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Frequently Asked Questions
- Why assess?
- Middle States is over, why do we have to do this now?
- We give interval grades to the students in our classes. Can't we say that we have met our goals when our students meet the requirements for graduation with a degree from our program?
- What is NCATE?
Why assess?
We assess to provide evidence to ourselves and others that students at The College of New Jersey are meeting our learning goals and that institutional policies and resources are appropriately supporting the mission of The College.
Middle States is over, why do we have to do this now?
For assessment to function properly it is part of an iterative process, a feedback loop:
- A program decides its goals and outcomes - what a graduate of that program "looks like"
- A program plans its curriculum to meet these goals
- A program decides how it will know if its students are graduating having met those goals
- asking questions
- determining what data is needed to answer them, and how it will be gathered
- articulating the acceptable result or answer
- A program gathers the data, analyzes and summarizes it
- A program assesses itself - do the data meet the acceptable result or answer? Do they indicate there is a need for some improvement in some area? Or is everything fine here this time?
If we start this feedback loop now, we will be able to easily show that we are assessing ourselves, and have improved programs, by the next Middle States visit.
We give interval grades to the students in our classes. Can't we say that we have met our goals when our students meet the requirements for graduation with a degree from our program?
Perhaps - if you assign grades to your students using a rubric, than your interval grades might mean this. Unlike most typical grading protocols, rubrics are criterion-referenced, rather than norm-referenced. A grading rubric allows an instructor to answer the question, "Did the student meet the criteria for level 5 for this goal?" rather than, "How well did this student perform compared to other students?" See also: "Do grades make the grade for program assessment?"
What is NCATE ?
NCATE is the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, "the profession’s mechanism to help establish high quality teacher preparation. Through the process of professional accreditation of schools, colleges and departments of education, NCATE works to make a difference in the quality of teaching and teacher preparation today, tomorrow, and for the next century. NCATE’s performance-based system of accreditation fosters competent classroom teachers and other educators who work to improve the education of all P-12 students. NCATE believes every student deserves a caring, competent, and highly qualified teacher (copied directly from the NCATE website: http://www.ncate.org/public/aboutNCATE.asp)." TCNJ is currenlty accredited by NCATE, and our next reaccrediation visit is in October 2008.
