Testing for college students? (NCLB extended to Universites??)

[rodeodance]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20051208/ts_usatoday/testingforcollegestudents;_ylt=Ar4HxgScon8t0QUZN54PTHas0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-
Testing for college students?

Thu Dec 8, 6:49 AM ET

If Charles Miller has his way, the national panel he leads for Education Secretary Margaret Spellings could be in for some rough going.

The Commission on the Future of Higher Education gathers in Nashville today for the second of five meetings. Miller, whose push for greater accountability in the public schools forged a national movement, is preparing to repeat his efforts in higher ed.

"I think there's some fear when I show up," he says.

Miller may create the same kind of stir he did in Texas when he pressed for testing of college students, similar to the high-stakes testing used in public education. He still thinks it's a good idea. "Student learning is where some of the biggest anxieties are," he says. "There's a lot of skepticism about what's being taught and learned."......

[WindRavenX]

1. dear god NO

:argh:

[MichiganVote]

2. Higher education is not mandated. Won't happen.

[salin]

3. heh -

so now the Us get protection against the problem of rich parents demanding passing grades for sluff off partying students...

and all the "for profit" post-secondary schools and diploma mills (owned by...????) will have to do testing?

I would bet that this reality would anger a lot of big repub $$ folks.

[Scooter24]

4. Why is the government trying to dictate

university curriculum? Each major is tailored specifically to meet the demands of the subject. And every school has different standards for their core curriculum.

So what's the standard for university level knowledge? Algebra? Calculus? Advanced English and Lit.? Biology? Physics? Chemistry?

Thank god I go to a private university.

[megatherium]

8. Accreditation agencies are now requiring universities to spell out

what all their students are supposed to learn. This is called "general education" in university-speak. Universities are supposed to detail what level of math, writing, science, etc all of their students will acquire. Typically, the math requirements are somewhere between algebra and calculus -- many universities are creating special "quantitative literacy" math courses that combine some algebra, probability theory and descriptive statistics. These courses communicate the rough idea of what math is about and also give some useful skills in estimating things and reading statistical arguments in the popular press.

[drhilarius]

5. This is horrendously bad...

not to mention bad form to undercut the authority of the faculty in making decisions regarding curricula. Honestly, I don't think I need the gov. saying we need "equal time" in college science classrooms so that they can teach id or whatever nonsense they see fit.

on edit: my impression of NCLB for lower grades is that it teaches anything but critical thinking skills. NCLB seems to stress memorizing over actual learning (understanding), which is something you don't want in any college class.

[megatherium]

6. "Critical Thinking" is all the rage in higher ed nowadays.

I teach at a regional campus of Indiana University and we have a new critical thinking requirement -- students have to take three courses in it. Of course there is no such course in critical thinking, so there must be a critical thinking component in all kinds of other courses, now. This is foolish, it turns out that all these new critical thinking courses are the same as before. The only difference is that faculty will be asked to "access" critical thinking. How do we do that? No one knows. I am sure as hell not going to serve on that committee when critical thinking assessment results are supposed to be forthcoming!!

[Toots]

11. Sounds like you are being pretty Critical of their way of thinking.

:+

[megatherium]

12. Yes, I am, actually.

In education circles, there's this notion that we should spend our time teaching facts and stuff for students to memorize; that we should instead teach them how to think and be creative. Part of this education movement comes under the heading of "critical thinking". But I'm skeptical of these notions. Not that I want to deaden students' minds with mindless "drill and kill", but the simple truth is that you cannot teach creativity and you cannot teach critical thinking. All you can do is teach actual subjects (chemistry, history, etc) well. The idea being that only if students genuinely master a subject can they be creative and otherwise think like experts do -- you can't isolate "thinking like an expert" from expertise in a subject. In this I am influenced by the writings of E. D. Hirsch (Cultural Literacy and The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them). Hirsch advocates "core curriculums" that stress the actual facts and content of a good education; the things that every well-educated person should be aware of.

[lolly]

13. I disagree

Certain disciplines--rhetoric, as the primary example, but also perhaps ethics and a few others--stress the process of deductive reasoning, using logic/reason to support claims, and demonstrating an understanding of alternative viewpoints.

This is the core of critical thinking, and it can be taught. And, yes, students need to have actual facts and information to practice it, but it doesn't necessarily pop up on its own once the student has a basketfull of facts at his or her disposal.

[megatherium]

15. You have a good point.

In the olden days, rhetoric was one of the subjects everyone was expected to take. But I can't remember if it was in the Trivium or the Quadrivium. <grin> Where I teach, we have now taken to requiring speech of all students. I'm not sure how much logic or rhetoric is in our speech classes. But at my university, the critical thinking courses are all supposed to be taught in various subjects (e.g., lab sciences) -- there are by design no courses in "critical thinking" at my school. My concern is that therefore there will be no systematic treatment of critical thinking, but the show or pretense of assessment of learning of critical thinking. We seem to have rejected the use of the several standard instruments out there for critical thinking. (I've attended workshops on assessment of gen ed and we were told by experienced people that the value of these instruments is not very clear. They must be useful to someone but not us.) I am afraid to say assessment of Gen Ed is a big trainwreck about to happen at my school.

Just teaching facts is of course not enough. Students must be taught how knowledge is established. So science students learn how to do labs; math students learn how to prove theorems. This is why I said I am skeptical of any attempt to prove "critical thinking" in isolation. I once read that there is no single "scientific method"; there are 15 different scientific methods, each being the way you establish a theory in science. E.g., the way you have to verify something in astronomy (where your only connection with the object you are studying is a few photons) is different than paleontology (where you are separated from your subject by hundreds of millions of years). Ultimately I suppose they are all based on the notion that a scientific theory must make testable predictions (predictions that can be verified through observation or experiment). At any rate, I believe that to do science requires good control over the gritty details. Otherwise you'll end up like Phillip Johnson, the Berkeley law professor who wrote Darwin on Trial. He asserted that an outsider can make a good reasoned judgement about evolution, that an outsider skilled in logical argumentation can see the errors of the evolutionists. His book was very influential in evangelical circles; it reads rather convincingly to persons with a superficial knowledge of science. Unfortunately, his book is dreck, scientifically speaking; amateurish and even bordering on dishonest (he argues like a lawyer, pulling quotes out of context, etc).

This post badly needs editing but I don't have time. Cheers!

[lolly]

18. Exactly

I hadn't even though of that, but of course scientific methodology is an excellent example of teaching "critical thinking."

Lack of discussion of the steps taken--in whatever scientific discipline--as one moves from observed /confirmed data to theories explaining why the date behaves why it does probably explains much of the confusion on "Intelligent Design." People seem to think a "theory" is just something some guy sitting in an easy chair cooked up and then wrote some books about; hence, one "theory" is as good as another.

[alcibiades_mystery]

17. Rhetoric is also a "rage," some would say

(Usually annoyed literary scholars who wonder why so many jobs appear in the formerly "service" discipline of composition - God forbid the adjuncts make a claim to intellectual work! Call E.D. Hirsch post haste!)....

[lolly]

19. Ok, "Dialectic," if you will

If rhetoric is the art of persuasion, dialectic is probably more accurately the practice of working towards the best conclusion on an issue. And that is what composition instructors are teaching--for, usually, much less pay than the "intellectuals!"

[alcibiades_mystery]

24. Indeed

I prefer rhetoric to dialectic, and we know from Aristotle that rhetoric is the "counterpart" to dialectic, yes? ;-)

[lolly]

27. Yes, but he dismissed rhetoric

As a cheap trick, a way to bamboozle inferiors by appealing to their emotions and weak sense of logic.

Dialogue/dialectic was more of an informed search for truth between equals.

[alcibiades_mystery]

28. I disagree

While Aristotle certainly valued dialectic over rhetoric, he saw enough need for rhetoric to formalize categories for it and produce, well, the book on Rhetoric. And he does argue for its value in Rhetoric Book I, where he calls rhetoric a useful art and distinmguishes it specifically from sophistry, which is defined as specious argument specifically. Certainly, Plato was more suspicious of rhetoric - at least according to the usual narration of rhetoric in antiquity (and, of course, the usual dialogues in which Soctrates addresses the sophists: Phaedrus, Sophist, Gorgias, the dialogues that feature Protagoras, etc.) - not to mention the history of philosophy, which always defined itself against classical sophism. Aristotle's pupil and successor, Theophrastus, was also interested in rhetoric - particularly stylistics - and his works, judging from their subsequent citations, particulalry in Cicero, were more important in this regard than Aristotle's, though most have been lost. It is one of the great ironies that while Aristotle's Rhetoric is today considered one of the great texts on the subjects in Antiquity, there is good evidence that it was not as important at the time (it was resuscitated in the Middle Ages, goes this argument, under the general spell of Aristotelianism).

[lolly]

31. ahh, my mistake

I was thinking of Plato--can't keep all those ancient Greek philosophers straight.

It's hard, I'm tellin' ya, hard.

Givin' me a headache, you are. Better go have some eggnog and practice my sophistry.

[Baconfoot]

30. Your friendly neighborhood philosophy department actually still existsNT

[alcibiades_mystery]

16. Hirsch is as conservative as the day is long

The notion that critical thinking cannot be assessed (not "accessed," as it were, and your reason for this misspelling is unclear to me) is ridiculous. The problem of the core curriculum is that it is always someone's core curriculum - a dandy project if you're into lockstep social reproduction, and a flaccid one if you're goal is even the slightest move toward innovation or social change.

[megatherium]

23. It's "your goal" not "you're goal", if yer going to be a spelling troll.

<grin> But I blush with embarrassment at my odd misspelling of assessment. I chaired that dang committee at my school, I should know how to spell that.

I am not aware that Hirsch is conservative; he slags certain education people who are on the left but only because he believes their prescriptions lead to more social inequality not less. He also is not against innovative teaching methods (cooperative learning e.g.), but he believes they should be in service of a coherent curriculum. Is he actually a conservative republican or something similar?

I might mention my background. I am an old Reedie. Reed College is very left-wing socially and politically, and I myself am not exactly a reactionary. But Reed has an old-fashioned great books humanities curriculum all students must take. Everyone studied ancient Greece, the Renaissance and the French revolution. Lots of books by dead European males. Lots of 2000-word papers too. A very conservative education in fact. But is this education retrograde or contrary to innovation or social change? I would say absolutely not. First of all, as I mentioned, Reedies tend to be very progressive and highly socially aware. Second of all, Reedies have outstanding success in academia. They tend to become college professors; 25% of them go on to get PhDs (among the very highest rate in the nation). So this is why I like the idea of a core curriculum. I think it should be the prerogative of the faculty of a good school to actually state what they believe a well-educated person should know or be aware of.

But if I thought for an instance that a core curriculum was simply a device to produce generations of docile republicans, I would oppose it too. I just don't think of it that way -- I am of the opinion that knowledge is power, and the more disenfranchised students learn about the world (natural and political) they live in, the more power they will have.

[alcibiades_mystery]

25. I'm not talking about docile republicans

I'm talking about social reproduction, and nothing you say about the Reedies contradicts that. You say "dead European males" in the general reactionary fashion, ("harumph, as if it were a bad thing!"). It's not necessarily a bad thing. Hell, Proust is fucking good, y'know? So's Toni Morrison. A liberal arts education should include Plato, to be sure, and preferably lots of it. And Franz Fanon, and lots of it. The problem - the conservative problem - with Hirsch's version of great books is that the great books are decided in advance, and the power that makes these decisions is hidden - as if the power that historically develops the cultural worth of Shakespeare as compared to the Upanishads is simply a natural development, vested obviously in the object (this is, of course, a somewhat simplified version of Hirsch, but not that simplified). Hirsch upbraids the "left" (whatever that is - haven't seen much of it lately) for "prescriptions" while hiding the prescriptions that already "weigh like a nightmare on the moinds of the living" (to quote another dead European male). That's a problem. And it is precisely there where critical thinking would have to come in if we have any pretensions to education rather than mere social reproduction - a learning factory for sorting the labor power products of capitalist economies. Can't read Aristotle but can do calculus at B+ levels? Off to middle management! You got the symbolic analytic chops to run with Wittgenstein? It's off to graduate school and labor administrative positions for you! And all the while the greats never change - for they reflect the form of society which is to never change (capitalism is the end of history, after all), except maybe by the incremental additions of slightly new greats, ta da, etc.

[Nikia]

22. I thought that was the point of higher education

I went to a private liberal arts college where we discussed ideas, generally took essay tests, and wrote analytical and reserch papers. In humanities and social science classes, we rarely had textbooks. We read writings by scholars, authors of great literature, and other important thinkers of the time. We examined their point of view, why they might believe as they did, and how that was related to other works and events.

[megatherium]

7. This is already going on in higher education!!

It's called "academic assessment". The accreditation agencies are reaming colleges and universities that do not have a convincing academic assessment plan for their school. Such a plan must provide good evidence that learning is taking place in each major as well as in general education (writing skills, math skills). They're turning higher ed into grades 13-16.

There is a great deal of diversity in how schools react to this pressure for academic assessment. Some schools have robust, tightly run plans that rely on national tests. (The company that produces the SAT test produces major field tests especially for assessment, e.g., mathematics, history, etc.) Other schools, like the one I teach at, have poorly-design piecemeal plans that do not produce convincing results but keep everyone occupied with busywork.

I suspect the original impetus for the academic assessment movement was the realization 20 or 30 years ago that grades no longer mean a damn thing. Where I teach in some departments or programs, almost every student gets an A or a B. Average grades are at least one full grade higher nationally than they were two decades ago. You simply cannot tell me students are that much better now -- in fact, I know from experience as a college instructor that they're if anything worse!

[bemildred]

9. So much for the free market of ideas.

It's very amusing to see these social Darwinist types suddenly convert into control freaks when its a matter of bullying the herd rather than coughing up tax dollars for social services. The basic question is who appointed these lackwits to decide what everyone else ought to learn? When did we all become incompetent to decide for ourselves on our schooling?

[AzDar]

10. If the abysmal NCLB were imposed upon colleges 30+ years ago,

would Dumbya have a degree? An MBA? Me thinks not.It's HILARIOUS that the person leading this fiasco is probably the least-intelligent rodent to ever occupy the White House and yet is constantly trying to overhaul education....Too much irony in my diet.

[yurbud]

14. .our K12 system blows, but colleges attract students from whole world...

so lets make college a mind-numbing drone factory too.

This is:

A. another scam to put money in the pocket of a crony

B. an attempt to silence a source of dissent

C. an attempt to make people stupider in general, so they can't fiure out what right is up to.

[superconnected]

21. People with college degrees are most likely to go dem

People with HS diplomas are most likely to vote Rep.
Pretty much shows you the problem the republicans have with college.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

26. Not entirely true.

The two groups of people that voted majority for Kerry were non-college educated people and people with post graduate degrees. The majority of people in between went for Bush

[Bill McBlueState]

20. yeah, you'd better believe it

The UMass faculty union just accepted a deal with Rat Romney where in exchange for getting their professional development money, they agree to make progress in implementing a testing system that has "NCLB" written all over it. It seems to be largely symbolic, but it's a clear indication of what Republicans think of the kids who can't afford private schools.

[bbgrunt]

29. It is the result of the corporate model overtaking

education in general. Corporate models take away decision making from the teachers, professors and people who generally do the work. It de-skills the job and puts all power in the hands of managers. Accountability is the stealth term. People who previously taught at all levels and took pride and ownership in their jobs become bean-counters who must produce the required test results to meet acccountability standards instead of taking joy and pride in their jobs.

This is what has already happened to K-12. They want the same result for colleges.

I joined the profession when the attitude was that administrators were there to serve the faculty interests. Now it is the reverse. Administration managers now control even the curriculum.

The emphasis today on providing accountability is bullshit. There has always been accountability......it was just linked to the reputation of a college name before. Now they want to mass-produce a bunch of robots. In this orwellian world they don't really want critical thinking--they want just the opposite.

[distantearlywarning]

32. Now that's a good idea. NOT!

Yes, let's make college as sickeningly boring as high school was by creating standardized tests that all the professors will teach to. Can you say "rote memorization", boys and girls?