Carnegie Calls for More Useful Assessments at Community Colleges

Stanford, Calif.—A new report from The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching calls for community colleges to develop richer, more revealing measures of student learning—beyond the traditional indices of grades, retention, persistence and degree attainment.

Toward Informative Assessment and a Culture of Evidence is the final publication from Strengthening Pre-collegiate Education in Community Colleges (SPECC), a three-year, action research project that explored the teaching and learning challenges in basic skills math and English at 11 California community colleges. A partnership of the Carnegie Foundation and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, SPECC asked participating faculty to use innovative forms of assessment, such as common exams and think aloud protocols (audio and video records of students verbalizing their thought process while trying to read texts or solve problems) to better track student learning and to improve instruction.

Working with their campus's institutional research offices, the faculty also explored different approaches to data, including collecting it directly from students through interviews, focus groups, special surveys and diagnostic tests; and faculty considered actual growth over a course through "value added" or pre-post assessments.

Click here to read the full article. Source: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching