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Chapter VI. Academic Accountability: What is to be done

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Title: Chapter VI. Academic Accountability: What is to be done


1
Chapter VI.Academic Accountability What is to
be done?
  • By Christopher J. Lucas

2
  • Presented By
  • Susan B. Espinoza
  • Cynthia C. Price
  • Sonya Plata

3
Learning Objectives
  • To define accountability in the context of higher
    education.
  • To discuss issues and concerns regarding
    academic accountability.
  • To outline examples of ways educators can measure
    success
  • To discuss policy recommendations for the future.

4
An Erosion of Public Confidence
  • In 1985 a National Assessment of Educational
    Progress (NAEP) found that roughly half of the
    twenty-one to twenty- five year old college
    graduates surveyed could not summarize the
    content of a newspaper article, calculate a ten
    percent tip for lunch, or interpret a bus
    schedule. (Finn, 1989)
  • NAEP findings were consistent with almost every
    recent attempt before and since to inventory the
    intellectual performance levels of college
    students across the country.

5
An Erosion of Public Confidence
  • This type of data continues to reveal that a
    certain number of todays graduates are not
    meeting the basic knowledge across the
    disciplines and seem to posses little
    intellectual curiosity or appreciation for
    current events or public affairs.
  • The chronic complaint from employers in business
    and industry is that one in every eight college
    graduates cannot perform even at a secondary
    school level.
  • American colleges are no longer reliable or
    guarantee basic literacy.
  • Opinion polls indicate that the public feels that
    higher education is still greatly valued and is
    assumed as an economic benefit.

6
Accountability
  • Had been thought of mainly in terms of financial
    stewardship, by how well and in how much detail
    an academic institution could document how
    revenues were spent as functions of, for example
  • faculty-student ratios
  • numbers of academic credit hours generated
  • instructional programs sustained
  • total numbers of degrees awarded
  • (Crisis in the Academy Rethinking Higher
    Education in America, 1998)

7
Why is accountability an Issue?
  • Open Admissions starting in 60s has created
    problems with underpreparedness and achievement
    during college
  • HE accused of lowering standards in the name of
    access
  • Remedial education at HE level expensive (from
    one in five needing remediation to three in five)
  • Public Ambivalence BA is important for getting
    jobs, but does not have former status
  • Faculty criticized for too much autonomy, poor
    teaching, too much research, falsified research,
    too highly paid at state schools
  • Athletics priority over Academics?
  • Unnecessary growth
  • Cost, Cost, Cost

8
What the public wants from higher education is
educational quality, institutional efficiency ,
reinforcement of fundamental societal values, and
a fair price tag.
Why is accountability an Issue? (Cont.)
  • HE facilities cost far more to obtain and
    maintain (just like housing)
  • Less governmental resources, more demands on HE
    to fulfill multiple roles
  • Taxing entities want proof of results for
    expenditures
  • Faculty have heads in the ground, expect things
    to remain the same, lazy posture of denial?

9
What do they want to know?
  • ..whether students have acquired higher level
    cognitive skills and specific skills competencies
    while completing a baccalaureate
  • States no longer want to pay up based on
    enrollment only, want proof of result
  • HE seen as business with customers who need
    return on investment
  • Quality assurance, total quality management
  • Skills have been measured by graduation rates,
    licensure rates, cost per credit hour, enrollment
    rates, faculty/students ratio
  • Value-added pre- and post college career
    testing has not caught on
  • Faculty/Administrators reject notion of Academia
    as business that must show results

10
State government and Statewide HE governing
bodies (such as THECB) have failed to
achieve/enforce allocation of programs and
resources Duplication of programs occurs between
schools for political reasons, to accommodate
special interests or because more is always
better, and the notion that every student should
have access to every field at every institution
  • Lucas believes that
  • public colleges should function as elements of
    an ecologically balanced interdependent whole.
  • He also believes that CCs should only do
    community, adult and vocational, and not serve as
    feeders. (!?) Universities have too many
    questionable graduate and doctoral programs.

11
Academic Freedom Vs. Faculty Assessment The Ideal
(?) of Participatory Governance
  • Faculty prize autonomy (academic freedom), want
    enough power to make sure they can continue to do
    things the way they want to but not the
    responsibility for administration
  • Faculty want involvement in establishing Mission,
    Goals and Objectives and making up budget, but
    dont want to be held accountable for educational
    outcomes/results
  • P.C. versus Academic Freedom the right not to
    be offended

12
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13
Accountability and the General Ed Core
  • Accrediting and governing HE bodies have started
    to ask for job placement rates does this
    contradict their commitment to a general ed core
    for all?
  • The accidental array or grab bag of courses
    Lucas describes has changed just since the
    publication of this book core courses and
    core competencies are now more emphasized in
    accreditation fewer people can graduate from
    college without math or history
  • Lucas is in favor of knowledge/competency testing
    at mid- Junior year, along with more stringent
    grading and an integrative capstone

14
Instructional Innovation
  • Credit by examination for life experience
  • Challenge to create a Learning Community
    (Socrates Agora) using the new electronic
    instructional innovations?
  • Lucas worries about using technology to extend
    teachers to more students http//www.accd.edu/sac/
    online/html/courses/courses.htm
  • We have pretty much figured out that online
    teaching doesnt make it easier to reach more
    students, but does work for students that are
    physically separated, if they are prepared to
    adapt to the methodology
  • http//www.accd.edu/sac/iic/int-basd/inetbased.asp

15
Prepared by SAC Institutional Research
16
Prepared by SAC Institutional Research
17
Prepared by SAC Institutional Research
18
Prepared by SAC Institutional Research
19
External Accreditation
  • Accreditors can be national, regional or state
    accrediting bodies, or profession-based
    accreditors (nursing, other medical, SAC also has
    Theater, Music and Journalist accreditations) for
    individual programs.
  • Six regional bodies look at HE institutions as a
    whole ours is the Southern Association of
    Colleges and Schools (SACS)
  • Accreditation lengthy, complex and costly the
    more local, the more incestuous and self-serving
    it can be faculty can use it to get more
    resources
  • Lucas believes it should be restricted to
    post-baccalaureate calls it piecemeal - not
    necessary or useful allow individual IHEs to
    self-monitor
  • For SAC, the process has cemented a new culture
    of evidence there are substantive changes in the
    way we are doing business, a true chance for
    improvement in teaching and learning.
  • Accreditation can awaken faculty and
    administrators to problems, inefficiencies and
    ways in which they are not accomplishing their
    mission, and re-focus them on the task of
    teaching.

20
Academic Standards and Curriculum Alignment with
High School
  • If Colleges are to be held accountable for
    output, can we control the input (skills of
    incoming freshmen/high school preparation)?
  • The chasm between HS and College has widened and
    narrowed throughout American HE history,
    remediation has gone in and out of fashion
  • Colleges tried sending faculty to HS to help
    align curricula created HS accreditation by
    turn of the century (1890s), then Carnegie Units
  • Chasm in preparation mirrored by chasm of
    communication between secondary and post
    secondary faculty, despite recognition of
    uncontrolled institutional peristalsis (passing
    students who are not prepared)
  • Lucas says Colleges should
  • Establish clear standards for college admission,
    what HS grads should know
  • Make HS accountable for input

21
The Status of Teacher Preparation
  • Teacher Preparation programs criticized for too
    much pedagogy, too little subject content great
    technique, no knowledge TP courses of dubious
    utility and vacuous content.
  • Most programs require almost all of a major in
    the content area however.
  • Rita Kramer claims pedagogy can be done in a
    summer
  • Some feel TP should be abolished in favor of
    general liberal arts and subject content, and
    field experience with supervision
  • Lucas feels that school conditions and a tendency
    to teach as one has been taught are the real
    culprits in poor elementary and secondary
    teaching ALL professionals should get liberal
    arts core, including teachers.

22
Measuring Faculty Performance
  • Reasons for assessment of individual faculty
    include telling outsiders what faculty are doing,
    contract renewal, tenure, promotions, salary
    adjustments.
  • University faculty measured by
  • 1) research grants
  • 2) publications
  • 3) teaching 2-Year faculty by teaching alone
  • How are faculty measured?
  • Grants how many and how much
  • Publications peer-reviewed, prestigious,
    original different for science and humanities
  • Teaching student course evaluations, peer
    review/classroom observation not used as much,
    portfolios hardly at all.
  • Student advisement, Consulting, Service less
    measured.

23
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26
Should We Assess HE?
  • Lucas feels that assessment is too quantitative
    and that faculty work involves imponderables not
    reducible to any meaningful quantification.
  • He offers no real qualitative alternatives,
    however, and says that the character and
    complexity of HE make it impossible to be
    precise.

27
League for Innovation in the Community College
(2004)
28
What are Learning Outcomes and how do you measure
them?
  • Assessment that truly measures improvement in
    student learning can be time consuming, and
    faculty are afraid of results
  • UGAs John Lough found that Carnegie Professors
    of the Year recognized by the Council for
    Advancement and Support of Education had in
    common that
  • "Their syllabi are written with rather detailed
    precision. Clearly stated course objectives and
    requirements are a hallmark. They employ a
    precise, day-by-day schedule showing specific
    reading assignments as well as all other
    significant requirements and due dates" (Lough,
    in Roth, ed., 1996, 196). http//www.accd.edu/sac/
    iic/STAFF/scaceres/Default.htm

29
Methods for Assessing Institutional, Program
Course Learning Outcomes
  • Traditionally-Used Quantitative Indicators
  • Productive grade rates
  • Retention/Attrition rates
  • Course completion rates for developmental and
    non-developmental courses
  • Graduation rates (degree and certificate)
  • Transfer rates to four-year schools
  • Passing rates on licensure exams
  • Employment rates, especially for
    technical/professional students

30
Qualitative Indicators
  • Alignment of course work with course descriptions
    and syllabi
  • Student satisfaction
  • Employer satisfaction (professional/technical
    programs)
  • Learning portfolios
  • Communication skills (reading, writing, speaking,
    listening)
  • Computation skills (understanding and applying
    mathematical concepts and reasoning, analyzing
    and using numerical data)
  • Community skills (citizenship appreciation of
    diversity and pluralism community, global, and
    environmental awareness)
  • Critical thinking and problem-solving skills
    (analysis, synthesis, evaluation, decision
    making, creative thinking)
  • Information management skills (collecting,
    analyzing, and organizing information from a
    variety of sources)
  • Interpersonal skills (teamwork, relationship
    management, conflict resolution, workplace
    skills)
  • Personal skills (ability to understand and manage
    self, management of change, learning to learn,
    personal responsibility, aesthetic
    responsiveness, wellness)
  • Technology skills (computer literacy, Internet
    skills, retrieving and managing information via
    technology)
  • Some of these indicators were taken from
    Miles Wilson (2004).

31
  • Worksheet Writing an Objective
  • Process (formative) Objectives
  • By what date will you be able to measure the
    results of the activities for this
    objective?______________
  • How many (what percentage) clients/students to be
    affected/served? ________________________
  • What will be done for them/what will they
    receive? _____________________________
  • OPTIONAL - Who will provide the services? (type
    of personnel or organization name)?
    ___________________.
  • Formula By __________________, to provide XXX
    or XX _______________ ______________________
    by_______________.
  • Date number/percen
    t Clients Services to be provided
    Personnel/Organization
  • Examples
  • By September 30, 2006, to provide 800 students
    at risk for drop out with counseling on time and
    anger management by SAC counselors.
  • By June 30, 2006, to conduct a three-day
    workshop for 20 family/community members
    committed to being trained as Community
    Intervention Specialists.
  • Your Process Objective

32
References
  • Allen, Mary J. (2004). Assessing Academic
    Programs in Higher Education. Bolton, Mass
    Anker. Page 7.
  • Community College Survey of Student Engagement,
    http//www.ccsse.org
  • The League for Innovation in the Community
    College http//www.league.org/welcome.htm
  • Miles, C. Wilson, C. (Summer 2004). Learning
    outcomes for the twenty-first century
    Cultivating student success for college and the
    knowledge economy. New Directions for Community
    Colleges, 2004 (126). San Francisco Jossey-Bass.
  • National Survey of Student Engagement,
    http//www.ccsse.org/aboutccsse/relate.cfm
  • San Antonio College Institutional Research
    Office, Analysis of Internet/Video Courses Spring
    2005
  • San Antonio Colleges Self Study (2005)
    http//www.accd.edu/sac/selfstudy
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