Category Archives: Accountability

California Community Colleges May Adopt Common Assessment by 2010

Posted on November 19, 2009 by | Comments Off on California Community Colleges May Adopt Common Assessment by 2010

The Chronicle: California Community Colleges May Adopt Common Assessment by 2010

Community colleges in California will be encouraged to offer a common assessment in mathematics and English for incoming students starting in the fall of 2010, the system’s chancellor, Jack Scott, said today at a news conference. The system’s 110 campuses have long offered dozens of incompatible assessment tests, which Mr. Scott said had wasted money, muddied transfer pathways to universities, and made it more difficult for students to move from one community college to another.

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Governors’ Association Urges More Accountability in Academic Performance

Posted on November 10, 2009 by | Comments Off on Governors’ Association Urges More Accountability in Academic Performance

The Chronicle: Governors’ Association Urges More Accountability in Academic Performance

The National Governors Association is urging states to measure student achievement more thoroughly in order to improve academic performance, ensure that tax dollars are being used wisely, and foster economic growth. An issue brief, released today by the bipartisan group, which represents the nation’s chief state executives, calls on states to go beyond federal reporting requirements for graduation rates, for instance, and include degree attainment by part-time students and those who transfer among community colleges.

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Montgomery College, in Maryland, Puts President on Leave for Rest of His Term

Posted on September 7, 2009 by | Comments Off on Montgomery College, in Maryland, Puts President on Leave for Rest of His Term

The Chronicle: Montgomery College, in Maryland, Puts President on Leave for Rest of His Term
Maryland’s Montgomery College Puts President on Leave

Brian K. Johnson, president of Montgomery College, has been placed on administrative leave with pay, the chairman of the Maryland institution’s Board of Trustees said after emerging from a four-hour closed-door meeting of the board on Thursday night.

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India: Education official, middleman arrested

Posted on July 17, 2009 by | Comments Off on India: Education official, middleman arrested

Hindustan Times: Education official, middleman arrested

In the first move to clean up higher education, a senior official of India’s technical-education regulator was arrested on Thursday in New Delhi and several others charged with accepting bribes from private-college managements, after raids in Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bhopal.

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Posted in Accountability, Administration, Ethics

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Measuring the Dreaded ‘P’ Word

Posted on July 17, 2009 by | Comments Off on Measuring the Dreaded ‘P’ Word

Inside Higher Ed; Measuring the Dreaded ‘P’ Word

Continuing its efforts to identify and encourage new ways to measure higher education performance, the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity and Accountability issued a new report Thursday designed to gauge how successfully public colleges in various states use their available resources to produce graduates with credentials that are valued in their markets. The report, “The Dreaded ‘P’ Word: An Examination of Productivity in Public Postsecondary Education,” also ranks states using the measure.

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Posted in Accountability, Administration, Corporate University

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New Study Takes a Crack at Measuring Higher Education’s Productivity

Posted on July 17, 2009 by | Comments Off on New Study Takes a Crack at Measuring Higher Education’s Productivity

The Chronicle News Blog: New Study Takes a Crack at Measuring Higher Education’s Productivity

Measuring value and productivity in higher education can be a complex and controversial topic: Lawmakers, taxpayers, and people paying tuition want to get the most for their money, while college administrators and faculty members argue that the quality of their educational product is directly tied to the amount of public support they receive.

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College athletic departments use vague law to keep public records from being seen

Posted on June 3, 2009 by | Comments Off on College athletic departments use vague law to keep public records from being seen

Columbus Dispatch: Secrecy 101
College athletic departments use vague law to keep public records from being seen

Universities blocked out large sections of files requested by The Dispatch, incuding news releases from New Mexico, a summer-job report from Ohio State and a 2007 national championship game ticket list from OSU.

Across the country, many major-college athletic departments keep their NCAA troubles secret behind a thick veil of black ink or Wite-Out.

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Do College Rankings Belong on the Sports Pages?

Posted on May 19, 2009 by | Comments Off on Do College Rankings Belong on the Sports Pages?

The Chronicle News Blog: Do College Rankings Belong on the Sports Pages?

Washington — College rankings may not be to blame for the decline in the quality of higher education in the United States, but they are doing little, if anything, to help. That was the nearly unanimous consensus of a panel of speakers from across the ideological spectrum who gathered here today at the American Enterprise Institute to discuss how the nation assesses the performance of its colleges.

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Posted in Academics, Accountability, Corporate University

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Canada: Native education program gets an F: audit

Posted on March 19, 2009 by | 1 comment

Chronicle Journal: Native education program gets an F: audit

OTTAWA – The Harper government flunks accountability, says a new audit that blasts lax controls over almost $300 million meant to help native students get to college or university.

The bruising report calls for tighter tracking of that cash and says funding has not kept pace with tuition hikes.

Ottawa does not trace how many native kids beat staggering odds to make it through high school only to be denied help to go on.

It spent $292 million last year to help 23,000 students – that’s down from a high of 27,000 funding recipients a decade ago.

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Higher-Education Reform Panel in India Says Universities Need More Autonomy

Posted on March 9, 2009 by | Comments Off on Higher-Education Reform Panel in India Says Universities Need More Autonomy

The Times of India: Higher education panel slams ‘mindless’ HRD

MUMBAI: Early last month, the Yash Pal committee was informed that the Union HRD ministry had whittled down its position to an advisory body, but members stuck to their recommendations and the original terms of reference.

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Assessing Assessment

Posted on January 23, 2009 by | Comments Off on Assessing Assessment

Inside Higher Ed: Assessing Assessment

SEATTLE — Margaret Spellings may be secretary emerita, but the assessment and accountability movements— which of course predated her commission — are alive and well. And if colleges think they can ignore these pushes, they are seriously misguided. That was the message behind speeches and the announcement of two new national education campaigns here Thursday at the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

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Liberal-Education Group Discourages Reliance on Tests to Hold Colleges Accountable

Posted on January 12, 2009 by | Comments Off on Liberal-Education Group Discourages Reliance on Tests to Hold Colleges Accountable

The Chronicle News Blog: Liberal-Education Group Discourages Reliance on Tests to Hold Colleges Accountable

The Association of American Colleges and Universities today released a statement arguing that efforts to hold colleges accountable should measure student learning broadly, and not rely too heavily on standardized tests.

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British Columbia: ‘UN’ university should be cut off, professors say

Posted on November 7, 2008 by | Comments Off on British Columbia: ‘UN’ university should be cut off, professors say

National Post: ‘UN’ university should be cut off, professors say

‘Something smells’; World Trade school an ’embarrassment’ to British Columbia

A private university erroneously touted by the B. C. government as a “United Nations mechanism” is really a failed experiment that should be terminated before causing the province “further embarrassment,” says a group that represents B. C.’s public university professors.

“Something smells” at World Trade University, declares Robert Clift, executive director of the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of B. C. (CUFABC). Yesterday marked the third anniversary of special provincial legislation giving the institution university degree-granting status, yet the school still has not opened for business and its founder and chief executive is rarely heard from any more.

Based on an old military base in Chilliwack, an hour’s drive southeast of Vancouver, WTU is the brainchild of a jet-setting, hyperbolic Bangladeshi-Canadian. Sujit Chowdhury has told legislative committees and media that, among other things, his school has campuses around the world, that it is formally tied to global institutions and that he has been nominated for a knighthood.

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Posted in Accountability, Government

UK: Universities reject more scrutiny

Posted on November 7, 2008 by | Comments Off on UK: Universities reject more scrutiny

BBC: Universities reject more scrutiny

University chiefs say that there is no need for any further scrutiny

Universities have defended the effectiveness of self-regulation in maintaining standards – rejecting any need for further external scrutiny.

Baroness Warwick, chief executive of Universities UK, said that this did not mean there was a “free for all”.

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Posted in Accountability, Governance

Kentucky: Ramsey says U of L broke no rules on disputed doctorate because “rare exception” policy was created in 2007; Doctorate in question awarded in 2004

Posted on September 13, 2008 by | Comments Off on Kentucky: Ramsey says U of L broke no rules on disputed doctorate because “rare exception” policy was created in 2007; Doctorate in question awarded in 2004

Courier-Journal: Ramsey says U of L broke no rules on disputed doctorate

Spokesmen: He was only addressing part of inquiry

In a letter to the University of Louisville’s accrediting agency, President James Ramsey said yesterday that “we do not believe any violations have occurred” in awarding a doctoral degree to a student who was enrolled at the university for only one semester.

But in interviews, spokesmen for the university said Ramsey was referring only to possible violations of the accrediting agency’s residency requirement for doctoral candidates.

But in interviews, spokesmen for the university said Ramsey was referring only to possible violations of the accrediting agency’s residency requirement for doctoral candidates.

They said the committee Ramsey appointed Wednesday still will investigate other aspects of the degree — including whether then-dean Robert Felner had a conflict of interest in supervising the doctoral candidate, who had given his research center a $375,000 contract.

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Posted in Academics, Accountability

ETS loses contract after failure to deliver SATs test results on time

Posted on August 15, 2008 by | Comments Off on ETS loses contract after failure to deliver SATs test results on time

The Times (London): ETS loses contract after failure to deliver SATs test results on time
Joanna Sugdenhttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article4538892.ece

The company responsible for failing to deliver millions of school exam results on time this summer has been sacked.

Teachers leaders said that the decision, which comes after a summer of delays in test results, was inevitable and called on the Government to scrap national tests for next year in an overhaul of the entire system.

ETS Europe had a five-year £156 million contract to carry out marking of the national tests for 11 to 14-year-olds, but today it was dissolved.

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Maryland: Coppin professors lash out

Posted on June 13, 2008 by | Comments Off on Maryland: Coppin professors lash out

Baltimore Sun: Coppin professors lash out

But criticism is purged from accreditation report

As part of their school’s formal case for reaccreditation, Coppin State University officials watered down a faculty- and staff-written report critical of the college’s treatment of its core academic staff, records show.

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Posted in Accountability, Faculty

California: Bill seeks report cards on higher education

Posted on June 13, 2008 by | Comments Off on California: Bill seeks report cards on higher education

San Francisco Chronicle: Bill seeks report cards on higher education

A key state legislator is pushing for an accountability system that would help parents and taxpayers tell whether the state’s colleges and universities are delivering on their promise of a quality education.

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State High-School Exit Tests Do Not Improve Academic Achievement, Study Finds

Posted on May 13, 2008 by | Comments Off on State High-School Exit Tests Do Not Improve Academic Achievement, Study Finds

The Chronicle: State High-School Exit Tests Do Not Improve Academic Achievement, Study Finds

A new study has found that state requirements that students pass exit tests to graduate from high school appear to do nothing to improve achievement on federal reading and mathematics tests.

The study, the results of which have been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in the journal Educational Policy, compared the reading and math scores of children in states with exit examinations to the scores of children elsewhere in the United States and concluded that there was no evidence that requiring passage of such tests improved academic achievement in those subject areas.

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A Test the Education Department Doesn’t Love

Posted on April 21, 2008 by | Comments Off on A Test the Education Department Doesn’t Love

Inside Higher Ed: A Test the Education Department Doesn’t Love

In many quarters within American higher education, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is viewed (unfairly, she and her supporters would argue) as an almost single-minded advocate for more, and more standardized, measurement of how well college students are educated. The position of Spellings’s Education Department on testing has made her unpopular with many college leaders and faculty members in the United States.

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Posted in Accountability