Concerns over accountability in higher education could result in
the use of standardized tests for college and university students
across the country.
The Commission on the Future of Higher Education has begun
looking into the possibility of using standardized testing in
higher education following a Jan. 24 memorandum written by the
commission’s chairman, Charles Miller, espousing the benefits
of a standardized method of comparing student learning.
“There is gathering momentum for measuring through testing
what students learn or what skills they acquire in college beyond a
traditional certificate or degree,” Miller wrote in the
memo.
“The Commission is reviewing promising new developments in
the area of student testing, which indicate a significant
improvement in measuring student learning and related institutional
performance,” he wrote.
But with the variability in university curricula, as well as the
educational specialization available to students, some educators
are concerned that a single test could not appropriately gauge
student achievement.
“There are so many different kinds of institutions across
the country that have different missions and have different ways of
going about their missions,” said John Pryor, director of the
UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.
“How could you have one test that could adequately assess
what happens across thousands of institutions?”
Pryor said standardized tests are useful when the curricula are
standardized, which is not the case among the country’s many
colleges and universities.
In his memo, Miller cites the Collegiate Learning Assessment
exam, along with tests created by the Educational Testing Service
and the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, as
examples of standardized tests that have been shown to provide
useful data on student learning.
As head of the Regents of the University of Texas in 2003,
Miller championed the use of standardized testing for all of the
University of Texas campuses.
The regents intended to develop a way to assess the universities
that incorporated measurements of student learning, as opposed to
the rankings in U.S. News and World Report, which do not assess
student learning while in college.
The University of Texas system began using the test during the
previous academic year. In an assessment of the effectiveness of
the test released last week, Pedro Reyes, associate vice chancellor
for academic planning and assessment, gave a positive appraisal of
the test results and advocated the use of standardized testing in
other schools.
“We recommend that institutions of higher education be
exhorted to develop performance-based initiatives to measure
student learning,” Reyes wrote.
He explained that the results would be used to make comparisons
across universities and determine areas in which the curriculum
should be improved.
Both within the Texas system and more widely, advocates of
standardized testing have maintained its value in assessing
students in areas like critical thinking and writing skills.
Miller’s 19-member commission is set to issue a report on
accountability in August.