This paper is the fourth revision of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) paper on equivalency adopted by the delegates to the plenary session in Fall 1989. Previous revisions were adopted in 1999, 2006, and 2016. The original paper was intended to help local academic senates develop policies and procedures in response to…

As the higher education leadership landscape has become more complicated, particularly through retirements, there is greater difficulty in finding the best candidates for non-presidential positions, which has resulted in more facilitated searches. Candidate recruitment is the most visible work, but equally important is managing, enhancing, and…

In this webinar, Dr. Edward Roeber, Assessment Director for the Michigan Assessment Consortium, addressed what educators need to know about formative, summative, and interim assessments and how each functions in a coherent assessment system. This Q&A addressed the questions participants had for Dr. Roeber following the webinar. The webinar…

Defending emotions is neither banal nor senselessness. It is not falling into sentimentality (Camps, 2011, p. 33) would say. Emotions take shape within human actions and imply leadership, not just in a purely mechanistic sense, but in the sense set out by Sartre (1973), dealing with the way the individual understands emotions and the role they…

To better understand the influence of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) competencies on practice since their formation, six community college chief executive officers (five presidents and one chancellor) were asked to reflect upon the enduring relevance of the competencies. They were also asked specifically how they acquired…

In this paper, I develop a critique of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)-based lifelong learning policy discourse with a particular focus on "key competencies" (KCs) and its equity implications for school curricular policies. First, I review the discussion of KCs in the writings by the OECD-affiliated…

This essay explores the contributions of student affairs professionals to religious and secular pluralism and interfaith cooperation in higher education. The authors propose a preliminary model of competencies necessary for student affairs professionals to engage in conversations effectively with students about issues of religion, spirituality,…

This monograph has grown out of a series of discussions and a six-month period of reading and reflecting on the literature which were initiated by Fritz Mosher's suggestions to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to examine the "standards" question. Conversations with Mosher himself and the staff of NAEP have been most…

Disability support personnel within Australia include those who provide direct and daily care to people with intellectual disability (ID), largely in residential and day service contexts. Their roles and responsibilities are many, calling on far ranging skills. Yet, they come to these roles with levels of education that range from incomplete high…

In "Elementary School Mathematics Priorities," Wilson (2009 [this issue]) presents a list of five core concepts that students should master in elementary school so that they can succeed in algebra. As researchers in mathematics education, the authors enthusiastically endorse Wilson's recommendations. Learning algebra is key to further study of…

It is shown that the Angoff and bookmarking cut scores are examples of true score equating that in the real world must be applied to observed scores. In the context of defining minimal competency, the percentage "failed" by such methods is a function of the length of the measuring instrument. It is argued that this length is largely…

Expresses the serious problems inherent in minimum competency testing, particularly as it is used in assessing student writing ability. (RL)

The article reviews minimum competency requirements for handicapped students in the 39 states which have set minimum standards indicating a range from total exclusion of handicapped students from the testing program to required participation with no modifications. It is suggested that separate minimum standards be defined for special education…

Raises three issues of competency testing: how competency is to be defined, tested, and paid for. (JL)

Contends that the imposition of competence standards might compensate for the climate of permissiveness that allowed students to graduate from high school without having developed high school level skills in the basics. (DD)