A Word About Assessment & SAT Scores

Do students achieve the stated learning objectives? What is the percentage of faculty with terminal degrees? What is the acceptance rate? What College Board http://www.collegeboard.com/ tier groups comprise your new class? We see program assessment, classroom assessment and the noted "general" assessment categories. Each provides a set standard of practices and a schedule for reporting results. When navigating the minefield of assessment with an eye that is focused on what's important, how do we determine what counts?

The answer may be an easy, 'it depends on your perspective' but if we had to select one assessment of the higher education experience, what would (or should) it be?

Those of us who work in higher education are aware of the challenges of pleasing multiple constituencies: administrators, trustees, directors, regulators, accreditation commissions, faculty governance, unions and not to mention students and their parents. We debate assessment regularly. This article discussed the issue of making SAT scores optional during the admissions process http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/26/sat. In this case we are assessing the validity and impact on making SAT scores optional as an admissions requirement. This is an important issue to discuss and the early results of this study appear to reveal what we could have guessed: dropping the SAT as an admissions requirement increases diversity and average GPA's of the incoming class and in public institutions results in higher academic achievement. Great! All public institutions should drop the SAT as a requirement. Since public institutions are usually more affordable and dropping this requirement increases diversity and diverse populations tend to have a greater financial need, from an enrollment marketing perspective, this is a win-win-win situation.

The MACCRAY school district in rural Minnesota is making every weekend last three days.

Students who live in Maynard, Clara City and Raymond, Minnesota will not have to go school on Mondays when autumn rolls around. In order to save an estimated $85,000 in administrative and transportation costs, the State Board of Education has decided to compress the school week into four days.

We predict that this will become a common occurrence in the rural areas of the country. Since it is established that $4 a gallon for gas is the standard now instead of a market abberation, the realities of fuel costs are starting to become apparent. 

Also of note in the article is the mention that the four day school week affects the parents, many of whom now have to juggle schedules in order to make sure that their children are supervised on Mondays.


http://www.startribune.com/local/22872239.html?location_refer=Homepage:highlightModules:3