Spellings Wants to Use Accreditation as a Cudgel

She may push for changes in the process as part of her 'action plan'

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By BURTON BOLLAG

Washington

When the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education delivered its final report to the secretary of education in September, accreditors and many higher-education leaders breathed a small sigh of relief. The document did not endorse an early recommendation that the current accreditation system be completely dismantled.

While the report said the process by which colleges were accredited had "significant shortcomings" and was in need of a "transformation," the commission took a much softer tone on the accreditation system than some college and higher-education association leaders had first feared.

Now, though, just a few months after the report's release, some of those concerns have returned, mainly because Margaret Spellings, the education secretary, has decided to focus on accreditors as part of her "action plan" to begin the most urgent changes proposed by the commission.

"Right now, accreditation ... is largely focused on inputs, more on how many books are in a college library, than whether students can actually understand them," Ms. Spellings said in a speech here in September after the report's release. "Institutions are asked, 'Are you measuring student learning?' And they check yes or no. That must change. Whether students are learning is not a yes-or-no question. It's how? How much? And to what effect?"

Next week Ms. Spellings will meet here with a few dozen accreditors, higher-education officials, and business leaders in what is being called an Accreditation Forum to discuss ways to make the measurement of student learning central to accreditors' oversight of colleges and universities.

In the wake of the Democratic takeover of Congress, the accrediting system is one of the few vehicles Ms. Spellings almost totally controls to drive her agenda. The Education Department reviews accreditors every five years, an occasion the agency often uses to persuade or cajole them to make changes in the way they operate. Without the resulting recognition, accreditors lose an important part of their utility to institutions: Students are eligible for federal aid only if their institutions are approved by recognized accreditors.

Department officials who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly gave one example of the accreditation process the secretary might be interested in changing: the teams of evaluators that visit colleges. She is concerned that the groups may not have enough expertise in some areas, particularly in examining the audit reports of a college's finances.

Many accreditors and college officials view next week's one-day gathering with varying degrees of suspicion, especially since several of them were never formally invited. Some fear that in the name of increased accountability Ms. Spellings will try to use the forum to promote solutions they think are simplistic, like comparing institutions on the basis of a few easily quantifiable indicators.

"One reason that some people are so opposed" to a government-sponsored discussion of measuring what students learn "is that it is a slippery slope," says Judith S. Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, an umbrella group for accreditors. "We could end up with national standards and federally set levels of expectations."

Credit Where It's Due

In particular, the agenda circulated for next week's meeting has caused an uproar among the accreditors, who say it contains certain incorrect assumptions. For example, the day is set to kick off with "a panel presentation by leading experts who will build a case for change from inputs to outputs."

Critics say that ignores a major shift in accrediting standards that has been under way for more than a decade, as accreditors have moved from examining elements like curricula and the portion of faculty members with terminal degrees to looking at indicators of what students have learned. In 1992, as part of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, Congress required accreditors to take into account student achievement. In 1998, in another edition of the Higher Education Act, lawmakers made it the most important factor for accreditors to consider.

"I'm offended," Steven D. Crow, executive director of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools' Higher Learning Commission, says of the panel on outputs. "I'm doing that already."

Mr. Crow leads the largest of the six regional accrediting groups, which together accredit nearly 3,000 institutions. "There is a perception — Secretary Spellings and [commission] chairman [Charles] Miller have expressed it in recent speeches — that is over 25 years old, that assumes we're just counting books and square feet."

Belle S. Wheelan, president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools' Commission on Colleges, agrees that Ms. Spellings's viewpoint may be dated. "There are some things we already do of which she may not be informed," she says.

Vickie L. Schray, an Education Department official who was also deputy director of the secretary's commission, readily acknowledges accreditors' shift toward measuring outcomes. But she says progress has been spotty. "A lot of folks would say they are already doing that," she says. "But many are not."

Because of a lack of evidence about student learning, she says, "we tend to put emphasis on inputs."

A community college, for example, may be required by its accreditor to have "faculty members with a master's degree, when CEO's or CFO's might be better." In this way, she says, accreditors may be "obstacles to innovation."

Complexity and Transparency

George D. Kuh, director of the Center for Postsecondary Research, at Indiana University at Bloomington, says he expects the discussion at the secretary's meeting to be animated because people with a variety of viewpoints have been invited. But he is one of many higher-education officials who worry that the group has an impossible task. Although Ms. Spellings insists she is not seeking a one-size-fits-all solution to the very complex problem of college performance, many officials fear she may be dragging colleges in just that direction.

"I know of institutions that have relatively high completion rates, but low student-engagement levels," says Mr. Kuh, suggesting that students graduate without having learned much. "I'm not opposed to reporting," says Mr. Kuh, who is director of the National Survey of Student Engagement, which measures how involved students are in academics and campus activities. "But the potential for mischief is great."

Mr. Miller, chairman of the secretary's commission, says he plans to tell accreditors at the meeting that in this time of rising college costs and demands for more accountability, they are falling short. They often tell institutions to "spend more money and hire more people," he says, when what they should be asking colleges is "what can you do better and more efficiently?"

Mr. Miller and Ms. Spellings want the accreditation process to be more open to the public. But many accreditors fear that could undermine their effectiveness in helping institutions improve. Small and private colleges in particular will be reluctant to talk about their problems, some accreditors say, if they know that information will be made public.

Yet accreditors are divided. At a meeting that Ms. Eaton's accrediting council held last month to discuss the commission's recommendations, "there were big differences of opinion on what the public needs to know," she says. "Some at the meeting said, 'The climate has changed, and we need to act,'" says Ms. Eaton. Those agencies, she says, are ready to disclose more from their reviews of institutions or programs, and willing to require institutions to carry out — and publish — more measurements of student learning.

"But others said, 'We don't have any verifiable information on what the public wants or needs,'" says Ms. Eaton. Her group is planning several focus groups to help answer the question.

Pushing Forward

The draft agenda for the secretary's meeting says the gathering should identify strategies to carry out the commission's recommendations, including that accreditors strengthen the measurement of student learning and support "innovation and productivity" at colleges.

The problem is, the commission's report recommends little in the way of specific measures for accreditors other than stressing the need for greater openness — disclosing more information to help students make a more informed choice of a college. Ms. Spellings, too, has said little about concrete steps she would like to see, and has indicated she hopes the meeting will provide some answers.

"The secretary wants to know how willing accreditors are in moving forward in learning outcomes and making the results public," says Jane V. Wellman, a consultant with the Institute for Higher Education Policy, who was invited to the forum as an expert.

The agenda lists seven questions for participants to discuss. One asks how accreditors should ensure they get reliable data "that allow appropriate comparisons among institutions considering differences in mission and other factors."

More specifically, another question asks, "What core measures of student achievement and related performance outcomes (e.g., course and program completion, degree attainment, certification and licensing, job placement) should be used by accreditation agencies in accreditation decisions for institutions and programs?"

Still, Ms. Schray, the deputy director of the secretary's commission, says this meeting will not focus on another type of measure recommended by the panel: giving students' any of a number of stand-ardized tests to see what they have learned.

Ms. Schray says the meeting is expected to come up with concrete proposals affecting the accreditation process. "I'm hopeful there are things we could do under current legislative authority," says Ms. Schray.

Education Department officials say privately that Ms. Spellings would like to put ideas that come out of the meeting in place quickly through the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, the department's panel that recognizes accreditors. That group could demand that the accreditors require more of what the secretary wants out of colleges or else the accreditors could be decertified.

Adequate Representation?

Some higher-education officials are troubled by the slim number of accreditors who have been invited to next week's meeting. Cynthia A. Davenport, executive director of the Association of Specialized and Professional Accreditors, says of her group's approximately 50 member organizations, she knows of only two groups that have been invited: ABET, the accreditor of science, computing, engineering, and technology programs, and the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education.

Her members, who also include the accreditors of medical, architecture, and rabbinical programs, "feel they need to be part of the discussion."

Only three of the presidents of the six regional accrediting association have been invited. Besides Mr. Crow and Ms. Wheelan, the president of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges' Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, Barbara A. Beno, was also asked to come to the meeting.

Even so, critics say that in some ways the choice of invited experts is reassuring. The opening panel presentation will be led by Peter Ewell, vice president of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, which specializes in data-driven educational consulting. He, Mr. Kuh, the Institute for Higher Education Policy's Ms. Wellman, and another invitee, Trudy W. Banta, an assessment expert at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, are all widely respected.

"They all have strong views," says Jon W. Fuller, a senior fellow at the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, a group that has been particularly suspicious of Ms. Spellings's intentions. "But they are not extreme and are very knowledgeable."

Jeffrey Selingo contributed to this article.