Question Description

Question Description

i need the answer to only discuss in blackboard.it should be one page.no need to write as essay , no need for introduction or conclusion. I want to show as my opinionuse the material to answer the question. in the first files has 4 articles. in the second files has one article. do not write too long sentences.you should write in comprehensive way.The question:Who is accountability for the success of students during their collegiate tenure? Dwyer, Millett, & Payne, (2006, p. 2) says “The public’s knowledge about what happens once students start a college education is limited. We often make assumptions about the quality of an education based on the institution’s reputation, and one occasionally hears statistics about college graduation rates.” As we analyze the educational gaps and state influence regarding funding; how do we increase the success of students, as they matriculate through college into the workforce? Dwyer et al., (2006, p. 17) mentions four student learning domains which will increase preparedness after college into the workforce. In your opinion, do you believe these areas of emphasis contribute to workforce readiness? If so, which one is the most important? Lastly, if parents knew this was the standard curriculum for all states/institutions would institution distinctiveness be a question regarding school choice? Use the readings to strengthen the response.

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A Culture of Evidence:
Postsecondary Assessment and
Learning Outcomes
Recommendations to Policymakers
and the Higher Education Community
Listening.
Learning.
Leading.
Carol A. Dwyer
Catherine M. Millett
David G. Payne
www.ets.org
A Culture of Evidence:
Postsecondary Assessment and
Learning Outcomes
Recommendations to Policymakers
and the Higher Education Community
CAROL A. DWYER
CATHERINE M. MILLETT
DAVID G. PAYNE
ETS
PRINCETON, N.J.
June 2006
Dear Colleague:
Developing a comprehensive strategy for postsecondary education that will meet the needs of
America’s diverse population and help ensure our ability to compete in the global economy is
vital to the growth of our nation.
The bar is being raised for the nation’s higher education system. Americans realize that
pushing students through the system is not enough; students must graduate equipped with the
skills and knowledge needed to be productive members of the workforce.
Key to improving the performance of our colleges and universities is measuring their
performance. Therefore, I am pleased to share with you this ETS issue paper titled A Culture
of Evidence: Postsecondary Assessment and Learning Outcomes, which outlines accountability
models and metrics for the higher education arena.
In this paper, we assert that to understand the value added to student inputs by the college
experience, it is essential to address three measurements: student input measures, student
output measures, and a measure of change between inputs and outputs. The paper also briefly
reviews principles of fair and valid testing that pertain to the assessments being recommended.
Today’s higher education institutions must not only prove their programs’ performance; they
must also take their programs to the next level if they are to be able to choose from the most
promising applicants, attract prestigious faculty, and secure access to financial support from
a competitive funding pool. Accordingly, colleges and universities should be held accountable
to multiple stakeholders, ranging from students and parents, to faculty and administrators, to
accreditation bodies and federal agencies.
As we move forward as a nation to improve postsecondary outcomes, I believe that the ideas
set forth in this paper will help inform the national discussion on how we can improve our
system of higher education.
Sincerely,
Mari Pearlman
Senior Vice President, Higher Education
ETS
Table of Contents
Executive Summary……………………………………………………………………………………………………1
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….3
The Postsecondary Assessment Landscape. ………………………………………………………………….4
The U.S. Education Context………………………………………………………………………………………5
Institutions……………………………………………………………………………………………………………5
Students……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….5
The Learning Environment……………………………………………………………………………………..6
The I-E-O Model………………………………………………………………………………………………………7
The Institutional Perspective………………………………………………………………………………….8
The Student Perspective…………………………………………………………………………………………8
Peer Groups: Making Comparisons Useful and Valid…………………………………………………..10
Characteristics of Fair, Useful and Valid Assessments………………………………………………..11
Dimensions of Student Learning……………………………………………………………………………….13
1. Workplace Readiness and General Education Skills…………………………………………….13
2. Content Knowledge/Discipline-Specific Knowledge and Skills……………………………..13
3. “Soft Skills” (Noncognitive Skills)……………………………………………………………………14
Student Engagement…………………………………………………………………………………………….14
Measuring Student Learning: Understanding the Value
Added by Higher Education. ………………………………………………………………………………….16
Summary………………………………………………………………………………………………………………17
Recommendations…………………………………………………………………………………………………….18
Recommended Plan: A National Initiative to Create a System for
Assessing Student Learning Outcomes in Higher Education…………………………………..18
Workforce Readiness and General Education Skills……………………………………………….19
Domain-Specific Knowledge…………………………………………………………………………………..20
Soft Skills. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………20
Student Engagement…………………………………………………………………………………………….21
Key Design Features of the Proposed Assessments………………………………………………….21
Sampling and Modularization………………………………………………………………………..21
Locally Developed Measures…………………………………………………………………………..22
Constructed Responses………………………………………………………………………………….22
Pre- and Post-Learning Measures/Value Added…………………………………………………22
Regular Data Collection…………………………………………………………………………………22
Focus on Institutions……………………………………………………………………………………22
Faculty Involvement……………………………………………………………………………………..23
Comparability Across Institutions: Standardized Measures……………………………….23
Summary of Key Design Features…………………………………………………………………..23
Implementing the New System: The Role of Accrediting Agencies…………………………….24
Additional Themes in Higher Education Accountability……………………………………………24
“Blue Sky”: A Continuum of Possibilities and Next Steps. …………………………………………..26
References. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………28
Endnotes………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..30
Executive Summary
Postsecondary education today is not driven by hard evidence of its effectiveness. Consequently,
our current state of knowledge about the effectiveness of a college education is limited. The lack
of a culture oriented toward evidence of specific student outcomes hampers informed decisionmaking by institutions, by students and their families, and by the future employers of college
graduates.
What is needed is a systemic, data-driven, comprehensive approach to understanding the
quality of two-year and four-year postsecondary education, with direct, valid and reliable
measures of student learning. Most institutional information that we have access to today
typically consists of either input characteristics (student grades and test scores, for example)
or output characteristics (institutional counts of degrees granted or students employed, for
example), with little attention to the intervening college-learning period.
We propose a comprehensive national system for determining the nature and extent of college
learning, focusing on four dimensions of student learning:
• Workplace readiness and general skills
• Domain-specific knowledge and skills
• Soft skills, such as teamwork, communication and creativity
• Student engagement with learning
To understand the value that a college experience adds to student inputs, three measurements
must be addressed: Student input measures (What were student competencies before college?),
student output measures (What were student competencies after college?), and a measure of
change between inputs and outputs.
This paper also briefly reviews principles of fair and valid testing that pertain to the
assessments being recommended. The design for these measurements must include attention to
the following points:
• Regular (preferably annual) data collection with common instruments
• Sampling of students within an institution, rather than testing all students, with an option
for institutions that wish to test more (the unit of analysis is thus the institution)
• Using instruments that can be used in pre- and post-test mode and that have sufficient forms
available for repeated use over time
• Using a variety of assessment formats, not limited to multiple-choice
• Identifying appropriate comparisons or “peer groups” against which to measure institutional
progress
The paper concludes that there are currently no models or instruments that completely meet
the needs of a comprehensive, high-quality postsecondary accountability system as outlined
here.
We recommend that the six regional postsecondary accrediting agencies be charged with
integrating a national system of assessing student learning into their ongoing reviews of
institutions.
To consider moving in this direction, policymakers and the higher education community may wish to:
• Focus on early implementation of measures of workplace readiness and general skills.
• Convene an expert panel to review an Assessment Framework Template included in this
paper.

A Culture of Evidence: Postsecondary Assessment and Learning Outcomes
• Charge the panel with reviewing the dimensions of learning to reach consensus on a
framework; review the completeness of the list of extant assessments; and review each
assessment to determine its match to desired skills and its applicability to both two-year and
four-year institutions.
A detailed list of issues for consideration by such an expert panel is included.

A Culture of Evidence: Postsecondary Assessment and Learning Outcomes
Introduction
To send your child off to a $40,000-a-year school, you just get “the feeling.” Asked
whether Mary’s college is getting the job done, [Mary’s mother] says: “The truth of the
matter is, I think it’s good but I have no way of knowing that — that’s my point. She
seems happy. For this kind of money she ought to be.” (Toppo, 2006).
This mother’s appraisal of our current state of knowledge about the effectiveness of a college
education in general or at a particular institution is most likely shared by students, other
parents, government officials, business leaders, and future employers of college graduates. The
public’s knowledge about what happens once students start a college education is limited. We
often make assumptions about the quality of an education based on the institution’s reputation,
and one occasionally hears statistics about college graduation rates. But what hard evidence is
consistently available about the outcomes of a college education? The simple answer is there is
no commonly used metric to determine the effectiveness — defined in terms of student learning
— of higher education in the United States.
As we outline what a new era in higher education accountability might look like, we will strive
to keep in mind two points: the need for clarity and simplicity in the system; and the need for a
common language that can be used consistently within the higher education community as well
as with stakeholders outside this community.
What is the purpose of a college education? Is it a first step toward advanced study? Is it for
getting a better job? Is it preparation for being a better citizen and contributing member of
society? Has there been a disconnect between education and work? Students are admitted to
colleges and universities, complete courses, graduate, and then enter the world of work. But are
they prepared for what employers expect them to know and be able to do? Whose responsibility
is it to provide answers to these questions?
The three major players in accountability are the legislative and political arenas, the academy,
and the general citizenry (LeMon, 2004, p. 39). They all need reliable and valued information
in a useable form. We must ask: What have students learned, and are they ready to use it?
(Malandra, 2005).

A Culture of Evidence: Postsecondary Assessment and Learning Outcomes
The Postsecondary Assessment Landscape
When the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education awarded all 50 states an
“incomplete” in the student learning category in its 2000 inaugural issue of Measuring Up, the
higher education community, policymakers and the public got their first inkling of the paucity
of information about student learning in college. Miller and Ewell (2005) took a first step in
framing how individual states might begin the process of measuring student learning outcomes
by considering several data-oriented themes: (a) the literacy levels of the state population
(weighted 25% in their overall evaluation); (b) graduates’ readiness for advanced practice
(weighted 25%); and (c) the performance of the college-educated population (weighted 50%).
To get the process started, Miller and Ewell’s college-level learning model employed currently
available assessments. For example, literacy levels were assessed using the 1992 National Adult
Literacy Surveys, now known as the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, or NAAL, which
poses real-world tasks or problems for respondents to perform or solve (2006). The graduates’
readiness for the advanced practice section used extant data on licensure examinations,
competitive admissions exams, and teacher preparation exams. The most heavily weighted
component, performance of the college educated, analyzed student performance on the ACT
Workkeys assessments for two-year institutions and the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA)
for four-year institutions.
Two of the assessments of college-level learning in Measuring Up warrant additional comment.
One NAAL finding in particular caught the public’s attention: “only 31 percent of college
graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it” (Romano, 2005). The CLA has also
continued to be in the public eye. Interest in the CLA may be due to several of its appealing
qualities: institutions rather than students are the unit of analysis, pre- and post-test measures
can be conducted, and students construct their own responses rather than answer multiplechoice questions. According to CLA in Context 2004-2005, approximately 134 colleges and
universities have used the CLA since 2002 (Council for Aid to Education, 2005).
At approximately the same time that Measuring Up was building momentum, the National
Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) was in development. Begun in 1998, NSSE has collected
information about student participation in programs and activities that promote learning
and personal development. The survey provides information on how college students spend
their time and their participation in activities that have been empirically demonstrated to be
associated with desired outcomes of college (NSSE, 2005a). The information thus represents
what constitutes good practices in education. Although the data are collected from individual
students, it is the institutions rather than the students that are the units of analysis. Over 970
institutions have participated in NSSE and new surveys have been developed for other important
sectors such as law schools (LSSSE), community colleges (CCSSE), and high schools (HHSSE).
The project described by Miller and Ewell (2005) and the assessments of student engagement
represent two of the recent efforts to answer questions regarding institutional effectiveness
in U.S. higher education. To appreciate the contributions of these efforts, and to provide
a framework for the present proposal, it is important to review briefly some of the major
characteristics of U.S. higher education at the start of the 21st century.

A Culture of Evidence: Postsecondary Assessment and Learning Outcomes
The U.S. Education Context
Access for all is the hallmark of the U.S. postsecondary education system. As a nation, we are
justifiably proud of the fact that a college education is possible for all citizens, ranging from
the traditional high school graduate to the senior citizen who wishes to fulfill a lifelong dream
of earning a college degree. Another important facet of U.S. higher education is the relatively
large degree of autonomy given to institutions of higher education (IHEs). Similarly, faculty are
often given tremendous autonomy in setting the curriculum, establishing degree requirements,
and other important academic matters. These aspects of U.S. higher education represent
important contextual features of the organizations that must be kept in mind as we consider new
accountability measures, especially for student learning outcomes.
In addition to broad access and institutional autonomy, other aspects of U.S. higher education
provide a lens through which to view the state of affairs in higher education; that is, important
dimensions along which institutions can be described. Although numerous discrete dimensions
may be used (e.g., public vs. private, for-profit vs. nonprofit, two-year vs. four-year, selective
vs. nonselective), more nuanced dimensions provide a richer set of descriptors.1 The image of
a series of continua is most appropriate for thinking about the U.S. system. Some examples
illustrating these continua and their underlying complexity can be usefully considered from the
institutional, student and learning environment perspectives. These dimensions are important
for present purposes because they relate directly to approaches that can be used to assess
student learning for the purposes of monitoring and improving institutional effectiveness in the
teaching and learning domains.
Institutions
• Postsecondary institutions award academic credentials ranging from certificates to doctoral
degrees.
• The instructional level of institutions ranges from less than one-year to four-year.
• The degree of selectivity differs greatly among institutions.
• There are several sectors within the postsecondary level (e.g., public vs. private, and
nonprofit vs. for-profit).
• Postsecondary institutions differ in their histories and institutional missions, (e.g., religiously
oriented institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving
Institutions, Tribal Colleges).
• Institutions range from being highly centralized to highly decentralized.
• In 2002, the 4,071 U.S. postsecondary institutions ranged in size from those enrolling fewer
than 200 students to those that enrolled 40,000 or more (NCES, 2002a).
• In 2001, nearly 16 million students were enrolled in U.S. degree-granting institutions. Public
institutions enrolled 77% of all students; private nonprofit institutions enrolled 20% of
students; and pri …

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