Higher Education Standardized Testing???

Saturday, February 11, 2006 at 1:05PM
Justin Bathon

A recent New York Times article reported on the activities of Secretary Spelling's Commission on the Future of Higher Education.
According to the article, the Commission is seriously considering
introducing some form of standardized testing to higher education. Here
is an excerpt:

In an interview, Mr. Miller [Charles Miller - a businessman
and the Chairman of the Commission] said he was not envisioning a
higher
education version of the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires
standardizing testing in public schools and penalizes schools whose
students do not improve. "There is no way you can mandate a single set
of tests, to have a federalist higher education system," he said.

But
he said public reporting of collegiate learning as measured through
testing "would be greatly beneficial to the students, parents,
taxpayers and employers" and that he would like to create a national
database that includes measures of learning. "It would be a shame for
the academy to say, 'We can't tell you what it is; you have to trust
us,' " Mr. Miller said.

Higher education is no stranger to standardized testing, with almost
every university requiring some form of standardized test to gain
entry. However, once students gain admission it is very rare for a
student to be subjected to a standardized test.



More than anything else, this represents a loss of trust in the
academy. Higher education must do a better job of presenting itself to
the general public as a practical and reliable institution for training
our next generations. This should ring as loud as a smoke alarm to our
nations universities: either regain our nations trust or face the same
fate as our K-12 schools.



For more analysis see Andy Rotherham's blog here.

Article originally appeared on The Edjurist - Information on School and Educational Law (http://edjurist.com/).