1. Challenging the Value of Outcomes Assessment 2. Outcomes assessment criticized for shifting blame, being resource-int

1. Setting Our Own Targets Toño Ramirez Philosophy Instructor SLO Coordinator

2. A “Bureaucratic Behemoth”: Criticisms of outcomes assessment from Molly Worthen • “The movement’s focus on quantifying classroom experience makes it easy to shift blame for student failure wholly onto universities, ignoring deeper socio-economic reasons that cause many students to struggle with college-level work.”

3. A “Bureaucratic Behemoth”: Criticisms of outcomes assessment from Molly Worthen • “The movement’s focus on quantifying classroom experience makes it easy to shift blame for student failure wholly onto universities, ignoring deeper socio-economic reasons that cause many students to struggle with college-level work.” • Implication: It makes us look bad, when the fault really lies elsewhere.

4. A “Bureaucratic Behemoth”: Criticisms of outcomes assessment from Molly Worthen • “The movement’s focus on quantifying classroom experience makes it easy to shift blame for student failure wholly onto universities, ignoring deeper socio-economic reasons that cause many students to struggle with college-level work.”

5. A “Bureaucratic Behemoth”: Criticisms of outcomes assessment from Molly Worthen • “The movement’s focus on quantifying classroom experience makes it easy to shift blame for student failure wholly onto universities, ignoring deeper socio-economic reasons that cause many students to struggle with college-level work.”

6. A “Bureaucratic Behemoth”: Criticisms of outcomes assessment from Molly Worthen • “The movement’s focus on quantifying classroom experience makes it easy to shift blame for student failure wholly onto universities, ignoring deeper socio-economic reasons that cause many students to struggle with college-level work.”

7. A “Bureaucratic Behemoth”: Criticisms of outcomes assessment from Molly Worthen • So universities assemble committees of faculty members, arm them with rubrics and assign them piles of student essays culled from across the school (often called “student products,” as if they are tubes of undergraduate Soylent Green). • Implication: It’s a systematic process, and thus creepy/inappropriate.

8. A “Bureaucratic Behemoth”: Criticisms of outcomes assessment from Molly Worthen • “All this assessing requires a lot of labor, time and cash. Yet even its proponents have struggled to produce much evidence — beyond occasional anecdotes — that it improves student learning.” • Implication: It’s an ineffective waste of resources.

9. A “Bureaucratic Behemoth”: Criticisms of outcomes assessment from Molly Worthen • “Learning assessment has not spurred discussion of the deep structural problems that send so many students to college unprepared to succeed.” • Implication: It’s an ineffective waste of resources.

10. Worthen’s beef with outcomes assessment: A summary • It’s an ineffective waste of resources. • It makes us look bad, when the fault really lies elsewhere. • It’s a systematic process, and thus creepy/inappropriate.

11. Worthen’s beef with outcomes assessment: A summary • It’s an ineffective waste of resources. • It makes us look bad, when the fault really lies elsewhere. ▫ “We do not need administrators to tell us how to measure learning. What we need is for better funded public high schools to do their job. Many of my students do not know basic grammar. They cannot parse a sentence. They don’t read books.” • It’s a systematic process, and thus creepy/inappropriate.

12. Worthen’s beef with outcomes assessment: A summary • It’s an ineffective waste of resources. • It makes us look bad, when the fault really lies elsewhere. • It’s a systematic process, and thus creepy/inappropriate. ▫ “I spent the last several years at my university on this nonsense as an ‘assessment coordinator.’ It was a total waste of more than 40 percent of my time and left me with no time to do research. It was bureaucracy at its worst. It was impossible to implement in any tangible way that would yield meaningful data, and nobody would or could provide guidance. It was a very large reason I retired early.”

13. Our Process: Let’s get the facts straight • It’s an ineffective waste of resources. • It makes us look bad, when the fault really lies elsewhere. • It’s a systematic process, and thus creepy/inappropriate. ▫ We are NOT beholden to any particular method of assessment, or to any particular model of data analysis. ▫ We can tailor our methods to our own curiosities— provided that we ARE curious

14. Our Process: Let’s get the facts straight • It’s an ineffective waste of resources. • It makes us look bad, when the fault really lies elsewhere. ▫ Assessment results are not used punitively ▫ ‘Deficit thinking’ is a well-documented obstacle to the pursuit of equitable opportunities • It’s a systematic process, and thus creepy/inappropriate.

15. Our Process: Let’s get the facts straight • It’s an ineffective waste of resources. ▫ Why, exactly? We are here, now. We can talk, now. • It makes us look bad, when the fault really lies elsewhere. • It’s a systematic process, and thus creepy/inappropriate.

16. I’ll give Worthen this one: • “Without thoughtful reconsideration, learning assessment will continue to devour a lot of money for meager results.” ▫ This is very likely to be true. And it’s why we’re here. So, then: ▫ What do YOU think meaningful outcomes assessment might look like?