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According to Molly Worthen's article in The New York Times, The Misguided Drive to Measure 'Learning Outcomes':
"[...] In 2018, more and more university administrators want campuswide, quantifiable data that reveal what skills students are learning. Their desire has fed a bureaucratic behemoth known as learning outcomes assessment. This elaborate, expensive, supposedly data-driven analysis seeks to translate the subtleties of the classroom into PowerPoint slides packed with statistics — in the hope of deflecting the charge that students pay too much for degrees that mean too little. [...]"
But apparently, there is little to show for tons of money and effort expended to gather data on what students are really learning or adapting curricula to their actual needs.
Mr. Erik Gilbert, a professor of history at Arkansas State University, who has criticized the methods, said to the author: 'Maybe all your students have full-time jobs, but that's something you can't fix, even though that's really the core problem. Instead, you're expected to find some small problem, like students don't understand historical chronology, so you might add a reading to address that. You're supposed to make something up every semester, then write up a narrative.'
As Frank Furedi, an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, told the author about the situation in Britain: 'It's a bit like the old Soviet Union. You speak two languages. You do a performance for the sake of the auditors, but in reality, you carry on.'
As the author puts it: 'If we describe college courses as mainly delivery mechanisms for skills to please a future employer [...] We end up using the language of the capitalist marketplace and speak to our students as customers rather than fellow thinkers. They deserve better. [...] Producing thoughtful, talented graduates is not a matter of focusing on market-ready skills. It's about giving students an opportunity that most of them will never have again in their lives: the chance for serious exploration of complicated intellectual problems, the gift of time in an institution where curiosity and discovery are the source of meaning.'
A lengthy read, but worthwhile. Are we preparing current students better than in the past or are we simply siphoning money out of them? Yesteryear, a degree was a sure bet to a better life, nowadays, it doesn't mean as much. Are the education methods lacking or is the surplus of graduates to blame for useless degrees?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @12:38AM (3 children)
Yes, IIRC these things are part of the scientific method along with measurement. Much more scientific than saying "We don't do it because a) it is difficult, and b) we just don't do it". Imagine you have to choose a school for your child. Would you rather see how the schools and teachers are ranked for competency and learning outcomes or would you rather take a crap-shoot based on warm fuzzy feelings?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 02 2018, @03:40AM (2 children)
Funny thing about schools. Way back in prehistoric times, like the 1960's, people knew which school systems were better than others. Students who graduated from New Castle High School were generally superior to students who graduated from Mohawk, or Shenango high schools. Meanwhile, Union Township's schools were regarded as superior even to New Castle.
How in hell did people know all of that? Well - it's pretty obvious that graduates from one school found better jobs than students from another school. Students from one school were far more likely to win scholarships, and to be accepted into college, than students from other schools.
TFS clearly states that attempts to measure all of this common knowledge have failed. Maybe we should go back to allowing school districts to run themselves? Then, we might be able to study those districts that do well, learn some lessons from them, and finally to teach those methods to the failing school districts?
The halfwits at the state capital don't have degrees in education. And, even if some do, they chose to go to the capital - so they don't have ten classes of successful students to use as evidence.
Give teachers the freedom they need to teach. Stop listening to the morons at the capital. Get government out of education - all government ever does is to fuck things up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @10:17AM (1 child)
Well, shit, Runaways, they was white schools, that's how you could tell! Have you been so SJWed that you forgot that?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 02 2018, @02:58PM
Wrong.