As this issue
of Peer Review goes to press, national events--from
the breakdown of negotiations over new rules governing
accreditation to the spirited resistance to Secretary
Spellings's efforts to federalize judgments about educational
quality--remind us all that the larger context for our
work is changing rapidly and dramatically.
Colleges and universities are under a spotlight with far
more scrutiny than has been typical in recent years. The good
news is that this heightened scrutiny is a result of higher education's
increasing importance in our society. Once just an option
for the fortunate, higher education is now seen as essential for
America's future. The bad news is that many who are scrutinizing
us have brought an accounting rather than an educational
vision to the task. Determined to produce quantitative metrics
that allow comparisons across institutions, the current
Department of Education and policy leaders in many states are
focusing relentlessly on things that can be counted, such as
graduation rates, job placement rates, and pass rates on standardized
tests. The obvious danger to anyone who cares about
education is that we will end up narrowing and trivializing
higher learning in order to measure it.
Yet employers, ironically, are urgently demanding that students
master the higher-level outcomes associated with liberal
education: analytical and communication skills, rich knowledge
of science and global interdependence, and the ability to apply
knowledge to unscripted problems where the "right answer"
remains an unknown (see results of AAC&U's employer survey
and recent LEAP report online at www.aacu.org/leap). But federal
officials seem focused instead on what is best described as
the meager minimum.
The higher education community is mobilizing to stop the
misguided efforts launched by the Department of Education. But
blocking is not enough. We must band together to champion a
vision of educational quality and authentic assessment practices
that will do more than measure basic skills. Assessment can and
should be designed to deepen and strengthen student learning,
not just to document it. And assessments surely must aim at the
highest levels of student learning--at the integration of knowledge,
analysis, and action--not at the most rudimentary levels.
With strong endorsement from educators and employers,
AAC&U's LEAP report, College Learning for the New Global
Century, affirms that "the framework for accountability should
be students' demonstrated ability to apply their learning to
complex problems." By definition, this standard calls for a
strong emphasis on students' performance in authentic integrative
assignments and projects.
With this as our standard, we have focused in this issue of
Peer Review on assessment approaches that serve the needs of
external accountability, but also help us raise students' levels of
achievement. We explore in particular the use of the culminating
course or project as a context both for integrating students'
learning and for assessing it.
As the examples in this issue show, capstones also can be
designed and assessed to reveal student learning on broad outcomes,
such as critical thinking or civic engagement, as well as
on competencies particular to a field of study. Some institutions,
including community colleges, also are incorporating capstone
assignments in student portfolios that include first-year
and milestone work. By systematic sampling and review, an
institution can use these work samples to show student growth
over time, as well as the actual level of student accomplishment.
Our challenge now is to make more visible to policy leaders
and the public these authentic assessment practices and explain
clearly why they are the right standard for accountability. To do
this, we will need educational leadership at two levels: nationally,
to promote the concept of assessments worthy of our mission,
and on campus, to establish high standards for the design
and implementation of authentic, learning-intensive assessments.
The stakes in this debate are very high. AAC&U's goal
for assessment and accountability is to "aim high" and make
authentic learning the standard. Working with you, we will do
everything we can to make this the American standard as well.
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