SLOs: “We think this is crap,” says the respected conservative scholar

• WE KNOW WHAT’S WRONG, BUT HOW DO WE FIX IT?
In this mornings’s Inside Higher Ed:

Who Leads?:

As a group of state leaders at last week’s Education Department summit on higher education began a discussion aimed at identifying the biggest problems facing higher education and potential achievable solutions to them, the session’s moderator asked for a volunteer willing to report back to the larger summit about the fruits of the group’s brainstorming. … So, any volunteers? she asked again. Despite repeated entreaties, no takers emerged. ¶ That small moment provided an apt metaphor for a nagging problem that has underscored much of the nearly three-year conversation surrounding the Bush administration’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education and its campaign to reform American higher education.

IHE explains that, when [Education Secretary] Margaret Spellings appointed her commission in 2005, there was general agreement about the issues in higher ed:

[We must] Significantly increase the number of young Americans and adults who enter and succeed in college, by strengthening the academic preparation of those emerging from the nation’s high schools and expanding the capacity of colleges and universities. Make higher education more affordable, by simplifying the student aid system and making colleges more cost effective. Improve the transparency of higher education, to help policy makers judge the success of postsecondary institutions.

Unfortunately, there’s been little agreement concerning how to solve these problems and what sort of role the Feds should have. And there’s been tremendous resistance to Spelling’s approach. See below.

• SLO ASSESSMENTS “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” FOR COLLEGES? SO SAY SOME CONSERVATIVE SCHOLARS.
Also in Inside Higher Ed: Could the Wrong Assessment Kill the Liberal Arts?:

Unlikely critics gathered Friday to offer strong criticisms of the Education Department’s push for assessment using standardized instruments. Among the critics were Diane Auer Jones, president of the Washington Campus, who recently stepped down from her position as secretary for the Department’s Office of Postsecondary Education. She and others told Congressional staff and university administrators that the liberal arts…are endangered by these proposed federal assessment efforts. Some say these tested assessments apply the approach of No Child Left Behind to postsecondary education, making them both incompatible and counterintuitive.

One of the participants in the gathering was Peter Wood, the executive director of the conservative National Association of Scholars, which has pressed for greater rigor in college curriculum. He is no fan of the DoE’s approach:

The department’s insistence on testing for specific learning outcomes … provide what he called a “severely impoverished view of what higher education should be.” The push to focus on learning outcomes at the college level, according to Wood, are “a distraction and, at worse, a menace” for instructors. Promoting learning outcome assessments, Wood said, assumes all collegiate courses have a specified skill-set of knowledge that can be identified in advance of having these courses instructed.

Wood noted that instructors often simply ignore SLOs:

“We bluff,” Wood said of some instructors who identify quantifiable sets of skills or knowledge, noting that accreditation reviews typically verify only what a college sets out to accomplish. “We think this is nonsense. We think this is crap. We put on paper what we’re going to do and then do something else anyway.”

See also Outcomes Based Assessments are Destructive of a Liberal Education written, it appears, by a conservative.
Making sense of SLOs, a recent DtB post

• MEANWHILE, AT UC:
Also in IHE:

Mark G. Yudof, the new president of the University of California, has announced plans for new accountability reports for campuses and the system he leads. The first report is expected this fall and will cover topics such as affordability, diversity, research successes and graduation rates. In announcing the planned reports, Yudof embraced the kind of language used by Bush administration officials and others who have charged that universities are not nearly accountable enough for performance….

• MICHAEL SAVAGE THINKS AUTISM IS PHONY.
Have you followed the latest Michael Savage controversy? (See Savage Stands by Autistic Remarks.) Evidently, the popular “conservative” radio host believes that autism is a phony condition. Hear him say just that in a clip available here.

It’s one thing to wonder why diagnoses of autism have increased so rapidly. It is at least possible that the condition is over-diagnosed. But only an ignoramus would make the claim that autism is “phony” and that autistic kids are simply stupid or misbehaving.

How can there be so large an audience for this man? What’s the matter with people?

• OBAMA AND MCCAIN COMING TO SADDLEBACK CHURCH.
The New York Times reports that Obama and McCain will attend a forum at Saddleback Church in August (McCain and Obama Agree to Attend Megachurch Forum):

…The Rev. Rick Warren has persuaded the candidates to attend a forum at his Saddleback Church, in Lake Forest, Calif., on Aug. 16. In an interview, Mr. Warren said over the weekend that the presidential candidates would appear together for a moment but that he would interview them in succession at his megachurch….

U.S. SECRETARY OF EDUCATION SPELLINGS ON THE DAILY SHOW (5/07):