Kelsey Volkmann, The Examiner
2007-10-23 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

BALTIMORE -

The federal government wants to test college students to ensure universities do a good job teaching, not to create a higher-education equivalent of the controversial No Child Left Behind Act, a Bush aide told school administrators and professors Monday.

“We need to evaluate colleges, not based on reputations but performance outcomes,” Diane Auer Jones, assistant secretary for post-secondary education, said at an annual conference of the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities in Baltimore.

“We need to be clearer about our universities’ strengths and weaknesses. We are not taking No Child Left Behind to college.”

Some primary and secondary teachers view NCLB testing as an edict that monopolizes their time and detracts from teaching and learning.

University officials worry that the secretary of education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education will propose similar testing at colleges.

While no formal plans have been adopted, the commission’s chairman, Charles Miller, has expressed support for the Collegiate Learning Assessment, an exam students in the University of Texas system must take.

Mandating a common test for college students is a one-size-fits-all measurement that fails to consider the nation’s wide variety of schools, critics say.

“It really misses the complexity of American higher education,” said Tony Pals, spokesman for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

“How do you compare Harvard with a rabbinical school or a performing arts school? Our association does not oppose a choice by universities to use learning measures, but we do oppose the prescription. It should be up to each individual institution to determine how they gauge their students’ learning.”

Jones, a Baltimore County resident, said the Education Department solicited suggestions for how schools can better collect information about student performance and share it with the public.

“We’re not saying everyone choose the same test,” she said.

Some, for instance, might use the Graduate Record Examinations, Jones said, while others might choose portfolios of work or other measures.

Educators at the conference, including Barbara Hewins-Maroney, a professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, continued to have questions about increased accountability at colleges.

If each school uses a different standard, she asked, what comparisons could be made?

kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com