The nationwide push for more accountability, outcomes assessment, and transparency in higher education—taken all together—is one of the most significant developments of the last generation. In an effort to meet this objective, policy makers and educational reformers typically assert that student learning can, and should be, precisely identified and quantified. This process, the argument goes, will foster more meaningful and open comparisons—of schools, demographic cohorts, pedagogical techniques, and teachers. Decisions should be "data-driven," as the saying goes.
Leaving aside for now the dilemma of defining an "educated mind" in the first place, an important component of current educational reform is to allow the public (with students and parents as customers in the educational marketplace) to make rational choices based on a free flow of information.
Here in Texas, the recent passage of HB 2504, which requires colleges and universities to formulate a plan to post syllabi and student evaluations of faculty online, may provide a case in point. (Background information about HB 2504 is available here.) The language providing for online student evaluations was inserted during the last days of the Session without an opportunity for public hearing.
The law, according to its sponsors, will foster more transparency.
However, is transparency ever a bad thing? Dean Dad, a regular anonymous commentator for the "Confession of a Community College Dean" segment of Inside Higher Ed. thinks so. Here's a link to the piece, which is available for free.
The writer believes it's best, first of all, to draw a distinction between assessment and marketing. These are two very different processes. For instance, he speculates, once college leaders realize that all information about their strengths and weaknesses is to be posted online, they might be less likely to ask probing questions or to focus on problems that need improvement. It becomes a PR exercise.
Dean Dad's observation could apply to the implementation of HB 2504.
Faculty members at Texas community colleges report invariably that student evaluations are very useful when scrutinized individually, or in consultation with a supervisor. As colleges and universities develop their plans for online postings, is there a danger that the evaluation instruments will become fuzzy and less specific? For instance, many student evaluations of faculty include a "comments" component. As any supervisor can tell you, these anonymous opinions can be very informative—and sometimes very outrageous. Some are not publishable under current standards of decency and decorum. Does this mean, then, that the opportunity for comment should be purged from such forms entirely? If so, the usefulness of student evaluations may diminish.
Which is probably not what the sponsors of HB 2504 had in mind.
Comments