Assessment is on an “unproductive path” and it’s your fault

An article in the March/April issue of Change: the Magazine of Higher Learning begins with this tidbit:

The assessment of student learning in higher education has been headed down an unproductive path for too long.  Not enough faculty and administrators engage in an assessment process that fosters cognitive and affective learning for all their students.

Yes, really.  And this is coming from authors associated with AAC&U, NILOA and AALHE.  People representing the exact organizations that have done the most to impose the bureaucratic form of assessment that is now the norm in higher education have belatedly recognized that assessment is unproductive.  But it’s not them, it’s you.  The good news is that they have a new plan and this time it will work.  Trust them. After all they have only been leading us down an unproductive path for twenty years now, so surely they are just the people to get the bumbling faculty back on track. What’s the new plan? We need to shift our thinking about assessment so that we focus less on “assessment of learning” and more on “assessment for learning.”  I guess now that we have the verbs in our learning outcomes sorted out it’s time to start thinking about prepositions.

How is that anyone still takes this seriously?