Colleges blast federal testing

In a public hearing Monday at Boston, university presidents from New England testified before President Bush's blue-ribbon Commission on the Future of Higher Education about such concerns as curriculum innovation, the complexity of financial aid, and the role of universities in student life, according to The Boston Globe. Standardized testing also came up (although as a secondary concern), and the academics were roundly opposed to it. Reported Sarah Schweitzer of The Globe:

The presidents largely steered clear of the most controversial issue before the commission: standardized testing for college and university undergraduates. The chairman of the commission, Charles Miller, former head of the regents of the University of Texas, has suggested that a nationwide performance-comparison system would foster greater accountability in higher education.

Susan Hockfield, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said testing would harm universities.

''Standardized curricula or testing would limit our ability to educate, to develop new curricula, and to train the innovators we need," she said.

[Tufts University President Lawrence] Bacow said, ''I would ask the commission ... that you not recommend changes to the system that would ... impose uniform or common standards such as exist in many other nations."

In an online column,Globe op-ed writer Derrick Z. Jackson, who also covered the hearing, concentrated on issues of finance and access to higher education:

President Susan Hockfield of Massachusetts Institute of Technology led off the proceedings at the Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel by saying that in order to maintain democracy and compete in a global economy, the nation needs to expand scholarship aid to expand access to college. But she noted how Congress is cutting more than $12 billion from the federal budget for student loans over the next five years and has frozen the maximum for a Pell grant for the last four years. On top of that, she expressed her fear that without proper support of math and science in the nation's public schools, "we will be racing to make up in higher ed what is not being done" in K-12.

Also staffing the hearing was The Harvard Crimson, which devoted more attention to the testing issue. Here's how staff writers Lois Beckett and Stephanie Garlow led the story:

The presidents of MIT, Tufts, and Boston University attacked a suggestion by a federal higher education commission chair to implement standardized testing of college students at a public meeting of the commission yesterday.

If this suggestion were implemented, Harvard students might once again face the kind of mandatory testing many of them experienced through state-wide exams in grade school. But Harvard “would be reluctant to accept any form of standardized testing,” Senior Director of Federal and State Relations Kevin Casey said in an interview yesterday.

“Standardized curricula or testing would limit our ability to educate,” MIT President Susan Hockfield said at a meeting of the U. S. Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education in downtown Boston.

Noting that outgoing Harvard president Lawrence Summers was out of the country and not present at Monday's hearing, The Crimson said "three other presidents of Boston area universities said in their speeches to the commission that standardized testing would hinder educational innovation." Beckett and Garlow added:

Boston University President Robert A. Brown told the commission that a school’s own regulation of faculty expectations and grading policies, not a nationally administered test, is the appropriate way to assess educational quality.

Tufts President Lawrence S. Bacow said in his speech that standardized testing would not address the differences between institutions. “What works at Harvard or Tufts would not work at MIT, would not work at UMass,” he said in an interview yesterday.

The Crimson said a few students also spoke at the hearing:

Harvard Graduate School of Education student Jessica M. Bibeau, who spoke for three minutes during a public comment period, supported an alternative to the proposed testing.

“The purpose of this accountability system should not be to penalize a one-size-fits-all definition of poor performance, but rather to allow institutions to focus their efforts toward meeting their stated goals,” she said.

But most students who spoke sought to communicate to the commission the need for larger grants and cheaper loans, citing their own educational debt.

What education student Bibeau proposed sounds an awful lot like what colleges and universities do now as part of the accreditation process.