The experience of professors at community colleges in California shows that a well-organized faculty can advocate for meaningful academic principles--by getting involved in local accreditation, serving on visiting teams, and sitting on the accreditation commission itself. California's community colleges are not in harmonious accord with…

Why should faculty members support efforts on their campuses to assess student learning outcomes? A great deal of ink has been spilled in recent years by a small number of professors and a much larger number of educational administrators arguing for assessment and pleading for greater faculty support of institutional assessment efforts. More…

Since the publication of "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform" by the U.S. Department of Education in 1983, American higher education has faced the need to develop its own effective means of learning assessment to forestall the prospect of government-imposed standardized procedures. The latter potential may have moved closed…

Since passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, thinking about America's schools has been taken over by something like philosopher Rene Descartes's malignant demon of doubt. The act's exclusive focus on assessing student achievement and faculty accountability in terms that can be "proved" mathematically has cast into doubt a…