In Inside Higher Ed today Kate Drezek McConnell has a commentary entitled “What Assessment is Really About.” To my mind this is the most nuanced and thoughtful of the responses I have seen to Worthen. It is directed mostly at assessment people and tries to make the case that there are types of assessment that actually work. This seems like a much more substantive response others that just take the “Well golly, those professors are sure a bunch of grinches” approach. However, still does not address the core issues. Why is there no empirical evidence that assessment has cause positive changes in student learning?
The comments are pretty brutal and I think betray the real frustration that faculty feel with the direction that assessment has taken. That said I think it’s important to remember that it’s assessment that is the problem not the people who do assessment. The commentator who said something about thinking about assessment professionals while using his tommy gun in Call of Duty seems to have lost sight of the nature of the problem. That was a totally inappropriate comment.