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Accountability & comparability: what's wrong with the VSA approach?

Article Excerpt
IN MID-NOVEMBER, the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) announced its official approval of the Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA). For those of us who have been hiding under rocks during the past few years (not such an odd place to find academics, whose interests often run more to details of Shakespearean tragedy or, indeed, rocks, than to higher education policy), here's why that matters.

Background

The VSA is an indirect outgrowth of the work of the Spellings Commission, a group that served at the behest of Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and that was charged with examining problems in higher education. Accountability was one of those problems. After extensive research and debate, the Spellings Commission, under the leadership of chair Charles Miller, former regent for the University of Texas system (and the same person who led development of a K-12 accountability system that eventually served as a model for No Child Left Behind), issued a series of recommendations.

At an early stage in the drafting of those recommendations, Miller lobbied hard to mandate standardized value-added testing of general education skills, using a measure like the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), as a basis for accountability and comparability among institutions. In response to push-back from higher education, the mandate was dropped from the final version--but only after the commission received assurances from organizations like NASULGC and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) that they themselves would take the lead in developing a rigorous system of assessment and accountability. NASULGC and AASCU appointed a committee to develop such a system, which they promised would fulfill both the letter and spirit of the Spellings Commission's intent.

The result of this committee's work is the VSA. Unfortunately, the VSA seems predicated on the assumption that the Spellings Commission approach is inevitable. Therefore, the VSA proposes mechanisms to control implementation of value-added testing (for example, via a phase-in, with decision...

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