Why assessment is good for colleges: A rebuttal

Robert Sternberg’s piece is fully in keeping with the Super PAC’s tendency to unleash misinformation about their opponents in this heated presidential race. Sternberg follows the standard line of attack: Distort the position of the opponents, and then demolish that position, says Roger Benjamin, president of the Council for Aid to Education, publisher of the Collegiate Learning Assessment, for the Washington Post. He rubbishes standardized assessments used in higher education, including the College Learning Assessment (CLA). He implies the only use for such tests is for nefarious–and unwanted–No Child Left Behind (NCLB) high-stakes testing and top-down accountability systems in higher education. He dismisses the CLA as a narrow test of something he calls “general learning,” which, in his view, will narrow the curriculum because instructors will have to teach to it. Sternberg provides his preferred list of attributes to assess, such as: academic disciplines, creativity, ethical behavior, portfolios, and persistence. These qualities, he argues, are far more relevant to the success of students than the content measured by the standardized tests. Moreover, he asserts that reliance on a single test score at the institutional level to evaluate student learning is ludicrous. The case is closed for Dr. Sternberg. Please read on for a different perspective…

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Trying to assess learning gives colleges their own test anxiety

Eight years ago, leaders of the University of Texas set out to measure something few in higher education had thought to question—how much their students learn before graduation. An unsettling answer emerged: arguably, not very much, the Washington Post reports. That conclusion is based on results from a 90-minute essay test given to freshmen and seniors that aims to gauge gains in critical thinking and communication skills. The Texas flagship and a few hundred other public universities have joined a growing accountability movement in higher education, embracing this test and others like it that attempt, for the first time, to quantify collegiate learning on a large scale. But the results have triggered a wave of rancor…

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