Put Student Work at the Center of Accountability Efforts, Authors Argue

By Dan Berrett

Students would be likely to learn more in college and academic rigor would be increased, say two higher-education leaders, if faculty members and accountability advocates focused on a deceptively simple idea: Ask students to produce original work and judge them on it, not on how they perform on standardized tests or how many hours they spend in class.

This idea underlies a new paper, by Peter T. Ewell, vice president of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, and