MAC Meeting Minutes March 2008

DRAFT MINUTES
Missouri Assessment Consortium meeting and conference call
March 28, 2008

Present:  Robin Adkison, Jeanie Crain, Michael Cunningham, Doug Dunham, Mike Easter, Mardy Elmers, Chris Frazier, Mike Grelle, Cindy Heider, Delores Honey, Martha Kirker, Thulasi Kumar, Joe Lange, Kathy Marlock, Rick Mihalevich, Michael Strait, Paul Wagner

Agenda: Response to Paul Wagner’s email re: performance funding Coordinated plan

COORDINATED PLAN

Paul Wagner’s summary

1. Began work on this before SB389. Put on back burner once 389 passed.
2. Last Fall and Winter CBHE put pressure on MDHE to develop the plan.
3. Worked internally and with institutions around the state, sent out drafts to Presidents/CAOs to get feedback.
4. Developed into current plan, which is four or five pages—for general public. Also is another 15 page document that is intended to provide rationale/context/background for higher education constituency.
5. Plan addresses access to higher education.

Questions? Concerns?

1. Look at mission statement, and like the mission statement, the first bullet under “basic values” is focus on student learning, but the strategic issues do not seem to focus on the learning. Instead, it seems the document is focused on accessibility.
1. Paul Wagner: Good point. Barriers to access are precursors to student learning. If they cannot get in the doors, then they cannot learn. The demographic trends tell us we will be hard pressed to keep enrollment without first focus on access…get them ready to learn before focus on what they learn.
2. Comment: While we do need to get them through the door, third Basic Value bullet says “access without success is an empty promise.” Thus, document should focus more on the “meat:” Should establish learning objectives, assessing learning objectives, informing program improvement through assessment.
3. Comment: Plan flirts with assessment throughout document.
4. We are in agreement with student learning and improvement

1. If we are talking about student learning and improving student learning, we must be discussing FORMATIVE assessment in addition to SUMMATIVE assessment.
1. Need to educate the public about the difference between Formative and Summative assessment: Formative allows us to find the deficiencies…summative – especially if used for performance funding – will not be embraced as a method to make improvements (i.e., to “find the warts”)
2. We need to find a way to operationally define “formative assessment” so the general public understands what we mean.
2. should not do assessment only at the end of the student’s career

2. Is there a movement away from assessment in the state?
1. Paul Wagner: The document is geared toward the public and getting them through the door. We want to say the product we’re producing is ready to compete in the global economy.
2. Comment: The document is a more global document.
3. Comment: We’re just asking for a couple of points in strategy 2 that emphasize the importance of learning
4. Comment: Issue 2.5 – is there a coded meaning (i.e., VSA)
5. Paul: CAOs from around the state indicated they would participate, so the MDHE did not engage in any top-down organization/pressure
6. Comment: There is a disconnect between the VSA and FORMATIVE assessment. We will be using measures of general education.
3. RECOMMENDATION: Assessment and student learning should be more prominent and greater focus either as a separate strategy or as part of Issues 2 and 3. Also, we recommend that the importance of institutional mission diversity is more prominently recognized in an action step.

PERFORMANCE FUNDING: RE: Paul’s email/question

1. HEF-T group needs to find ways to measure statewide general education
1. How do we respect differences across institutions? Institutions doing a good job should be rewarded for continuing to do a good job

1. internal performance: reward for maintaining good quality or improving
1. not going to provide more points for one institution than another
2. Comment: Must be careful we do not reward mediocrity. For example, if institution scores at the 40th percentile on a gen ed assessment then we wouldn’t want to reward that, necessarily—important to make comparisons to external sector/peer group

2. General education: Missouri’s 42 – hour block vs. Liberal education, the latter which incorporates both discipline and ‘general education’ courses over 4 year education. We can/must focus on the assessment of the 42 hour block.
3. Much discussion on the validity of currently available “general education” standardized tests  ensued

1. Is the MAPP, for example, a good assessment tool for our own 42-hour gen ed block?
1. consideration must be given to the fact that VSA requires freshmen/senior testing; this means the assessment would be given year or two after they finish their gen eds
2. suggestion that the state institutions develop its own assessment for our own 42 hour block
1. comment: we do not want to add another assessment—students will perceive we are assessing them too much
2. Could we focus on the intellectual skills rather than the content areas of the specific tests? For example, the MAPP critical thinking, etc.
1. What about academic gains?
2. MDHE wants to be able to measure gen ed assessment against external benchmark and against institution over time (i.e., test needs to be normed)
3. Frequency counts of what institutions participating in call use to assess Gen Ed:
1. CAAP: 4
2. MAPP: 7
3. CLA: 2
4. C-BASE: 1

4. Sector-based benchmarking

1. Can we use the peer-group identified by NSSE to benchmark against for gen ed purposes?
2. Can we agree on a common method to choose sector/peer-group?
1. We might have 15 different institutions with 15 different peer groups

5. We endorse the idea of using our current gen ed assessments and establishing peer comparisons; question is how do we establish them?

1. Paul wants us to get away from comparison to peer groups
2. Discussion goes back to using peer groups chosen by the testing organization
1. We need to be informed of how the testing organizations select the peer groups

6. RECOMMENDATION: We endorse the idea of establishing peer comparisons for benchmarking purposes and that we should investigate the validity of using testing companies’ (i.e., ETS) established peer groups for benchmarking or other agreed upon process. For this purpose, we will use VSA-approved assessments. (approved)

Minutes submitted by Doug Dunham