Two decades after the start of the standards and testing era in education, which vowed to hold public schools accountable for firm measures of student achievement, efforts are underway to hold higher education institutions to the same standard. It’s not an idea that everyone in the ivory tower is rushing to embrace.
Just as K-12 assessments are moving away from absolute measures of student achievement and toward so-called “growth models,” leaders of the higher education effort say the aim should not be to measure absolute student performance levels after four years of college — which may only measure the caliber of students a school is able to draw — but to gauge the degree of growth in student skills during their time on campus.
“We used to hear a lot more of, ‘The value of college can’t be measured,’ and now we hear more of, ‘Let’s talk about how we can measure,’” David Paris, executive director of the New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability, tells the New York Times.
The nonprofit New Leadership Alliance, an advocacy group formed by a coalition of high education organizations, issued guidelines in January calling on US colleges and universities to gather data on “evidence of student learning” and publicly release their results. Yesterday’s Times story reports that more than 1,000 colleges may already be using one of several national assessments that would permit such an evaluation.
Existing benchmarks for higher education tend to track front-end inputs such as average SAT scores of entering students, or end-of-the-line markers like graduation rates. But these provide no real measure of student learning during the college experience. The push for such assessment has gained steam from critiques like Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, published last year. The book, based on a data from US college students, contends that more than one-third of students make no gains critical thinking skills during four years of college.
But measuring such skills isn’t necessarily easy. “I’m not sure any standardized test can effectively measure what students gain in problem-solving, or the ability to work collaboratively,” Alice Gast, president of Lehigh University, told the Times.
The effort is part of a broader call for more accountability in higher education. In Massachusetts, the current focus is the state’s public community college system. A report issued in November by The Boston Foundation calls for more centralized oversight of the 15-campus system in order to ensure that the community colleges are aligning their programs with the workforce needs of the state economy. As with the accountability effort among four-year colleges, the community college report drew pushback from leaders at the state campuses who vow to fight any limits on their autonomy.
But with college graduates swimming in billions of dollars of student debt, including more than 2 million Americans 60 or older who still owe on student loans, the drive to try to determine the tangible gains students get from college is not likely to go away.
–MICHAEL JONAS
BEACON HILL
Although former treasurer Tim Cahill has said his ramped up spending on lottery ads in 2010 — for which he now faces corruption charges — was an effort to counter damaging Republican Governors Association ads that were threatening lottery sales, the Globe reported yesterday that Cahill maintained at the time that the attacks were having no effect and that lottery sales remained strong. The Beat the Press panel wonders if the media is going soft on Cahill. Banker & Tradesman columnist Scott van Voorhis says the Cahill scandal begs questions about why Massachusetts lets the treasurer, not the governor, run the Lottery. And yet another look at what the person who made all this possible, Martha Coakley, might be up to.
Republican Charlie Baker chats with NECN’s Alison King, and she concludes he wlll run for governor again. (He’s also citing a MassINC report on job losses during the last decade.)
A coalition of labor forces and advocacy groups is pushing to hike the state’s income and capital gains tax rates to offset budget gaps and service cuts. Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll is leading the effort to require online retailers to collect Massachusetts sales tax, the Salem News reports. The Globe also tees up the online tax effort, which is being driven by brick-and-mortar retailers.
The Herald talks to the leaders of a medical marijuana ballot effort.
The Legislature takes up a bill to de-fund the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy.
CASINOS
Offering a refresher on tribal gaming law, the Globe reminds everyone that a scheduled June casino vote for Taunton residents is not binding because the proposed site would be sovereign Indian land if the Mashpee Wampanoag succeed in getting the land putting into federal trust on their behalf.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
The Enterprise posts a database of all Brockton city employee salaries. One interesting angle: higher salaries for those in the School Department compared to those at City Hall with similar titles and responsibilities.
Haverhill’s City Council takes cue from Lowell and is considering charging the town’s nonprofit organizations a payment in lieu of taxes equal to 25 percent of what their tax bill would be without the nonprofit exemption, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
A former corrections officer and candidate for an open Bridgewater Town Council seat is facing charges of impersonating a police officer after allegedly flashing his Department of Correction badge in two separate incidents.
ELECTION 2012
WBUR’s Bob Oakes interviews Republican Sean Bielat, who is running for the open Fourth Congressional District seat being vacated by Barney Frank.
In a move that lacked any element of surprise, Planned Parenthood has endorsed Elizabeth Warren.
Newt Gingrich says he expects Mitt Romney to be the Republican nominee, but that apparently isn’t reason enough for him to abandon his own quixotic quest for the nomination.
Karl Rove’s super PAC readies its first anti-Obama ad blitz.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
The Wall Street Journal editorializes against a plan to use leftover TARP funds to write down the balances of mortgages held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Mass marketing: Bay State firms are looking to cash in on the 1 billion middle-class consumers China may have within two decades.
New York spotlights ex-Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack’s comeback.
EDUCATION
The Boston nonprofit EdVestors plans to commit $3 million to aid three Boston schools that haven’t been officially deemed “underperforming,” but which are struggling nearly as much as the district’s worst performing schools.
State education officials will appoint an advisor to the Fall River School Committee today, acknowledging that the schools have made progress in some areas but expressing concern about the committee’s leadership abilities.
The New Bedford School Committee is continuing closed door negotiations with the school superintendent over her departure from the struggling system.
The MetroWest Daily News argues that something must be done about student debt since the declining purchasing power of young people holds the economy back.
HEALTH CARE
Former Boston mayor and Vatican ambassador Ray Flynn sat down on Keller@Large to talk about the federal health care bill and stem cell research and his view was decidedly conservative Catholic.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
A court awarded the MBTA a $2.9 million judgment in a counterfeit ticket case, the Lynn Daily Item reports.
MEDIA
Mike Wallace, the Brookline-born 60 Minutes inquisitor who once said his interviews walked “a fine line between sadism and intellectual curiosity,” died on Saturday at age 93. CBS remembers Wallace. The Globe recalls his warm-hearted return visits to Brookline High School. The Times obit is here.
Newspapers increasingly are being owned by 1 percenters, reports the New York Times.