The SATs, ACTs and other high school proficiency exams are nothing more than a memory to many college students. But similar exams will be a reality on college campuses nationwide if the Commission for the Future of Higher Education gets its way.
Ball State University officials, however, question how effectively college-level standardized testing would fare compared with current university academic standards.
The federal commission, appointed in Fall 2005 by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, would like to use standardized tests to measure college students' progress, as well as hold universities accountable. A report due in August will explore issues of accountability, cost and quality.
Michael O'Hara, chairman of Ball State's Undergraduate Education Committee, said standardized tests would allow the federal government to measure college students' skills, just as President George W. Bush is striving to improve the quality of primary and secondary education through the No Child Left Behind Act. But he could not find any studies that would substantiate the benefits of such a testing system, he said.
"We are not considering any kind of standardized testing here at Ball State," O'Hara said. "In my personal opinion, I think education is best suited to each individual standing in front of you. The most foolish thing they can do is to expect that instruction would affect each of you all the same."
Ball State's campus has more than 150 majors at the undergraduate level, so envisioning a single test that would be useful or appropriate to measure all students' performance would be difficult, said Sherry Woosley, assistant director of institutional effectiveness.
Woosley and Donald Whitaker, executive director of institutional effectiveness, also said that Ball State has a Writing Competency Exam, while a number of academic departments participate in Educational Testing Service Major Field Examinations. Some departments even use capstone courses, field experiences and other activities to "allow students to demonstrate their skills. So we do have performance measures in place," Woosley said.
Juli Eflin, chairwoman of the University Core Curriculum Committee, said all Ball State majors would soon have built-in assessments as required by the Higher Learning Commission. The commission oversees all regional accreditation agencies, including the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, which serves Ball State.
The university's next accreditation will take place in seven years, and the agency will need five years of data by then, Eflin said. As a result, all departments before long will need to produce assessments based on learning objectives, she said.
"So we have to get up and going on it right away," Eflin said.
The University Core Curriculum will also have some assessments built in once it is reformed, with the goal for implementing the current proposal being Fall 2007. Eflin said standardized testing for all students would not be meaningful, especially because they measure a student's progress on a particular day instead of giving a picture of what students are truly capable of doing. Different kinds of universities also have different emphases, so using one test to compare various institutions' progress would not be effective, she added.
"It's perfectly possible to have standards of what we want students to be able to accomplish, but we're too complex a university to have one short set of standards that we want all students to meet," Eflin said.
Sophomore Valerie Johnson, Japanese communications major, said she did not think standardized tests were an accurate reflection of how well a university educated its students. College students are likely more mature than high school students and are willing to learn, so they should not have to take extra tests to make sure the university is operating correctly, she said.
Sophomore Alex Umberger, secondary education major, agreed and expressed concerns about how one general exam could measure the progress of students in different majors.
"It would be kind of hard to base it on something so general when there is such a large field of study," Umberger said. "You are at a university. There are a lot of studies going on."
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