In this chapter, we focus on an institutional case study of Paul Quinn College, a historically Black college, to explore how its adoption of a "new urban college model" provides innovative ways of assessing institutions' success in supporting their students.

At this transformational moment in history, this report takes time to center Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) within the assessment realm; from teaching and learning experiences to internal and external mandates, from accreditation requirements to advocacy and agency. This work requires more than a statement composed of…

'School league tables' summarising the performance of secondary schools in England have been published annually since 1992. Although now a firmly established feature of the educational landscape, they have attracted criticism from those who point to their unintended negative consequences. These include 'teaching to the test', entering pupils for…

Holistic student learning has been a hallmark of U.S. higher education since the early 20th Century when the American Council on Education (ACE) published the "Student Personnel Point of View" (SPPV) in 1937, reaffirming time and again that learning happens both inside and outside of the classroom. To consider students' holistic…

In March and April 2021, conservative education leaders representing state education agencies, charter networks, foundations, think tanks, research organizations, testing companies, universities and teachers convened in a private, three-part working group to discuss the future of state assessment and accountability systems. This brief highlights…

Purpose: Successful implementation of Health Promoting Schools (HPS) depends on putting the model in the schools' context for both health improvement and school improvement. HPS can only be effective if the change can be sustained over an extended duration. The purpose of this paper is to discuss development of the HPS process by University…

In spring 2013, the Washington Center administered a national survey to find what campuses assessed when they assessed their learning community programs, how they assessed those outcomes, and what they did with the results. Sixty-six campuses responded to the survey. Most campuses assess at least one measure of student success (pass rates, course…

Despite questions about validity and reliability, the use of value-added estimation methods has moved beyond academic research into state accountability systems for teachers, schools, and teacher preparation programs (TPPs). Prior studies of value-added measurement for TPPs test the validity of researcher-designed models and find that measuring…

The purpose of this study was to examine the efficiency of Texas public school districts through Data Envelopment Analysis. The Data Envelopment Analysis estimation method calculated and assigned efficiency scores to each of the 931 school districts considered in the study. The efficiency scores were utilized in two phases. First, the school…

This brief discusses the Massachusetts' Essential Conditions for School Effectiveness. The conditions articulate the key elements of school governance, curriculum, instruction, finance, training and student services--elements that the State believes every school needs to have in place for all students to succeed. For Massachusetts, these…

The primary users of the current college ranking systems do not seem to be high-school students and families, but college presidents, board members, and development officers. As structured, the commercial ranking systems imply a precision that is not corroborated by research on what matters in college, nor can college quality be accurately summed…

In this paper we consider the challenges involved in evaluating teacher preparation programs when controlling for school contextual bias. Including school fixed effects in the achievement models used to estimate preparation program effects controls for school environment by relying on differences among student outcomes within the same schools to…

This qualitative study identified the best practices utilized by community colleges to achieve systemic and cultural agreement in support of the integration of institutional effectiveness measures (key performance indicators) to inform decision making. In addition, the study identifies the relevant motives, organizational structure, and processes…

Student success is at the heart of both institutional effectiveness and the community college mission, yet measuring such success at community colleges is problematic. This article highlights three efforts to grapple with this problem--a multistate work group of system- and state-level policymakers to create an improved set of student success…

Assessment of educational effectiveness provides vitally important feedback to Institutions of Higher Education. It also provides important information to external stakeholders, such as prospective students, parents, governmental and local regulatory entities, professional and regional accrediting organizations, and representatives of the…