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Jan. 20, 2006
No Professor Left Behind
At the annual meeting of one of the regional accrediting agencies a few years ago, I wandered into the strangest session I’ve witnessed in any academic gathering. The first presenter, a young woman, reported on a meeting she had attended that fall in an idyllic setting. She had, she said, been privileged to spend three days “doing nothing but talking assessment” with three of the leading people in the field, all of whom she named and one of whom was on this panel with her. “It just doesn’t get any better than that!” she proclaimed. I kept waiting for her to pass on some of the wisdom and practical advice she had garnered at this meeting, but it didn’t seem to be that kind of presentation.
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The title of the next panel I chose suggested that I would finally learn what accrediting agencies meant by “creating a culture of assessment.” This group of presenters, four in all, reenacted the puppet show they claimed to have used to get professors on their campus interested in assessment. The late Jim Henson, I suspect, would have advised against giving up their day jobs.
And thus it was with all the panels I tried to attend. I learned nothing about what to assess or how to assess it. Instead, I seemed to have wandered into a kind of New Age revival at which the already converted, the true believers, were testifying about how great it was to have been washed in the data and how to spread the good news among non-believers on their campus.
Since that time, I’ve examined several successful accreditation self-studies, and I’ve talked to vice presidents, deans, and faculty members, but I’m still not sure about what a “culture of assessment” is. As nearly as I can determine, once a given institution has arrived at a state of profound insecurity and perpetual self-scrutiny, it has created a “culture of assessment.” The self-criticism and mutual accusation sessions favored by Communist hardliners come to mind, as does a passage from a Credence Clearwater song: “Whenever I ask, how much should I give? The only answer is more, more!”
Most of the faculty resistance we face in trying to meet the mandates of the assessment movement, it seems to me, stems from a single issue: professors feel professionally distrusted and demeaned. The much-touted shift in focus from teaching to student learning at the heart of the assessment movement is grounded in the presupposition that professors have been serving their own ends and not meeting the needs of students. Some fall into that category, but whatever damage they do is greatly overstated, and there is indeed a legitimate place in academe for those professors who are not for the masses. A certain degree of quirkiness and glorious irrelevance were once considered par for the course, and students used to be expected to take some responsibility for their own educations.
Clearly, from what we are hearing about the new federal panel studying colleges, the U.S. Department of Education believes that higher education is too important to be left to academics. What we are really seeing is the re-emergence of the anti-intellectualism endemic to American culture and a corresponding redefinition of higher education in terms of immediately marketable preparation for specific jobs or careers. The irony is that the political party that would get big government off our backs has made an exception of academe.
This is not to suggest, of course, that everything we do in the name of assessment is bad or that we don’t have an obligation to determine that our instruction is effective and relevant. At the meeting of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design, I heard a story that illustrates how the academy got into this fix. It seems an accreditor once asked an art faculty member what his learning outcomes were for the photography course he was teaching that semester. The faculty member replied that he had no learning outcomes because he was trying to turn students into artists and not photographers. When asked then how he knew when his students had become artists, he replied, “I just know.”
Perhaps he did indeed “just know.” One of the most troubling aspects of the assessment movement, to my mind, is the tendency to dismiss the larger, slippery issues of sense and sensibility and to measure educational effectiveness only in terms of hard data, the pedestrian issues we can quantify. But, by the same token, every photographer must master the technical competencies of photography and learn certain aesthetic principles before he or she can employ the medium to create art. The photography professor in question was being disingenuous. He no doubt expected students to reach a minimal level of photographic competence and to see that competence reflected in a portfolio of photographs that rose to the level of art. His students deserved to have these expectations detailed in the form of specific learning outcomes.
Thus it is, or should be, with all our courses. Everyone who would teach has a professional obligation to step back and to ask himself or herself two questions: What, at a minimum, do I want students to learn, and how will I determine whether they have learned it? Few of us would have a problem with this level of assessment, and most of us would hardly need to be prompted or coerced to adjust our methods should we find that students aren’t learning what we expect them to learn. Where we fall out, professors and professional accreditors, is over the extent to which we should document or even formalize this process.
I personally have heard a senior official at an accrediting agency say that “if what you are doing in the name of assessment isn’t really helping you, you’re doing it wrong.” I recommend that we take her at her word. In my experience — first as a chair and later as a dean — it is helpful for institutions to have course outlines that list the minimum essential learning outcomes and which suggest appropriate assessment methods for each course. It is helpful for faculty members and students to have syllabi that reflect the outcomes and assessment methods detailed in the corresponding course outlines. It is also helpful to have program-level objectives and to spell out where and how such objectives are met.
All these things are helpful and reasonable, and accrediting agencies should indeed be able to review them in gauging the effectiveness of a college or university. What is not helpful is the requirement to keep documenting the so-called “feedback loop” — the curricular reforms undertaken as a result of the assessment process. The presumption, once again, would seem to be that no one’s curriculum is sound and that assessment must be a continuous process akin to painting a suspension bridge or a battleship. By the time the painters work their way from one end to the other, it is time to go back and begin again. “Out of the cradle, endlessly assessing,” Walt Whitman might sing if he were alive today.
Is it any wonder that we have difficulty inspiring more than grudging cooperation on the part of faculty? Other professionals are largely left to police themselves. Not so academics, at least not any longer. We are being pressured to remake ourselves along business lines. Students are now our customers, and the customer is always right. Colleges used to be predicated on the assumption that professors and other professionals have a larger frame of reference and are in a better position than students to design curricula and set requirements. I think it is time to reaffirm that principle; and, aside from requiring the “helpful” documents mentioned above, it is past time to allow professors to assess themselves.
Regarding the people who have thrown in their lot with the assessment movement, to each his or her own. Others, myself included, were first drawn to the academic profession because it alone seemed to offer an opportunity to spend a lifetime studying what we loved, and sharing that love with students, no matter how irrelevant that study might be to the world’s commerce. We believed that the ultimate end of what we would do is to inculcate both a sensibility and a standard of judgment that can indeed be assessed but not guaranteed or quantified, no matter how hard we try. And we believed that the greatest reward of the academic life is watching young minds open up to that world of ideas and possibilities we call liberal education. To my mind, it just doesn’t get any better than that.
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Comments
Assessment and Responibility
“Few of us would have a problem with this level of assessment, and most of us would hardly need to be prompted or coerced to adjust our methods should we find that students aren’t learning what we expect them to learn.”
One of the major problems with assessment, as evidenced by the quote above, is that it places all the responsibility upon the professor, none upon the student. It assumes that if a student has not learned the material or skills offered in the course, the fault necessarily lies exclusively with the person charged with teaching the course. This, IMHO, very closely resembles the Stalinist dictum that there are no bad students, only bad teachers. The result, of course, is that teachers started to make up results, just as the pandemic of testing in K-12 has led to cheating on the part of teachers.
Anonymous, at 11:26 am EST on January 20, 2006
KNowledge is discovered on these “fantasy” trips you seem to dismiss so quickly, AD. I will guess that you are not an academician, based upon your comments here (I hope that such attitudes are not present in academe, at least on a large scale).
This assessment mania currently afflicting our campuses is just another in the seemingly endless parade of fads that get pushed off on educators.
Personally, I dismiss the NCLB and its associated jargon and programs, due in large part to the fact that the entire program is built upon a fabricated incident — the so-called “Houston Miracle” of the mid-1990s. Don’t believe me? Read Kozol’s latest book for the details.
The Groover, at 11:26 am EST on January 20, 2006
Again: pay for it yourself, please
” .. I dismiss the NCLB .. due in large part to the fact that (it) is built upon a fabricated incident — the so-called “Houston Miracle” .. Don’t believe me? Read Kozol’s latest book for the details.
No, I don’t believe you. Or Kozol. You have political/funding agendas — facts are secondary.
If Kozol had the courage of his convictions, he’d start his own charter school. And Michael Moore would take his money out of Haliburton stock and start up a company to employ people, instead of complaining (and eating) non-stop.
NCLB is about trying to set standards in a field that has so many problems, it is clear to nearly everyone without blinders on.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com...isplay.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001845403
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/...385907-4052862?v=glance&n=283155
As to this — ” .. We don’t resent the assessment program because it’s demeaning but because it robs us of autonomy ..”
Everyone is assessed — even presidents can be impeached. What’s your alternative, other than “just give us the money"?
You don’t want to be assessed by the public’s representatives? Don’t take public money. How much more simpler can it be?
As to this ” ..AD — you’re already paying for wastrels via tax cuts. ..”
That is just indictitive of the failure of math education noted today in IHE. In this, we get into endless, iterative arguments about total vs. percentages — absolutely ridiculous.
Example: As a total aggregate of personal income taxes paid, which group pays the most?
http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/250.html
Answer: the groups in the highest income brackets. The Hilliary-ites want to increase marginal rates on the top brackets, who are already paying most of the aggregate.
IMHO, their demands for higher taxes will not be satiated until Hiliary is re-elected President and Chelsea is Senate Majority Leader. They think taxing others (a.k.a., class envy) will get them elected — I think it just them look more desparate.
Anyway — when taxes go down, people get the freedom to choose where it goes. That is: instead of sending taxes to Washington, which takes out their huge cut before returning what’s left to the states — why not leave those dollars in local communities, without the middleman’s cut? Why pay for offices in Washington? Isn’t that wasteful and silly?
A.D., at 2:18 pm EST on January 20, 2006
I like many parts of assessment — Here’s why
I like pro-active assessment. I’ve done it since 1970 when I began teaching (it wasn’t even called assessment then). A colleague above wrote that assessment was aimed at faculty. ** I aim assessment at students, and ask them to be pro-active learners. Try it: I ask students at mid-term time two primary questions for anonymous feedback (they are remarkably candid when asked anonymously). Q1: “Assuming I learned something so far this semester, I credit myself for the following reason...” Q2: “Assuming I failed to learn something so far this semester, I blame myself for the following reasons..” Then, for those who want to pro-actively gauge the teaching-learning equation, two more Qs. Q3: “Assuming I learned something this semester, I credit the instructor for the following reason...” And finally, Q4: “Assuming I failed to learn something this semester, I blame the instructor for the following reason...” I have their responses keyed into a master set of answers, and print out copies for all students in the class. They end up with a list of successful student behaviors, unsuccessful student behaviors, and both successful and unsuccessful professor behaviors. Some very rich, insightful, and candid comments emerge from which one can inform students that they also carry a responsibility in the learning equation. Their comments have also helped me as I continue to practice (after 30+ years) in honing my craft. Final comment: If you don’t want to know the answers — Don’t ask the questions.
Russell J. Watson, Ed.D., Professor at College of DuPage, at 2:18 pm EST on January 20, 2006
Dr. Watson
Interesting thoughts Dr. Watson. I too remember the 70s, when resources and potentials were “assessed” (land was assayed).
Outputs were evaluated, but the term “evaluation” carried such negative baggage; especially for those who hated to be evaluated (or assessed). By whence came the term “outcomes assessment” — with only slightly less sting for those oppressed who were forced to be (evaluated) assessed.
Dr. F. Gump, at 7:49 pm EST on January 20, 2006
AD’s 20 Jan Comment
AD says thoe who disagree with him have only political agendas and their facts are secondary.
You must be looking in the mirror. Where are your facts? Those links you provide have no facts, just assertions. Your own political agenda is showing.
Richard Katz, English professor, at 11:19 am EST on January 21, 2006
Many of the criticisms of assessment expressed by Professor Palm and by those commenting on his piece provide strong evidence for the wisdom of E. O. Wilson’s observation that “Men would rather believe than know.”
Don Langenberg, Professor of Physics at University of Maryland, at 2:06 pm EST on January 21, 2006
What you say about me, comes back on you
” .. Where are your facts? ..”
The same place as YOURS, sir. In the theoretical netherworld of right, left, and center.
At least I’m not claiming to have “the truth” — then giving myself a wedgie, on the public dime, when people critique my views.
And I’m not on the public dime — like Michael Moore, I’m using my own resources.
The Kozol crowd’s real great at criticizing those on the front line.
What they ought to do, is DO something. That’s a 1000x harder.
I’d love to see their great theories, put into action, with 1,000 disadvantaged students. I think it would be great entertainment — “Theorists Smash Into Reality.”
A.D., at 2:06 pm EST on January 21, 2006
The assessment movement is a sham. I tried, I really, really did, to understand the complex rulebooks and rubrics but ended up finding this metaculture to be metaridiculous. I find it especially overwhemling in schools of education. I’ve had to console many a student teacher who cried on my shoulder saying “I didn’t think that teaching meant meeting so many picky standards!” Where has the creativity gone? My daughter will go to a private school, where instuctors are not strangled by the assessment movement. A pity, to be sure, since I’ve always been a staunch supportor of public schools. But not after seeing what my own students go through to meet over-the-top assessment standards. Someone has got to me making big money off of this.
olivia, at 5:46 am EST on January 22, 2006
Best of times, worst of times
” .. My daughter will go to a private school, where instuctors are not strangled by the assessment movement. ..”
My sister just transferred her K-3 children to Catholic schools. The former principal, in an effort to hold down costs, wouldn’t authorize a transfer to a more-experienced teacher’s classroom.
So, on one hand, you have Big Education, trying to meet reasonable goals with more rules than the IRS. Conversely, you have Big Education, unable or unwilling to listen.
There is nothing wrong with standards. In my sister’s school, a group of parents complained about curriculum — the bishop told them to leave and gave them best wishes. Standards are everywhere (except at Anarchy University).
When you control resources, you have control. Big Education ties up resources, thereby removing options.
It is family (not the entire village) that makes the difference. Olivia, your child should be fine.
A.D., at 9:58 am EST on January 22, 2006
The real purposes
Tsk, tsk, you naysayers. The assessment fad does loads of good stuff. Assessment adds yet another layer of bureaucracy, allowing even more people to suck the public teat. Assessment lets some people seem really smart by using lots of big words and opaque prose to restate the obvious. Assessment lets educators seem busy and concerned as they pretend to attack a problem while simultaneously pretending that certain other problems don’t exist. And assessment protects delusions that some educators cherish.
At its simplest, assessment is neither bad nor new. Good teachers have long asked several basic questions:
1) What do I want students to learn?
2) Do they learn it?
3) Why is the answer to question 2 so often no?
4) What can I do to change the answer to yes?
Do teachers need complicated rubrics and incomprehensible manuals and yet another Everest of paperwork to know that some students (or many, as the case may be) don’t learn what a course is supposed to teach them? Not if teachers listen to what students say and look at the work that students do. But rubrics, manuals, and paperwork do furnish employment (indeed, careers) for some people.
Now for the big question: Why don’t some college students learn? This question has many answers, but many people in higher education choose to ignore a few of them: Some people just aren’t very bright (in “book learning” terms, that is), some are lazy, and some simply aren’t interested in the stuff colleges try to teach. Our colleges have remedial courses, writing centers, tutoring centers, learning labs, and other services to help students, yet many students still can’t or won’t make the grade. We choose not to take the hint.
Not everyone can do college work; not everyone can get a college education. So why set people up for failure? Why not provide more and better vocational training so that people who will never get calculus and don’t give a rat’s ass about philosophy can make a living? Why encourage everyone to tackle things that not everyone can do?
Ah, but the answers to those questions are unpleasant. If we had real entrance standards and real requirements to demonstrate knowledge, if we admitted that “higher education” works for some but not for all, then we’d have fewer college students, fewer colleges, and fewer jobs for people like us. Gadzooks.
No; better to concoct elaborate assessment schemes that let us appear to be finding solutions to problems. When the current fad has run its course without producing any results, someone will hatch a new scheme to keep the system rolling. Enrollment will remain high; paychecks will keep coming; we’ll keep pretending that everyone can be an astrophysicist, philosopher, historian, biologist, or classical scholar.
Before someone lambastes me for snobbery, let me point out that none of this has anything to do with elitism. I do not believe that a tenured professor of, say, literature is any better or smarter or more valuable than a good electrician or diesel mechanic. The real elitists might be academics who insist that lots more people need to be just like them.
Conscientious teachers assess themselves and their courses all the time. Rubrics, extra paperwork, and new words for old ideas do nothing for dedicated teachers except distract them from actually teaching. Lazy or inept teachers will find ways to manipulate the paperwork—cook the books, if you prefer that term—to ensure their employment. Meanwhile, some kid who could have been a hell of an electrician or plumber is failing three courses for the second time. With any luck, though, our assessment studies will justify enrolling him for another try.
B. Blunt, English instructor, at 2:41 pm EST on January 22, 2006
Minimum
There needs to be minimum standards set by someone with a larger perspective than the teacher. Once you achieve the standards, then, and only then, do you have opportunity to explore “creativity” and “self-fulfillment.” With the level of literacy and basic math, we are in serious trouble — being “creative” won’t replace basic skills. When you can’t balance a checkbook or read your co-worker’s correspondance, you are in trouble. Period. No amount of abstract thought or creativity or love of learning will counterbalance it. Everyone says that they are doing the best they can. It still remains to be seen whether the best they can is meeting the most basic of expectations.
These expectations cannot stop at the university quad either.
Kevin, Undergraduate, at 6:30 pm EST on January 22, 2006
Well, AD, you don’t have to believe me or Dr. Kozol — but that does not change the simple, verifiable facts. NCLB was based upon and built upon a program with reported results that were completely fabricated. Kozol lists the sources in the notes in his book, and the Houston Chronicle has run a series of stories on the sham.
Now, you can choose not to believe any of this, but it does not change the facts. To ignore the established truth in such a manner is a bit silly.
The Groover, at 1:17 pm EST on January 23, 2006
The idea that NCLB was modelled on a fraudulent Houston program is simply incorrect, as anyone who was in Washington when the law was enacted can tell you. Conceptually it’s not terribly different from the 1994 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, passed under President Clinton. Much of heavy lifting in writing the law was done by Democrats in Congress and their staff, people like Sen. Ted Kennedy, who supports the testing and accountability provisions of the law to this day.
KC, at 2:21 pm EST on January 23, 2006
500,000 laid-off workers can’t be wrong, dude
Yesterday, 30,000 of America’s best-paid workers were pink-slipped, the latest in a long series of layoffs. Steve Jobs of Apple has been quoted as saying he doesn’t think Americans can engineer or manufacture as well as the Japanese today.
And you have inexperienced, naive waifs claiming, “oh, we can’t have NCLB, we can’t have standards, we need more money.” Hey — we spent $400 billion on EEOC over the last 30 years, as well as a lot of other stuff. We have to live with what we have.
Anyone who thinks the U.S. can maintain its standard of living (i.e., affording Michael Moore’s endless criticism) without educational standards is a fool.
And about this —
” .. you don’t have to believe me or Dr. Kozol ..”
You’re right. Kozol’s bio doesn’t list a doctoral degree.
A.D., at 12:15 pm EST on January 24, 2006
Confusion reigns
There are many differences in assessment as it is expressed in K12 versus higher education, and I don’t see that in this conversation.
Assessment in higher education (at least so far) is about the faculty dictating the outcomes versus K12 where this is done by the state. Without evaluating which is better, they are very different. It is a weak argument to use assessment in K12 education as the basis to attack assessment in higher ed, which is the topic of this article.
Is higher education just the sum of the courses or is it something more? The focus of assessment in my institution is on the assessment of the entire experience, which is more than an instructor assessing students in one class.
Assessment is also being confused with accountability. Assessment as we know it may or may not be a fad, but I don’t think accountability is. The question is what type of accountability can be negotiated between higher ed and government and society.
Chris, at 8:50 am EST on January 25, 2006
Lack of vision
” .. Personally, I dismiss the NCLB and its associated jargon and programs ..”
” .. There are many differences in assessment as it is expressed in K12 versus higher education, and I don’t see that in this conversation ..”
Absent the aforementioned lack of vision — one of Jay Greene’s most interesting hypotheses is that despite sizable increases in funding for education — NO sizable difference in performance.
Is someone on Secretary Stallings’ staff doing that same study methodology on colleges? What would the outcome be, I wonder?
A.D., at 3:21 pm EST on January 25, 2006
Dean Palm is disingenuous at best. Allusions to New Age, Communism, and the customer always being right are not germane here. Just where has he been? Has he ever taught? The now-defunct AAHE sponsored an assessment institute for many years that provided excellent direction for this initiative. The assessment discussion in higher education is at least a full decade old, and thankfully, thus far, has not taken the “magic number” approach of our K-12 colleagues. I am concerned about legislators and bureaucrats, who may not have spent any time in the classroom, deciding how assessment should play out. Those of us who teach understand the reality of the classroom, and the true impact that assessment can have there. It’s all part of being an effective teacher, concerned with student learning, and working in an environment that continues to evaluate student learning by multiple measures. This is not to say that anyone should feel “demeaned or distrusted,” as Dean Palm expresses. If we follow his argument to the end, re-read his final paragraph about an inability to quantify or qualify what teaching and learning are intended to accomplish. While I concur that a liberal education is an excellent end, I also propound that in the end we need students whose courses of study lead them to productive lives in which they can sustain themselves and their families. We really don’t need any more Ph.D. taxi drivers, now do we? The academic world is filled with assessment that is productive and effective — perhaps Dean Palmer just hasn’t been looking in the right places. He might begin by looking at institutions like Alverno College, SIU-Edwardsville, IUPUI, and many others. It would be more than unfortunate if his lack of understanding ultimately gave greater credence to the legislators and bureaucrats taking control of assessment in higher education. As bad as NCLB may be, NPLB would be even worse. And, that’s not assessment as I understand it.
Daniel Larson, at 11:05 am EST on January 26, 2006
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Want to dream? Pay for it yourself, please
” .. Others, myself included, were first drawn to the academic profession because it alone seemed to offer an opportunity to spend a lifetime studying what we loved ..”
So .. hard-pressed taxpayers — now paying more for Medicaid than Education — should pay for someone else’s fantasy trip down Knowledge Lane? That has little, if any, accountability?
Does that sound fair?
There’s plenty of doo-doo in assessment — I’ve seen the puppet shows.
But IMHO, wandering about with no real direction should only be for those who can afford to be intellectual wastrels (e.g., Kennedys, Bushes). The working classes already have too many bills to pay; they don’t want to pay for wastrels.
A.D., at 9:26 am EST on January 20, 2006