this campus," says Raven Curling, a biology and pre-dental student who is also president of the student government. "It feels like we're a university without university standards." Policy wonks and education reformers talk often about the importance of accountability and about the responsibilities of trustees to set and enforce standards. All that jargon moves from abstraction to reality when you see the price students pay for inattention.
  • Gary Brown on 12 Nov 09
     
    more focus on provostial numbers, but the import is still the same--"accountability is in the wind."
Gary Brown

Accountability Issues Persist Under New Administration - Government - The Chronicle of ... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...49190

accountability accreditation

shared by Gary Brown on 18 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Gary Brown on 18 Nov 09
     
    The daily dose of calls for accountability--useful for those who are inclined to see OAI as the agent of their distress.
Gary Brown

Teacher-Education Programs Are Unaccountable and Undemanding, Report Says - Government ... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...123712

education accountability

shared by Gary Brown on 29 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Most states are doing little or nothing to hold teacher-education programs accountable for the quality of their graduates, according to a new report that also criticizes colleges for setting low standards for education majors.
  • Colleges, by contrast, are largely not selective enough in accepting students for education programs, lack a rigorous curriculum, and don't give teaching candidates enough classroom training.
  • the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, said that the report was timely and that her association was working to unify its members on the theme of accountability.
  • Gary Brown on 29 Jul 10
     
    Apparently NCATE is not sufficient according to some.
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