Capstone as a measure of education? Not enough.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/not-enough-graduate-college-now-theres-exit-exam-8C11006596

BOSTON -- Seniors returning to classes at dozens of U.S. colleges and universities have one more hurdle to prepare for this school year: a new standardized test for graduating students intended to give prospective employers a measure of their abilities.

Called Collegiate Learning Assessment Plus (CLA+), the test aims to provide a more objective way to compare the intellectual achievements of graduates of different schools.

"It's another set of information that employers can use to review the applicant," said Robert Keeley, director of assessment services at the Council for Aid to Education, the New York-based nonprofit that has developed the test. "We're looking to equip students to share their scores more readily than they have in the past."

About 200 colleges and universities, including small liberal arts colleges Ursuline College of Pepper Pike, Ohio, and Stonehill College of Easton, Mass. as well as some of the California and Texas state university systems, have signed up to give the CLA+ tests at the end of the academic year now getting underway.

The test will measure analysis, problem solving, writing, quantitative reasoning and reading, the Council for Aid to Education said.

It could serve a similar role to the admission exams that graduate schools rely on as a standard evaluation for their applicants.

(more hilarity at link)

So, we've now FUCKED K-12 with standardized testing successfully, it's time to apply the process to universities.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Just for reference:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/testing/companies.html

When Congress increased this year's budget for the Department of Education by $11 billion, it set aside $400 million to help states develop and administer the tests that the No Child Left Behind Act mandated for children in grades 3 through 8. Among the likely benefactors of the extra funds were the four companies that dominate the testing market -- three test publishers and one scoring firm.

Those four companies are Harcourt Educational Measurement, CTB McGraw-Hill, Riverside Publishing (a Houghton Mifflin company), and NCS Pearson. According to an October 2001 report in the industry newsletter Educational Marketer, Harcourt, CTB McGraw-Hill, and Riverside Publishing write 96 percent of the exams administered at the state level. NCS Pearson, meanwhile, is the leading scorer of standardized tests.

Even without the impetus of the No Child Left Behind Act, testing is a burgeoning industry. The National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy at Boston College compiled data from The Bowker Annual, a compendium of the dollar-volume in test sales each year, and reported that while test sales in 1955 were $7 million (adjusted to 1998 dollars), that figure was $263 million in 1997, an increase of more than 3,000 percent. Today, press reports put the value of the testing market anywhere from $400 million to $700 million.

It's likely that other companies will enter the testing market. Educational Testing Service (ETS), which until recently had little to do with high-stakes testing and was best known for its administration of the SAT college-entrance exam, won a three-year, $50 million contract in October 2001 to develop and score California's high-school exit exam, beating out other bidders such as Harcourt and NCS Pearson.

[Kai]

It could serve a similar role to the admission exams that graduate schools rely on as a standard evaluation for their applicants.

No. Just, no. The GRE is a reactive, SAT-like exam that tests cognitive abilities in mathematics, logic, reasoning, vocabulary, and writing, and is used as one of many factors that graduate schools take into account in their applications. For most places (i.e. the universities I am doing my PhD at and did my Masters at) this is the lowest thing on the list of considerations; as long as you pass the benchmark set by the graduate school, usually a reasonable one, no one cares. Far more important are your research interests, your work ethic, your funding base, specialized knowledge and special skills. This is, also noting, an /ADMISSION/ process, and completely based on whether you want to go to grad school. Most people will never take it, because most people don't intend to attend.

What they are proposing is a final, mandatory, standardized commencement exam for /employers/, serving a /completely different role/ than the GRE. So, no. The author doesn't understand in the least what the hell he is talking about.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The author reminds me a lot of Armstrong Williams.

Remember him?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armstrong_Williams

Armstrong Williams (born February 5, 1959) is an American political commentator, author of a conservative newspaper column, and host of a daily radio show and a nationally syndicated TV program, called The Right Side with Armstrong Williams. During the early years of the George W. Bush administration, he received $241,000 from the Department of Education to promote the No Child Left Behind initiative; exposure of these payments ultimately lead to the cancellation of his syndicated column with Tribune Media Services.

Makes you wonder if the author benefitted from Harcourt or something.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I just hired PLC/microprocessor-control programmer fresh out of school.  I skimmed over his grades, what I was really interested in was his capstone project, which involved robotics.  He nailed that, grade-wise, and provided his notes from the project, which gave me an insight into how he problem-solves.

That's valuable.  This shit?  Just another way for Harcourt to turn a buck. 

[Kai]

Wouldn't surprise me. US journalism is basically PR these days.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Capstone projects are awesome.

Standardized testing at the end of college?? That makes NO FUCKING SENSE AT ALL.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Capstone projects are awesome.

Standardized testing at the end of college?? That makes NO FUCKING SENSE AT ALL.

Unless you happen to produce those tests as a product.

Then it makes perfect sense.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Capstone projects are awesome.

Standardized testing at the end of college?? That makes NO FUCKING SENSE AT ALL.

Unless you happen to produce those tests as a product.

Then it makes perfect sense.

Yep.

FUCKED UP.

[Junkenstein]

Wouldn't surprise me. US journalism is basically PR these days.

Kai, I think I've fixed that for you now.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Wouldn't surprise me. US journalism is basically PR these days.

Kai, I think I've fixed that for you now.

Well, you've got the Guardian.  I mean, if thugs are running in and smashing computers, they must be doing SOMETHING right.

[Cramulus]

  I won't tell you which of the companies named in this thread I work for. I'm definitely not an apologist for our work, but I gotta get paid, yo.

We haven't heard much about the CLA+ in my division (which is mostly focused on deforming the K-12 curriculum). But we do publish college level books, so I'm sure some divisions are drooooling.

From the wall street journal: "The test is part of a movement to find new ways to assess the skills of graduates. Employers say grades can be misleading and that they have grown skeptical of college credentials."

Basically, the publishers are spinning this as a way that they are just meeting employer demands. Employers don't really care about GPA, so this smells like an opportunity.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I won't tell you which of the companies named in this thread I work for. I'm definitely not an apologist for our work, but I gotta get paid, yo.

Is it not written, "Let "Bob" into your wallet"?

[LMNO]

This is also another way for corporate managers and HR departments to slash their budgets and shirk responsibility.

"Fuck interviews; run their scores through the machine, pick the top five."

[The Good Reverend Roger]

This is also another way for corporate managers and HR departments to slash their budgets and shirk responsibility.

"Fuck interviews; run their scores through the machine, pick the top five."

Yeah, we just got a directive about that (though more just GPA than a test).

We're NOT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT.

My company sometimes finds an option that MAKES SENSE, then goes ahead and does it anyway.