Comments on: NCLB – Coming To A College Near You?

By: Comments « The Flip Side

Comments « The Flip Side — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:40:20 +0000

[...] Chris [...]

By: Eng 310 Comments « pigsney

Eng 310 Comments « pigsney — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 14:13:29 +0000

[...] Apr 17th, 2007 by hannah8 http://boundtoreact.wordpress.com/2007/03/14/nclb-coming-to-a-college-near-you/ [...]

By: mishlela1

mishlela1 — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 13:49:23 +0000

I agree that standardized tests at a college level would be useless. I think that they would be a waste of resources that could have been spent on more productive ways to improve higher education. Honestly, the idea of a standardized test to assess college achievement is frightening to me. I think that there should be some way of making sure colleges are doing what they’re supposed to, but standardized tests would not be the best way. One issue that I see with tests like that is how would they “standardize” so many different majors, goals and styles that can be found in colleges across the country. I agree that looking at employment rate and facts along that line would be better than a test and I sincerely hope that they don’t start some test like that for colleges.

By: hannah8

hannah8 — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 22:32:40 +0000

I completely agree with you! I think it’s ridiculous for legislators to think that standardized testing could work in colleges, especially (as you pointed out) when it hasn’t been working in high schools. Also, colleges and universities are much more divese in what they teach and focus on than high schools, so trying to measure their success rates with a standardized test is screwey thinking. You made a good point that they should go public with their employment rates and such. I think that would be a great way of rating colleges, I think it’s already being done actually. However, if this were required of all colleges I could see this leading to a standardized testing-like epidemic where colleges would racing to teach toward the most employable professions. I think we just need to realize that high school and college are two completely different games, and to measure them we have to use two completely different yard sticks. I am not an expert so I’m not sure what the solution should be, but I do know that standardized testing won’t work in college (mostly because it’s not really working anywhere else.