Measuring Student Learning: Impact on Accountability and Autonomy

While college education has always had the reputation of being difficult, it has steadily become easier. This isn’t based on the course load or information; simply, it is easier to achieve high grades. In fact, “Campuswide averages have crept up from a C just 10 years ago to a B-plus today” (Staples). Brent Staples, in his article “Why Colleges Shower Their Students with A’s”, successfully illustrates the concerns with grade inflation. Grade inflation is a complex situation affecting universities which leads to less legitimate degrees.

Lurking now as perhaps the greatest challenge facing accreditation is a reduction in traditional higher-education institutions serving as the primary authority for education offerings, credits, and degrees. President Obama in August 2013 proposed that colleges be rated based on metrics measuring such things as affordability and student outcomes, which could be tied to alternative accreditation

In “Should US Colleges Be Graded by the Government?”, Haley Sweetland-Edwards discusses a plan made by President Obama to have colleges evaluated based on accessibility, affordability, graduation rates, and how students are performing after graduation. Sweetland-Edwards explains the possible negative consequences of this plan by explaining how certain details (such as athletics, performance by professors, and internship opportunities) may be ignored in favor of basic statistics. Sweetland-Edwards further explains how ratings for areas that are being evaluated may affect

As Director of the Office of Student Learning and Institutional Assessment at SFA, the Provost charged me with developing, implementing, and overseeing institutional effectiveness efforts for academic programs, administrative units, and educational support units. Under my leadership in institutional effectiveness, SFA was successful in achieving reaffirmation from the Southern Association of College and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) with no monitoring reports or recommendations, an achievement that only 10% of institutions could claim during the year SFA received reaffirmation. We were able to accomplish this distinction despite the fact that the institution had no consistent or formal institutional effectiveness processes in place just 3 years before our compliance report was

A growing propensity among policymakers is to engage more actively in more dimensions of higher education (Association of Governing Boards, 2015). There is a partnership between states and the federal government that provide access and quality in higher education. It is a check and balance system that is to design to benefit students in higher education. On the level of institutions of higher learning, governing boards have been established where they follow the guidelines set forth by the state and federal government to deal with ongoing issues in higher

Performance funding is a method of financing public education institutions based on outcomes such as retention, course and degree completion, and job placement. However, how are states being held accountable for monies received? According to Burke, (2002); Dougherty & Hong, (2006); Layzell, (1999); Ruppert, (1995), the purpose of performance based funding is to encourage institutions to be more effective and efficient while demands on higher education are being increased. One of the mysteries of state performance funding is that more accountability has been associated with states receipt of monies. Although there has been great interest in it for over 30 years, only half of all states have ever created a performance funding program for higher

College education has changed dramatically over the last decade. For a long time, the common perception of how colleges prepared students involved, teachers providing lectures, students doing various homework assignments and then being evaluated. Students either passed or failed. Each individual’s success was considered to be a direct reflection on how much time and effort they put into their studies. Colleges did not often bear the burden of responsibility for poor student outcome statistics. In recent years, the responsibility of student success has begun to fall more heavily on the schools. According to Grubb and Associates’s article, “From Black Box to Pandora’s Box. Evaluating Remedial/Developmental Education”, as the shift in responsibility has

First, accreditation helps to ensure and improve the quality of an institution or program. It is a process that uses a set of standards that ensures quality of education based on measures of student learning. There are many accrediting organizations that review higher education institutions or specific programs within that institution. Accreditation provides many things to students and the public by making sure the institution or program lives up to its promises. For example, students who attend an accredited institution can be assured that classes will transfer and that the program of study will be accepted by future employers (CHEA, 2010). Accreditors usually focus on student learning outcomes. A good institution will have these student learning outcomes within its strategic plan which drives all assessment processes. Yet, despite the obvious need for assessments that can

Third, a self-regulated peer review accreditation system is cost effective in relation to a government accreditation system. Although critics charge that the accreditation system is costly, creating an unnecessary financial burden on institutions, Eaton (2013) noted there is a lack of data to confirm this charge. She reported that most institutions could only estimate the cost of the accreditation process because they do not track the direct or indirect costs. Furthermore, she posed an important question: “If the cost of an accreditation review (which is what is usually reported) is amortized over the three or five or ten years of accredited status, is this too costly?”

Assessment is a multi-faceted issue, it should be viewed as such when attempting to gauge an accurate understanding of learners. Several states have implemented performance-based assessments into standardized testing, in addition to including assignments such as student portfolios and presentations for the supplementary measure of learner understanding (Edutopia, 2015). Consequently, the pressure for school administrations to perform has led to poor judgment, inadequate decision-making, in addition to educational scandals. For instance, the scandal at Harvard in 2013 lead to about 70 withdrawing from school after academic exam responses were supplied by peer learners (Perez-Pena, 2013). Administrators in K-12 have also been involved in

Providing teachers with some autonomy in their classrooms and opportunities to affect school policies and instruction is essential. According to Pearson and Moomaw (2006), when such conditions existed, teacher satisfaction and professionalism increased, on-the-job stress decreased, and greater job satisfaction was achieved. Ingersoll explained that a lack of control in the classroom may make teachers feel hindered and ineffective, leading them to pursue other employment options. Thus, Ingersoll (2001) reported that schools have lower rates of attrition when they provide teachers with more classroom autonomy. Teachers are more likely to stay in schools where they have the opportunity to contribute to school-wide decision-making, including

The U.S. Department of Education today took the first step toward terminating a college accrediting agency with a history of greenlighting predatory and substandard institutions. While the reasons for the action against the Accrediting Council of Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) have been in the news (see here and here and here and here), the process for ending such an agency’s federal recognition has been less discussed.

Teacher autonomy has been gaining increasing interest among educational researchers, policy makers, administrators, and teachers over the past few decades. According to federal data from the National Center for Education Statistics (Sparks & Malkus, 2015) educators reported less classroom autonomy in school year 2011-12 compared to 2003-04. In an age of accountability reform, teachers feel their independence waning during a period of time marked by standardization, scripted curriculum, and high-stakes testing.

Within the past few years, Higher Education institutions have transformed from their traditional roots of a collegial culture and have begun to transition to this new “Managerialism” culture. This culture was adopted from the private/for-profit sector within Higher Education. The managerial culture resembles more of a business model approach. It focuses on the quantity in relations to productivity, bottom line, quantitative and efficiency versus the quality in regards to academic freedom, research, values and autonomy. “ Procedures around performance measurement, quality control, and audit aimed at improving the effectiveness and accountability of Higher Education institutions have at the same time contributed to the creation of additional bureaucratic layers of control which have often been experienced as inhibiting organizational effectiveness and responsiveness (764)” which has the greatest impact on how Higher Education operates.

The transition to college can be a difficult one. In addition to taking more difficult, more complex classes, many new college students are also experiencing a much greater degree of personal responsibility and independence than anything they have ever previously experienced. For some students, this transition is an easy one, and success in college comes with little or no effort. However, for many students, the transition is very difficult one, and those who are unable to develop greater personal responsibility may find themselves failing or in danger of failing. Therefore, it is important to incorporate effective strategies that highlight personal responsibility and make accountability a routine facet of daily life, in order to be successful as a student. These strategies include: 1) taking personal responsibility for success or failure; 2) choosing appropriate goals; 3) establishing a study-life balance; 4) maintaining personal health; 5) ensuring financial ability to cover school costs; and 6) overcoming obstacles.