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  • Measuring College Learning Responsibly: Accountability in a New Era
  • Frances K. Stage and Jody Clark Vaisman
Richard Shavelson. Measuring College Learning Responsibly: Accountability in a New Era. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010. 238 pp. Paper: $21.95. ISBN: 978-0-8047-6121-5.

Richard Shavelson’s Measuring College Learning Responsibly: Accountability in a New Era is timely and provocative, given the recent debate in higher education regarding the measure of learning as exemplified in the fall 2011 issue of The Review of Higher Education (e.g., Porter, 2011).

This book should be required reading for scholars and policymakers who are interested in college learning and the nettlesome issues surrounding its measurement. Indeed, Shavelson’s goal in writing the text was to provide policymakers, including those “in the academy, in government, and in the public—with an overview and critical analysis of [End Page 135] options for crafting learning assessment and accountability systems that meet needs for campus teaching and learning improvement and external accountability” (p. x).

Shavelson advocates for measurement of cognitive abilities, knowledge, and skills associated with particular college majors, and for broad competence in individual and social responsibility. He makes a strong case for using the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) to measure a range of cognitive abilities: specifically critical thinking, analytic reasoning, problem solving, and communication. An advantage of the CLA, unlike other measures, is its ability to be used as a teaching task.

The book begins with an overview of the problem in the policy context and argues for the need for better measures of college student learning. Shavelson describes the weaknesses with student learning indicators, most of which are indirect. His description includes indicators related to forms of student progress—such as retention, academic progress, graduation, and employment rates; and also subjective indicators such as student satisfaction, self-assessment of learning, alumni satisfaction, and employer satisfaction. While a few of these measures might be valuable to campuses and accrediting agencies, none can actually be called a measure of learning.

Shavelson next offers a brief history of student learning assessment beginning with the origins of standardized testing in the first part of the 20th century and ending with the development of the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). He provides five characteristics of the CLA that take the assessment instrument beyond any of its standardized predecessors:

  1. 1. Open-ended tasks such as testing critical thinking and reasoning, problem solving, and written communication; realistic work samples; and application to differing academic majors

  2. 2. Use of an interactive internet platform

  3. 3. Random samples of student subsets

  4. 4. Aggregated performance levels by institution, school division, and major

  5. 5. Value-added estimates.

He details the Collegiate Learning Assessment and describes several colleges that do an exemplary job assessing campus learning, then closes by laying out local, national, and global accountability issues as the field moves forward. In his conclusion, Shavelson presents a vision for the future that includes addressing those issues. He advocates for publishing a profile of indicators for both students and institutions based on direct measures of learning tied to the campus curriculum. Finally, Shavelson recommends creating a campus consortium and/or involving discipline-based groups combined with current measures such as evaluation of achievement in capstone projects and portfolios.

A major strength of the volume is the inclusion of chapters that survey the global context for higher education assessment or quality assurance. Shavelson discusses these issues vis-à-vis U.S. accrediting practices and provides a comprehensive review of state processes.

Shavelson’s first chapter, which serves as an introduction lays out an overview of assessment and the current policy context. He appraises the impact of the Spellings report, which shifted the focus of assessment to performance, accountability, transparency, and consumer-oriented evidence-based measures of value-added direct learning. He credits the report for stimulating the creation of the Voluntary System of Accountability College Portrait but cautions against misuse of accountability information, which allows “room for mischief” (p. xi). He makes an excellent case that assessment should serve both formative and summative purposes, providing for institutional improvement and comparative information.

In Chapter 2, Shavelson demonstrates the complexity of defining and measuring learning as distinct from achievement and...

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