Dr. George B Ellenberg

In recent years, the nature and number of administrative reporting requirements have increased substantially for most universities. As a result, faculty find themselves devoting increasingly large amounts of time to these needs (Gardiner, 2002) often at the expense of time devoted to teaching, scholarship, and service. One major driver for administrative reporting is embedded in the assessment of learning process. This paper uses Critical Policy Analysis to examine assessment policies and processes at four universities through the viewpoints of the authors who serve in the roles of administrators, faculty, and students to determine policy “winners” and “losers.” In this process we identify why many faculty resist the assessment process and make recommendations on how universities can develop assessment policies and processes that meet the real requirements for assessment of learning while meeting the demands of all stakeholders.

Excerpt - Progressivism is most closely linked with urban and industrial America, but the movement also deeply influenced the nation's rural areas. Indeed, the early years of the twentieth century were marked by a particularly strong interest on the part of many urban Americans for the welfare of the nation's farmers, farm families, and their way of life. In short, urban reformers desired to apply contemporary urban standards of efficiency and organization to rural life. This progressive urge rippled into rural nooks and crannies throughout the South as it flowed into the 1920s. Early twentieth-century policies set in place by officials imbued with a reform spirit, such as the extension programs administered by the state land-grant colleges, continued to have a profound impact on southern farming and farm life after the end of World War I.