In the Fall of issue of Intersection, which is the Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education’s journal, Dave Eubanks of Furman Univeristy offers an insider perspective on the failure of assessment to fulfill its advocates’ expectation that it would improve student learning. Eubanks argues that the scale at which assessment is done causes the data that are collected to be of very low quality. Trying to improve courses or programs based on bad data is, not surprisingly, a fool’s errand.
The article is found here. The entire issue appears as a single page so you need to scroll down a bit to get to the article.
My article about the implications of Eubanks’ argument is in this article in the Chronicle.