Commitments and Resources Distributed to Assessment Activities: Sustaining and Improving Assessment Plans

Assessment in higher education has become increasingly important over the past twenty years (Ewell 2002). The assessment move-ment in higher education originated as a result of several national reports released in the 1980s pertaining to the state of education in the United States. Concerns pertaining to student learning in public K–12 schools led to the articulation of A Nation at Risk by the National Commission on Excellence in Education in 1983. This report affected higher education and resulted in legislation passed in two-thirds of the states that required public colleges and universities to establish plans to assess student learning (Burke 2005). The U.S. Department of Education further emphasized the importance of assessment in its 2006 report about the future of American higher education. The report, authored by a commission appointed by the secretary of education, states that institutions “must become more transparent about cost, price, and student success outcomes, and must be willing share this information with students and families” (U. S. Department of Education 2006, 4). Recently, accreditation agencies have incorporated assessment measures into their accrediting standards. Huba and Freed explain the change in the locus of assessment requirements from state-level government bodies to accreditation agencies as an attempt to “curtail the direct involvement of state legislatures in higher education ” (2000, 17). While accreditation provides extrinsic motivation for institutions of higher education to pursue assessment endeavors, the examination of student achievement is also important to the continuous improvement of academic programs and services. Purpose and Scop