ACTA's Must-Reads
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ACTA's place in the accountability debate
Coverage of last week's Indianapolis meeting of Margaret Spellings' Commission on the Future of Higher Education has centered on college preparation, accreditation, assessment, and general issues of accountability. Featuring largely in news reports is the presentation of Peter McPherson, president of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. McPherson's presentation focussed on how colleges and universities might adopt a "voluntary system of accountability;" coming in the midst of heated debate about whether we ought to have a federally mandated system of accountability for higher education, McPherson's proposal was at once warmly received ("The draft you circulated changed the discusssion in all sorts of ways," University of Pennsylvania education professor Robert Zemsky told McPherson), and greeted with a certain amount of skepticism as a possible "filibuster": Zemsky advised McPherson to move swiftly from words to action in order to clarify that "this isn't an issue of whether or not but how and when. ... That would help us, that we could have some faith that this train was leaving the station."
Zemsky's skepticism is well placed--after all, the Commission would not have been called if colleges and universities had managed to make themselves voluntarily accountable. ACTA president Anne Neal joined Kevin Carey of Education Sector in noting that "these are rational, self-interested institutions, and we cannot expect them to release information that puts them in a less than flattering light."
Neal's presentation--inexplicably downplayed and even ignored by the press--spoke directly to this issue. Invited to speak on the topic of accountability, Neal offered an eight point program for ensuring that higher education institutions are focussing on what counts: improving the quality of education, eliminating grade inflation, reducing costs, and functioning in a manner that is truly accountable to the broader public. Neal argued that all colleges and universities should review and reform the general education curriculum, end grade inflation, and develop institutional expectations and assessments for student learning. Arguing also for an end to mandatory federal accreditation, Neal urged governors to concentrate on appointing informed college and university trustees, and she also emphasized the importance of training trustees to do their jobs ethically and well. Part of that, she noted, would involve board transparency, and the hiring of presidents who would be agents of positive institutional change.
ACTA's recent report, Intellectual Diversity: Time for Action, outlines in great detail how institutions can restore a robust intellectual culture to their campuses; similarly, ACTA's affiliate, the Institute for Effective Governance, offers trustee training and a range of related services. If McPherson's proposal is going to fly, it needs to recognize and endorse the valuable work ACTA has already done on the issue of how institutions can make themselves more accountable and more responsible. Otherwise, the decentralized approach he endorses will just involve lots of administrative fumbling, and plenty of unsuccessful efforts to reinvent a wheel ACTA has already perfected.
Posted by acta online at April 10, 2006 08:35 AM
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