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Standardized Tests in college

By: pangsiyan

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When U.S. Secretary ‘of Education Margaret Spellings suggested a year ago that American colleges and universities consider using standardized tests to measure performance, the outrage^ in academia was loud. Critics worry that No Child Left Behind type accountability1 measures are being unleashed3 on college campuses.

But now some influential college leaders seem to have had a change of heart. This week, two big consortiums of public colleges, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, and the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC), agreed to launch a Web site that will allow applicants, their parents and legislators to compare undergraduate experiences, costs and eventually test scores that measure "student outcomes".

Participating colleges will _begin administering. JJtandardjzed Jests Jo see how much test scores measuring writing, analytic ability _and critical thinking^grow^up_for students between freshman and senior^ year. The site, called College Portrait, is still being tested but a preliminary version is now online. There are about 550 member schools in the two groups. So far, about half have agreed to become part of College Portrait,

The consortiums are reacting, at least in part, to Spelling’s call for colleges to be transparent about their costs and what students were getting in exchange for their tuition. She challenged institutions to devise new measure — namely to start using standardized tests — to figure out how much students were learning and to make public information about how graduates fared4 in the job market or in graduate school.

"The Spellings Commission was a catalyst5," says David Shulenburger, vice president for academic affairs at NASULGC. "It pointed us in a direction that we didn' t want to go — which was manure testing. But most schools have come to understand what the test is and the need for it."

Over the next year, participating institutions will provide information on a three-page template1 that de-scribes degree offerings and class profiles — details that can be found in almost any college guide. The institutions will also begin adding details about expenses, including a college-cost calculator, so students can compare the cost of a four-year degree from one school with another. The participating schools will also provide results from student surveys about campus life as well as scholastic and intellectual engagement.

But perhaps the biggest shift is that College Portrait institutions have four years to begin administering standardized tests to freshman and seniors. At the end of four years, the results of those tests will be made public.

University of California president Robert C. Dynes said in a letter to NASULGC that he would not be providing this kind of information for his nine campuses because the University has concluded that using standardized tests on an institutional level as measures of student learning 1) fails to recognize the diversity, breadth, and depth of discipline-specific knowledge and learning that takes place in colleges and universities today and 2) usurps* the role of campus and departmental faculty in assessing student learning. The University of California system intends to set up its own database.

Private universities, which rely less on public funding, aren't rushing to embrace standardized tests for their students either.

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