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| David Clemens |
By David Clemens
Monterey Peninsula College
The astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle once said that “When a starting point is wrong, the more impeccable the logical development the worse the result.” That is, if you begin with a false idea and reason carefully from it, you can quite logically end up with disastrous consequences. The theory of outcomes-based education proceeds from such false starting points, which would reasonably lead to their never becoming the issue they are today. Unfortunately, reason is not part of the discussion. And if Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) are not about reason, neither are they about education. That SLOs are about “student learning” is the first, and biggest, lie. There is no objective evidence that SLOs have any positive effect on learning at all, although there is evidence that they negatively affect learning because they encourage dumbing down and teaching to the test.
SLOs aren’t waning
SLOs have been waxing and waning at least since the 1980s. The urgent problem today is that they are not waning anymore. A few years ago, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, (WASC), adopted SLOs as a totalizing basis for accreditation and in a single stroke made fundamental changes in the definition of what we do and the way we do it.
For years we had been assured that “Assessment rubrics and student learning outcomes are just data collection and will never be used for teacher evaluation.” In fact, expected outcomes and assessment schemes are perfectly suited for use on teacher evaluation forms and already have been. But anyone who actually teaches knows that the most important factor in education is the student. The greatest effects on student learning are the individual student’s knowledge of subject, self motivation, language proficiency, disposition, parental support, social skills, talent, physical and mental health, preparation, cultural background, religious beliefs, political persuasion, commitment, desire, determination, level of cognitive growth, age, and work ethic. Student learning outcomes are silent on all these factors.
Yet as of last year, SLOs are already a component of teacher evaluation. WASC Accreditation Standard III: Resources reads:
Faculty and others directly responsible for student progress toward achieving stated student learning outcomes have, as a component of their evaluation, effectiveness in producing those learning outcomes.
Here we have a clear conflict between negotiated evaluation procedures and accreditation imperatives. WASC has usurped the authority of the unions to negotiate evaluation.
Another oft-repeated lie is that “SLOs and assessment do not intrude on your classroom.” Wrong. Where “assessment” intrudes most is by insisting that all learning is observable and measurable. This may be true in vocational or performance courses such as nursing or cello, but it is false in humanities or art courses.
Affecting evaluation
Because student attainment of stated SLOs will affect teacher evaluation, SLOs actually create downward pressure on curricular standards. If I am to be judged by my students’ achievement on outcomes tests and SLO guarantees, I will spend my class time on the most testable and achievable SLOs so as to insure “student success” on the exit test. The next step involves the current buzzword: “alignment.” Certainly, if the English 1A SLOs at one college are producing a higher metric of “student success” than other schools, the logic of SLOs is to identify such “best practices” and create statewide alignment of them. Voila! One hundred nine schools, one curriculum, one set of outcomes, one exit test, and one set of textbooks.
Another common but egregious lie is that learning outcomes do not compromise academic freedom. On the contrary, SLOs are the greatest danger to academic freedom in my professional lifetime. The fact that WASC’s definition of SLOs mentions “attitudes” I find chilling. The heart of academic freedom is the conviction that both education and community suffer when teachers are forced to embrace a single viewpoint. To the contrary, our highest courts have held that society benefits when students are exposed to various academically legitimate yet contradictory ideas.
There’s no agreement
One of the key strategies of coercion employed by SLO zealots is that it’s all one big conversation and in the end we all agree. This is another lie intended to produce the appearance of consensus. I believe that it is vital to dispel this illusion. The word from U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to WASC is “SLOs or we will kill you and replace you with a federal bureaucracy.”
One last Big Lie for employee groups is that SLOs are not an increase in workload and an un-negotiated change in the terms and conditions of employment. In fact, those who have tried them on our campus have testified that SLOs create an epic data-storm. The training handbooks alone run 50-70 pages. And the disclaimer that this workload is only in the initial stages is another lie because SLOs are predicated on perpetual feedback cycles. Now on every trip up the hill, Sisyphus also has to go out and find a new rock.
I urge faculty to reject their efficacy, demand rigorous placement and pre-requisites, demand academic freedom, battle over wording, negotiate workload, and adopt only core competencies corrosive of SLOs themselves.
David Clemens teaches English at Monterey Peninsula College and presented his views on Student Learning Outcomes in a workshop at CCA’s Membership Conference in April.
