For the longest time, having good teachers and good classes was enough to convince government leaders that learning was going on.

No longer. The K-12 system has been changed dramatically by No Child Left Behind, and federal and state leaders are now looking at the higher education system to determine whether there is enough accountability in student learning.

Early evidence, according to the federal government at least, suggests there’s not enough accountability, and now the Kansas Board of Regents is looking at whether it could somehow evaluate learner outcomes – specifically whether graduates have acquired college-level skills in writing, public speaking or perhaps even personal financial literacy.

“It used to be if your student/teacher ratio was low, you had one of the largest libraries and you had a good endowment, then you were a good institution,” said Kansas Board of Regents chairwoman Christine Downey-Schmidt. “That’s not the case anymore. We’re ready to look at learner outcomes in all fields.”

That’s not to say that there’s a test that students will have to take to graduate, but it could mean that universities will need students to take a test in order to receive its funding for the year.

“What often happens is legislatures get asked for a chunk of money in hopes that things will improve,” Downey-Schmidt said. “It’s often easier to get (funding) if you have evidence that more resources will produce more of the desired results.”

‘Assess themselves’

Downey-Schmidt said the first step in determining whether Kansas universities could benefit from a standardized examination of student learning is going to the universities and asking them if they are content with the quality and amount of student learning that is taking place.

“We want them to begin to assess themselves,” she explained.

The federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education last year concluded that colleges “should measure and report meaningful student learning outcomes,” and further concluded that using standardized tests is the best way to compare and evaluate whether colleges and universities are successful at the work they do.

While several schools do test portions of their student body to determine whether learning is taking place in the desired manner, few make that information public. The University of Texas system, including UT-Austin, has been using the Collegiate Learning Assessment – the CLA – for three years and makes the results public on its Web site.

KU Provost Richard Lariviere came to Kansas from Texas shortly after the testing system was instituted.

“Learner outcome assessment is a very good idea,” he said. “We’ve been doing this in higher education for a long time. But what I’m not really keen on is the idea you can do this with a single test across the university.”

The CLA does just that. At Texas, a sample of students is recruited to take the test, which has no bearing on their grades or graduation. The results are then compared with other universities and the UT schools, according to system Vice Chancellor Geri Malandra, then educators look at where their programs don’t measure as favorably.

“The CLA tells you something,” Lariviere said, “but I’m not sure what it tells you.”

Is it broken?

Lariviere said he preferred that learning assessment take place on a department-by-department level.

“We’re working with the Faculty Senate right now to determine how best we can make an assessment of whether students are learning what we teach them,” he said.

Malandra said the key difference in testing at the higher education level versus the K-12 level is no one believes the higher education system is broken. An approach that is keyed on sampling – at the UT schools, 100 freshmen are tested in the fall and 100 seniors are tested in the spring – provides all the necessary data and accountability, she said.

“What we’re trying to do is assess the impact of institutions and investments and tactics overall to improve the success of students,” Malandra said.

For instance, if a particular campus’ students score poorly on questions that measure the effectiveness of written communication, the administration can then go to the departments that deal with writing and try to find where the disconnect is. But she proudly stated several times that very rarely do the tests reveal areas where the UT schools aren’t scoring as well as peer institutions.

While Malandra believes the CLA is providing valuable data to schools in the UT system, she cautions that it cannot provide a complete picture of how well the schools are doing. She said student retention, student engagement, graduation rates and other information are all important in pushing universities to do better.

“We were looking for something that would be consistent, and would give us a chance to compare our learning not just among institutions but also nationally,” she said.