Escaping the K-12 system doesn't mean escaping from standardized exams. The State University of New York (SUNY) system has begun a pilot implementation of a campus-wide standardized test to see how its approximately 411,000 students are doing at all 64 locations:
A pilot program for the test is set to begin next fall and run for two years. There is no firm starting date for the full-scale version of this test.
Students at the University at Albany were not thrilled with the idea. "I don't like it," said Lauren Summers, a sophomore from Queens. "You do your testing in high school. It's just for them," she said, referring to officials who want to implement the exams.
"What is the point?" wondered Crystal Smith, a senior from Westchester County. "We took the SATs already in high school."
Faculty members across the state, too, are starting to question the idea and in some instances protest it, saying it's unnecessary and too much of a one-size-fits-all idea for the diverse SUNY system, which runs the gamut from two year colleges to university research centers such as UAlbany and Stony Brook.
"We're not a cookie-cutter system," said Ivan Steen, a UAlbany history professor and vice president for academics at the United University Professions, the union representing professors and other employees.
Resistance seems especially strong among SUNY's community colleges. The Faculty Counsel, comprising staffers in the two-year schools, earlier this month sent a letter to SUNY Chancellor Robert King expressing "consistent and determined opposition to universitywide assessment," as the planned tests are called.
Plans for this testing program have been under active development since June when the SUNY trustees quietly approved the idea.
The test, Henehan explained, will cover skills such as math, writing, social sciences and information management, which consists largely of computer literacy. And there may be more than one test, Henehan said.
Relying on essays and other nonmultiple choice questions, it is unlikely to be a graduation requirement. Instead, it is viewed as a way to help gauge the effectiveness of various programs throughout the SUNY system.
The stakes of this test are thus low for students, but higher for the campuses and programs involved. The question, then, is, how useful are the data if the students feel no pressure to perform well on - or even be present for - the exams? Sometimes, no-stakes data can give good information, but such data always need to be taken with a grain of salt.
That much said, I'm betting that the complaints we'll see will parallel the complaints of K-12 schools that are rated. Campuses with low test scores will claim that the test is biased, or inappropriate for their students, or that it contains inaccurate or misaligned content.
The more basic the skills on the exam, though, the less valid the claims become. It's hard to argue that a test of basic English and math skills is too standardized (or "cookie-cutter") for any college campus. If the community college scores, for example, show that, after two years, students still haven't mastered these skills, that would be a pretty devastating piece of information suggesting that students are wasting their money at these campuses.
Posted by kswygert at October 16, 2003 10:13 AM