This report highlights the experiences of the 33 members of CIC's (Council of Independent Colleges) Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) Consortium over the past three years as they used the CLA to measure student learning outcomes. The CLA instrument assesses how the college experience helps students develop such "higher order" cognitive skills…

Institutional Effectiveness is a process in which an Institution demonstrates its success in accomplishing its mission and meeting its goals. The Institutional Effectiveness process requires the University to establish outcomes based on its mission. Faculty and administrators align the University mission statement to academic programs and…

Scientifically-based child assessment tools, observation, screening, portfolios, individualized research-based curriculum are now requirements for accreditation by the NAEYC. Head Start has set them as expectations in their performance standards. And increasingly, entities that fund early childhood programs are looking to the use of child…

In the wake of the Spellings Commission, critical choices need to be made about how to refashion institutional assessment practices to respond to new accountability demands, without destroying the essence of accountability as a process of continuous improvement. This article begins with a brief description of the history of assessment, with…

The key drivers of technical and further education (TAFE) institutes' systems for monitoring and evaluating effectiveness and efficiency are accountability for government funding, compliance with legislation and quality assurance requirements. The need to supplement government funding with commercial income requires institutes to understand the…

In 2005, the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) produced a report entitled "A New Look at the Institutional Component of Higher Education Finance: A Guide for Evaluating Performance Relative to Financial Resources." It gauged the performance of state public postsecondary education sectors (i.e. research, bachelor's…

The schools' inspection regime in England has shifted in recent decades from a focus on external assessment of practice to a scrutiny of external data and schools' self-evaluation, culminating in a normative system based on self-surveillance by school senior managers. This model of inspection (characteristic of the performative approach to public…

As many experienced board members know, given the national debate in recent years over institutional accountability, learning--the heart of the educational enterprise--is often treated as a by-product of other more measurable processes. The fact is, no matter how excellent the curricula, no matter how stellar the faculty, no matter how talented…

I explore the relationship between education policy and identity by looking at how the learning subject is constituted at national education policy level. The notion of the "ideal South African learning subject", which I suggest, foregrounds national education policy discourse, contradicts the reality of continued class, race, cultural…

Countries reforming their education systems frequently look outside of their borders for best practice and seek to import policies, practices and programs that appear to incorporate it. In so doing they appear to contribute to the increasing globalization of education. Scholars of comparative education examining this process have focused on the…

The purposes of metaevaluation go beyond the traditional functions of accountability and enhancement. It helps guide strategic organizational change and legitimizes evaluation systems. Metaevaluation results can also be used to create checklists so that the persons responsible for any evaluation can revise, monitor, and control them by themselves.…

Two primary outlets for community psychology research, the "American Journal of Community Psychology" and the "Journal of Community Psychology", were assessed to rank institutions based on publication frequency and scientific influence of publications over a 32-year period. Three specific periods were assessed (1973-1983, 1984-1994, 1995-2004).…

This article examines the nature of international school accreditation and seeks to place it within a wider accreditation framework encompassing both internal and external evaluation. The tensions between the self-study dimension of such accreditation and the use of external standards are explored, and the article concludes by indicating that the…

As usual, "U.S. News & World Report's" annual college rankings offered a heavy dose of deja vu when they arrived last August. In this article, the author discusses the response rate to the magazine's controversial reputational survey. The overall response rate plunged to its lowest level ever, a possible sign that organized criticism of the…

Corporate librarians hold the key to determining new ways to work within their environments. They must drive the process to change the view of the company library as a liability--as overhead, as a cost center, as part of the problem--to the library as a solution center, a necessary investment. For the sixth consecutive year, corporate libraries…