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
(No Transcript)
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
(No Transcript)
24
(No Transcript)
25
(No Transcript)
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