State-Level Assessment
of Student Learning
As our nation faces increasing competitiveness
in the global economy, policymakers need effective
ways to assess and increase our “educational
capital” at the state and national levels.
What knowledge and skills do our nation's college
graduates have? What contributions do our colleges
and universities make to the development of these
skills? In recent years, policymakers, the business
community, and education leaders have been asking
crucial questions about our most important product
of higher education- student learning.
Despite the growing urgency of these questions,
answers have been hard to come by. In higher education,
there has never been consensus as to what knowledge
and skills we ought to be producing, nor have there
been sufficient tools to measure higher learning.
There has not been a collective political will to
undertake the task, nor the resource commitment
to accomplish it. But after two decades of effort,
we are finally moving closer to finding some answers.
OBSERVATIONS
An "assessment movement" emerged
in the mid-1980s, based on concern about the quality
of teaching and learning in higher education. But
the underlying belief was that it is the role of
departments and institutions, not the state, to
evaluate student learning.
This movement stimulated growth of an assessment
industry. Assessment experts began to define student
learning outcomes in general ways and to develop
tools to assess and improve student learning.
An "accountability movement" emerged in
the 1990s, focusing attention on a broad array of
public policy issues such as access and affordability.
For the most part, however, it missed the boat on
student learning.
This movement spurred the development of state
report cards. These compared institutional performance
on various issues, but states rarely tackled the
difficult subject of student learning—except to
collect information on licensure pass rates on professional
exams. This occurred, in part, because of widely
held beliefs that no single set of outcomes would
apply across diverse programs and institutions and
that state legislatures should not intrude into
academic matters.
By 2000, a number of states had established
programs for measuring student learning— for purposes
of certification of individual students, institutional
improvement, or accountability. However, because
of the variability of instruments within and between
states, the nation was no closer to having answered
key public policy questions.
Only six states used a common test to assess student
learning across institutions, and these included
both nationally-normed as well as state-developed
tests. Fifteen states mandated assessment, but allowed
local choice of tests. Eight states were in the
process of developing a common approach to outcomes
assessment, and twenty-one states had no visible
state requirement for assessing student learning
outcomes.
National policymakers have addressed these
issues as well, calling for better information on
college-level learning.
When the National Center for Public Policy and Higher
Education issued its first national report card
on higher education (Measuring Up 2000), it graded
all fifty states "Incomplete" on student
learning due to lack of comparable national data.
In response, the Pew Charitable Trusts sponsored
the National Forum on College-Level Learning in
2001, which produced consensus that we need a way
to measure our "educational capital" in
a comparable way across states.
Since then, the National Governors Association
has described student learning as our most critical
accountability measure and is supporting efforts
to integrate student learning data into statewide
accountability systems. Regional accrediting associations
are increasingly insisting that student learning
be demonstrated for accreditation purposes. Also,
in the proposed reauthorization of the Higher Education
Act (H.R. 4283), Congress is calling for a study
of “the best practices of States in assessing
undergraduate postsecondary student learning, particularly
as such practices relate to public accountability.”
Assessment experts continue to respond
to the call, with many innovative projects to define
what we need to know about postsecondary student
learning and developing instruments for accomplishing
the task. But their efforts do not add up to a clear
set of indicators for statewide assessment.
Described under Resources below, recent efforts
include attempts to develop student learning outcomes
in specific disciplines, to measure the institutional
contribution to student learning or the value added,
to measure effective educational practices, and
to examine institutions' impact on their graduates'
subsequent lives.
Most recently, a feasible approach to state-level
assessment of student learning has emerged, offering
comparable learning data across five states. The
opportunity is there for more states to become involved.
The National Forum on College-Level Learning did more
than raise awareness. By 2002, it had developed a
prototype for measuring student learning at the state
level and since then, has conducted a five-state pilot
study. With assistance from the National Center for
Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS), it developed
a set of standard statewide indicators of student
learning and the results were presented in
Measuring
Up 2004.
CONCLUSION
There is no doubt that pressures will increase on higher education to document the learning outcomes of college graduates. The stakes have risen and the lens has shifted, with a new focus on state-level performance and policy responses to improve student learning. But we need to develop tools that not only answer state and national accountability demands, but simultaneously support institutional improvement efforts. Increasingly, institutions will have the opportunity to participate in state-level discussions and to examine their performance in light of state benchmarks. This should provide useful information to help understand what colleges and universities are doing well and not so well, and how to improve their teaching and learning practices. There has never been a better time to get involved and to make the extra effort.
RESOURCES
National Forum on College-Level Learning
The National Forum developed a model to measure
across states what college students know and are
able to do. Results of a recently completed pilot
study make it possible to assess both the intellectual
capital available to states and the contributions
their colleges and universities collectively make
to it.
collegelevellearning.org
National Center on Public Policy and Higher
Education
The National Center produces a biennial national
report card on higher education, Measuring Up. The
2004 edition presents, for the first time, data
on student learning from the five-state pilot project
conducted by the National Forum on College-Level
Learning.
highereducation.org
Quality in Undergraduate Education (QUE)
QUE is a national project of faculty at selected
institutions who are developing discipline-based
standards or student learning outcomes for six undergraduate
majors. It is sponsored by the Education Trust and
the National Association of Systems Heads (NASH),
in association with Georgia State University.
gsu.edu
Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA)
The Council on Aid to Education (CAE),
in partnership with RAND, has undertaken the CLA
project, an initiative to assess the quality of
undergraduate education by measuring the value added,
or the institutional contribution to student learning.
cae.org
National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)
and
Community College Survey of Student Engagement
(CCSSE)
NSSE, headquartered at Indiana University, and CCSSE,
at the University of Texas at Austin, measure empirically
confirmed "good practices" in undergraduate
education—behaviors by students and institutions
that are associated with desired outcomes of college.
These offer indirect measures for institutional
quality.
indiana.edu
ccsse.org
American Association for Higher Education
(AAHE)
AAHE promotes effective approaches to assessment
and holds the annual Assessment Forum. Currently,
AAHE has joined with NSSE on the Documenting Effective
Educational Practice project (Project DEEP), an
initiative to examine 20 effective colleges and
universities to learn what they do to promote student
success.
aahe.org
aahe.org
Association of American Colleges and Universities
(AAC&U)
AAC&U's assessment activities include the Project
on Accreditation and Assessment (PAA). This project
aims to influence revisions of accreditation standards
to place greater emphasis on student achievement,
and has worked to build consensus among regional
and national accreditors and higher education associations
on outcomes for, and methods of, assessing liberal
learning.
aacu.org
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