Readers of this blog may not have noticed the significant announcement last week by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan of the recipients of Race to the Top grants to support the development of a new generation of K-12 assessments that are more performance-based, technologically sophisticated, and inclusive of both formative and summative evaluations of students’ math and language arts skills.  This development—if successfully implemented in even a fraction of the states involved—will, indeed, be a game-changer in K-12 education and have profound implications for higher education as well.

Whether these assessments really will measure students’ “college readiness” or not remains to be seen, however—at least in my judgment.  Much will depend on how involved college and university faculty and assessment experts are in both the development of the tests and the implementation of the new common core standards they are designed to assess.  To date, there has not been nearly enough serious involvement by college faculty either in the assessment consortia or in the development of new standards.  Time will tell if that can be remedied going forward.  The leaders of these consortia seem to be seriously committed to involving higher education faculty and leaders— a reason for optimism.

I think a very significant shift in emphasis —that many Americans who read the media coverage of his speech might have missed —is also evident in Secretary Duncan’s remarks.  In addition to launching a new era of more sophisticated learning assessment, Duncan also made clear the importance of liberal education—even if he didn’t use those words.  As he noted, he wants the new assessments to better measure “higher-order thinking skills…vital to success in the global economy of the twenty-first century.”  He noted that “students need to show that they can analyze and solve complex problems, communicate clearly, synthesize information, apply knowledge, and generalize learning to other settings.”  As AAC&U has noted in many of its publications and reports, especially those published as part of the LEAP initiative, these are precisely the capacities that a good liberal education provides to students.

For several years now, AAC&U has documented the importance of these and other essential learning outcomes and the ways in which colleges and universities are reinventing liberal education to provide these outcomes to all students—not just some.  Duncan noted last week that the new K-12 assessments will incorporate more “problems situated in real-world environments, where students perform tasks or include multi-stage scenarios and extended essays.”  This, too, is precisely what AAC&U’s board of directors called for in its 2004 statement on assessment and accountability, Our Students’ Best Work (reissued in 2008 with slight revisions).  It is also what employers endorse as the best methods of assessment for college-level achievement.  For instance, in suggesting to which assessment approaches colleges should devote scarce resources, they most often named “faculty evaluations of internships or community-based research projects” and “essay tests that measure students’ problem-solving, writing, and analytic thinking skills.”  (See what else employers have to say about learning assessment and about outcome priorities in the wake of the economic downturn.)

Finally—and probably most important to those of us most committed to liberal education—is Secretary Duncan’s recognition of the importance of a “well-rounded curriculum.”  When the draft common core standards were released earlier this year, AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider released a statement noting that their focus on only math and language arts was a serious limitation.  She noted then that “to reap the full benefit of their college studies, today’s students need far more than just reading, writing, and math skills.”  She remarked further that, “these standards cover, at best, only about one-third of the school curriculum.”  As she went on to say, high school seniors could meet these standards, but still remain scientifically illiterate, unaware of histories and cultures outside the United States, vague about their own history, and unable to communicate in any language other than English.  Secretary Duncan also seems concerned about this shortfall and limitation of the standards.  He noted in his remarks last week that, “There is no disagreement that math, reading, and writing are vital core components of a good education in today’s knowledge economy.  But so is the study of science, history, foreign languages, civics, and the arts.”

He argued, as AAC&U does, that “a well-rounded curriculum is not a luxury but a necessity.”  It is incredibly important that the US Secretary of Education understands and articulates this commitment.  He should be applauded for making this commitment so clear.  It is equally important, however, that college and university faculty and educational leaders stay informed and vigilant about helping the public understand this commitment and keeping the Department of Education from implementing policies that limit, rather than expand, opportunities for all students to achieve a well-rounded education—a liberal education.  Rhetoric is important, but actions and policies matter more.

Tags: assessment, liberal education