No College Left Behind?

Better wait before throwing away those Number 2 pencils; soon, even college students may be required to take performance-measuring standardized tests.

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, still dealing with the fallout from the controversial No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program, has proposed a similar plan for colleges. Last year, the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which Spellings created, concluded that colleges should "measure and report meaningful student learning outcomes," that tests should be used for purposes of comparison, and that accreditation should be heavily dependent on the outcomes and publication of these tests.

In support of these findings, Charles Miller, the chairman of the commission, stated, "We need to assure that the American public understands through access to sufficient information, particularly in the area of student learning, what they are getting for their investment in a college education."

Many academics are worried that a standardized testing format for colleges would lead to a mandate similar to NCLB, which critics have said actually hurts schools because it forces tests but does not provide funding necessary to help them meet goals. The backgrounds of Spellings and Miller help fuel this speculation; Spellings has advised Bush on education at the state and federal levels and was instrumental in implementing NCLB, while Miller, as a member of the Board of the Regents of the University of Texas System, helped make the system first in the nation to require the use of standardized testing and publication of the outcomes.

"You take students who aren't prepared and then you toss them overboard," Miller stated in a phone conversation with the New York Times. "Time on task has shrunk a lot. You can't schedule a class Thursday afternoon or Friday, or no one will come. What you get is a happy professoriate and good grades. That's a system that's dysfunctional, and it shows."

The idea of standardized assessment is catching on with some in the world of academia. However, for every academic who approves of this new proposal, there are plenty who disapprove.

Georgetown Professor Heather Voke, who studies education policy and school reform, is not among those getting onboard. "I think it would be a horrible mistake to apply the high-stakes testing approach that has been used in middle and high schools to higher education," Voke said. "As we've seen in the case of No Child Left Behind, the power that this would give the federal government over teaching and learning is far-reaching; this small measure leverages big changes in what and how teachers will be able to teach in classrooms across the country. Such changes aren't incidental--they're exactly what this policy and NCLB hope to produce."

Others echo Voke's concerns about negating the freedom and individual character of professors and institutions. "We will get a meaningless outcome at a great cost," said David L. Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, to Inside Higher Ed. "Trying to create an über-instrument where we simply draw the line and say, 'This is the measurement,' will be a grave disservice to the individuals, the institutions and the country."

Despite these concerns, one standardized test is already in use at over forty institutions: the Collegiate Learning Assessment, or CLA. The test attempts to measure skills in critical thinking, analytic reasoning and written communication through a combination of "performance tasks" and writing prompts. Some administrators, such as Geri H. Malandra, associate vice chancellor for institutional planning and accountability at the University of Texas System, are enthusiastic about the test.

"We believe that the CLA provides a robust and flexible tool that allows higher education institutions of a very wide range of characteristics to assess specific kinds of cognitive outcomes among students," Malandra said, "the kinds of macrolevel changes in students that you hope will happen over the course of a four-year education."

Even some supporters of the CLA, however, feel that it's not a perfect solution. Carol Geary Schneider of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, who sits on the Council for Aid to Education's board, stated to Inside Higher Ed, "I like the CLA, I think it's a breakthrough, but it is by no means the solution."

Voke worries that most education reformers are too business-oriented, and that students' abilities to get jobs after graduation may be the reformers' sole concern. This could potentially refocus the entire purpose colleges adapt.

"I worry that we would lose sight of the larger mission of education of the whole person," Voke said, "someone who can flourish as a full human being" - in other words, someone who is not simply prepared to take a test.

Ponder is assisstant editor and an American studies junior.