The Flexner Report of 1910 was an evaluation of medical education in all programs in Canada and the US–Flexner found medical education wanting and his report lead to significant changes in medical education. But for evaluators, the importance of this report is that it was the genesis of accreditation, a model of evaluation based on expert, professional judgement. The New England Journal of Medicine has published a 100 year retrospective look at medical education and still finds it wanting.
Accreditation has changed over the years, moving away from looking at resources and processes, to a more substantial examination of outcomes. But still, the approach holds too fast to simplistic criteria, and still often looks at things like the ration of support staff to faculty, and the number of hours of clinical work, and the office space allocated. And it is common knowledge that accreditation is as much about feting the site visitors as it is about doing a good job of professional education.
There have been few advances in accreditation as evaluation, perhaps the one exception is TEAC or the Teacher Education Accreditation Council. Unlike other accrediting agencies, TEAC holds programs accountable for what they say they intend to do based on reasonable evidence identified by the program being reviewed, rather than an abstract, general notion of what is considered appropriate professional education and preconceived sorts of evidence.
Now, if only someone would do a 100 year retrospective analysis of accreditation qua evaluation…
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