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Why
develop standards?
The best reason to develop standards is to improve
students' learning. While debate may continue over the effectiveness of
standards-based learning, the membership of the QUE project believe that
learner-centered competency-based approaches will be more effective for
the majority of students than will more traditional "input"
or teaching-centered approaches. Given the pressures on public institutions
to meet demands for accountability, we believe that there is a pragmatic
strategy for faculty in setting standards. It is better to set standards
for one's own institution than to have standards imposed by such external
stakeholders as legislators, employers, and governing board members. In
K-12 education, many states have utilized high-stakes tests to register
performance. One way to mitigate against imposition of similar tests in
post-secondary education is to develop and use a credible set of standards
and ongoing aligned assessments.
Isn’t this just another externally
imposed accountability measure?
QUE is a voluntary project, driven by faculty
working in partnership with administrators. Rather than being an externally
imposed accountability measure, standards should communicate to employers
and others the knowledge and skills proficiency of successful students.
Further, QUE encourages faculty in departments to shape standards for
their own students.
Don’t postsecondary institutions
already have standards?
College and university faculty members and academic
programs need to articulate what they have internalized as standards or
learning outcomes so that the standards are external and understood by
students, fellow faculty, administrators, employers, the public and other
stakeholders. For the most part, students are now judged in a series of
discrete courses. Part of the value of articulated learning outcomes is
that work in a number of different courses will contribute to learning
according to a particular standard. Further, work in a given course may
contribute to more than one disciplinary standard at a time. In a standards
system, a priority is the accumulation and development of students’
understanding and use of their learning.
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What are the advantages of standards-based
education?
Standards can help colleges and universities to
make the transition in emphasis from what the courses teach to what students
actually learn. Academic standards also can enable students to know what
they are expected to understand, professors to know what to teach, and
employers to be cognizant of what graduates are learning in college. When
advancement through higher education is determined by performance on such
standards and assessments, the value of a degree becomes a publicly known
achievement, understood by policymakers, students and their tuition-paying
families, and employers.
To be effective, standards should be high, achievable,
and credible to these broad constituencies. Moreover, with standards in
place through all sectors of public education, pre-school through post-secondary,
states can achieve a better alignment of the currently dissociated systems.
Such alignment should decrease the need for remediation. At present, many
students experience difficulty in crossing boundaries such as those from
middle school to high school, from high school to college, or from one
transfer point to another in college.
There are benefits of standards-based learning
especially for students who transfer – and students are increasingly
mobile. Standards should foster program coherence and articulation between
institutions and hence enable more efficient transfer, with fewer credits
lost by students. Standards-based education should make coherent learning
possible within a complex system. Aware of these many advantages, the
QUE project will provide robust direct measures of learning—evaluations
of authentic performances and student portfoliosæthat are linked
to the QUE-established standards of quality.
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What are performance standards
or performance indicators?
Performance standards (also known as performance
indicators or descriptors) are concrete statements of outcomes. They describe
levels of performance, illustrating how well students must learn what
is set out in the content standards. Performance standards ideally have
two parts: (1) descriptions of student work that meets the standards;
and (2) samples of student work that illustrates this achievement. Performance
levels within a standard such as Advanced, Proficient, Acceptable, Novice,
or Beginner give faculty and students a clear picture of where a student
is in meeting a standard.
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What are content standards?
Content Standards are statements that define what
students should know and be able to do in various disciplinary areas:
knowledge (facts, concepts, principles) and skills (processes, strategies,
methods); often called the "what" and the “be able to do”
of "what students should know and be able to do."
How is assessment related to standards?
Assessment is one of the keys to successful standards-based
education. Design and implementation of assessment is a central element
of an infrastructure to increase student learning. When student learning
outcomes are clearly specified, the design of both learning experiences
and assessment has a sharper focus. The QUE project will provide robust
direct measures of learning and assessments - evaluations of authentic
performances and student portfolios - that are linked to the QUE-established
standards of quality. In particular, development of multiple types of
assessments is important and the sharing across campuses of an already
rich variety of assessments will be an important deliverable for QUE.
Much of the criticism of standards-based education comes from the incorrect
assumption that it uses only high-stakes standardized tests.
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What are the benefits of standards
for students?
Discipline-based standards for student learning
should enable students to move beyond memorization to better understanding
of a discipline and to be able to apply their knowledge and skills in
unfamiliar settings. Standards are particularly important for students
who transfer since there will be an expectation of performance proficiency
by the receiving institution in lieu of credits and grades. Clear enunciation
of student learning outcomes that are understood readily by faculty and
students should lead to better student advising.
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Who develops standards?
Disciplinary faculty members develop standards.
QUE provides a model by which institutions develop their own standards
that are used to improve student learning and understanding. QUE encourages
faculty in departments to shape standards for their own students. A value
of participating in QUE is that faculty from across institutions and states
can help each other in standards development.
Why should I participate in the
development of standards?
The process of writing the standards is itself
rich and stimulating - the project may be regarded as a faculty development
opportunity since faculty are invited to reflect on their goals and to
find the points at which those goals contribute to the overall coherence
of the curriculum. In addition to knowing our disciplines, it is necessary
to know how our students learn and to develop multiple ways of assessing
the desired learning. By working collectively in the QUE project, faculty
can share and develop together.
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What is the difference between
"standards" and "learning outcomes"?
In some disciplines—English is a good example—the
distinction between "standards" and "learning outcomes"
is worth observing. However we might wish to use the term, "standards"
is a term that has a known history and a fraught reputation. It is likely
to imply quantifiable measures as well as raising concern about standardization
across institutions. Faculty in the humanities generally understand quantitative
measures to mean high-stakes testing, rote learning, and an approach to
knowledge that is antithetical to the ends of the discipline. The habits
of mind of the humanities are not, of course, as linear or quantitative
as they are associative and qualitative. The very term "standards"
is likely to come across as tendentious. A recent decision by the Writing
Program Administrators, a national association, suggests an approach.
A WPA committee decided to draft a set of learning outcomes for first-year
composition, useful to all institutions, and they intentionally chose
not to use the term "standards." They reasoned that learning
outcomes are "types of results," while standards are "precise
levels of achievement." Individual institutions or groups of institutions
might agree to the setting of standards, they noted, but the association
is only recommending learning outcomes for first-year composition courses.
This decision made it possible for the WPA to publish a set of learning
outcomes—a considerable achievement—now available for comment
on the web at http://www.mwsc.edu/~outcomes/.
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What is the scope of standards
– department, state, or universal?
Deliverables of QUE include department and campus
draft academic standards, performance descriptions, collections of student
work, and assessments. Sharing of draft standards may result in some universally
accepted outcomes, but the thrust of the project is for standards to be
developed locally, especially within the cluster. There are benefits of
common standards especially for students who transfer. Standards will
lead to better program coherence, better articulation between institutions,
and fewer credits lost by students.
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What is a cluster?
We refer to a cluster of institutions as a four-year
college and its two-year partners. One of the aims of QUE is to increase
and strengthen the interactions among cluster institutions.
Are standards forever?
Standards are not forever. Perhaps the two most
valuable adjectives to apply to standards being developed in QUE are draft
and voluntary. We anticipate a continuous development and refinement process.
Isn’t this just more work
and another fad?
Standards in some form have been around for quite
some time. The publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983 brought attention
to the quality of education, which resulted in an increase in the number
of K-12 students enrolled in core academic courses and began the standards
movement, as it is known today. Voluntary national standards were established
in many K-12 core areas by independent and scholarly and professional
organizations. The staying power and value of standards is that they contribute
to a systemic alignment among learning outcomes, assessments, and curriculum
that has been missing from all levels of U.S. education.
QUE is a project to extend draft, voluntary standards
to post-secondary education. Development of standards is being undertaken
as a means to increase student learning and understanding – yes,
it’ll take work to accomplish this task. We anticipate that QUE will
differ from K-12 standards initiatives in method and manner of development,
as well as in results. We also expect to learn from the past. The process
for development of standards should not be a significant workload issue.
Additional workload comes in development of aligned assessments –
but this is work that we ought to be doing. It will unquestionably challenge
us to account for the demands on faculty in the full context of faculty
work. In any case, we seek better assessments of student learning.
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Isn’t the imposition of standards
an infringement of academic freedom?
Standards should not be imposed. They should represent
thoughtful discussion by disciplinary faculty as to what learning outcomes
the faculty members expect of students after a series of courses. The
curriculum is the responsibility of disciplinary faculty; the department
sanctions an individual course that contributes to the curriculum. There
is no necessary infringement of academic freedom within a standards-based
curriculum. Academic freedom is a faculty member’s right to discuss
topics that are pertinent to the learning outcomes of the course, with
responsibility lodged, as it most often has been, within the department
and the college.
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Aren’t standards just another
way of imposing course standardization?
Standards represent learning outcomes for a course
of study at a particular educational level. They call for mastery or proficiency,
not minimal knowledge or skill. Individual courses will contribute to
the overall set of standards in varying ways. Department faculty members
should agree on learning goals for a course and how those goals contribute
to the overall disciplinary standards. Faculty members are free to design
instructional strategies to enable students to meet or exceed proficient
levels for learning goals of a course.
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What’s the relationship between
standards and faculty evaluation?
Faculty evaluation is not connected with standards
as we are discussing them in QUE. Development of standards is primarily
to provide a mechanism for enhancing students’ learning and understanding.
What’s the relationship between
standards and department evaluation?
The QUE project did not expect that department
evaluation would be directly connected with standards at the outset. However,
there may be reduced workload for a department if the sum of individual
student assessments is used to provide a measure of program assessment.
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What are the objectives of QUE?
- Development and use of standards
for transfer from 2-year to 4-year college
- Development and use of standards
for graduation from college
What are the deliverables of QUE?
QUE is funded in part by grants from The Pew Charitable
Trusts and the ExxonMobil Education Foundation. In the proposal to the
granting agencies, the following are listed as deliverables:
- Department and campus draft
academic standards, performance descriptions, collections of student
work, and assessments of student learning
- Disseminate process for writing
standards, performance descriptions, and assessments at the two-and
four-year level of postsecondary education through the web, presentations
at regional and national meetings, and published papers
- Provide institutions with statements
of greater expectations for learning for all students against which
they can evaluate their curricula and assessments
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