Rather than relying on traditional measures of student performance, new admissions procedures attempt to describe what students know and can do. |
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| I
think it is important for both faculty and students to feel as if what they are
doing is important. Students especially need to know that they are being
evaluated in many ways and what they do everywhere matters--not just in core
academic courses, but everywhere. When their goal is being admitted into
college, it's important for them to know that they need to be competent writers
in their English classes, as well as in their agriscience courses.
-High School Agriscience Teacher | I
think that competency-based admissions takes the pressure off of admissions
officers' backs by putting it on the high schools to say that this
apprenticeship does help students develop math skills and this is how. It is up
to them to determine whether it is valuable or not--defining the competencies
and skills the student has gained by participating. I think this is a very
useful tool for me in admissions to answer the question, "How does this
apprenticeship experience develop math skills?" It is very helpful to know that
those who are really working with students are evaluating them.
-Admissions Officer University of California, Berkeley |
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These two professionals' comments reflect many educators' sentiments about the use of new admissions procedures in four-year colleges and universities. Rather than relying on traditional measures of student performance, such as grades and the completion of Carnegie units in specific courses, these procedures attempt to describe what students know and can do. In this brief, we describe recently completed and continuing research aimed at assessing whether students who participate in career-related courses and work-based learning in high school benefit from these new assessments. We begin by describing the rationale behind efforts to redesign undergraduate admissions, noting some of the deficiencies in traditional measures used for student selection into colleges and universities. We then highlight recent initiatives in states where changing admissions have been developed: California, Wisconsin, Oregon, and Washington. Finally, we end with preliminary conclusions about the use of changing admissions procedures for students who follow a career-oriented curriculum in high school. Additional findings and conclusions will appear in Fall 1999 in the final report of this project.
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Ironically, while K-12 educators are trying to respond to the forces that have attracted more students to four-year colleges, it has become apparent that standard admission procedures in four-year institutions are an obstacle to educational reform. |
The rising demand for education at the baccalaureate level is, in part, a response to the increasing economic payoff. Among 25-34 year olds, men with a bachelor's degree or higher earned an average of 24% more per year than high school graduates in 1970, but in 1996, the college graduates' advantage had grown to 54%. For women, the additional earnings of college graduates compared to high school graduates rose from 68% in 1970 to 88% in 1996 (Witt et al., 1998). The large proportion of bachelor's degrees earned in occupational majors such as business, engineering, health, and education indicates that much of the demand for college is career-related. This proportion of occupationally focused bachelor's degrees expanded from 50.1% in 1971 to 59.1% in 1993 (Smith et al., 1996).
The same economic changes that have contributed to the rising payoff from a bachelor's degree have also given rise to a major reform movement in high schools and community colleges (Business Week, 1996; Olson, 1997). On the assumption that initial education and training now provide a smaller fraction of the knowledge and skills that people will need throughout their working lifetimes, schools and two-year colleges are offering students more opportunities to develop the capacity for continual learning in the context of work. High schools in particular are devising new courses of study that weave college-preparatory academic subject matter together with applications and experiences related to industries, occupations, and careers. Federal legislation enacted in 1990 and 1994, as well as laws in many states, encouraged the creation of new partnerships between schools and employers to provide work-based learning and integrated curricula that prepare students both for work and further education.
Ironically, while K-12 educators are trying to respond to the forces that have attracted more students to four-year colleges, it has become apparent that standard admission procedures in four-year institutions are an obstacle to educational reform. Current admission procedures that require specific numbers of Carnegie units in prescribed academic courses do not reflect the integrated curriculum and applied learning in which more students are now engaging. Worse yet, these conventional admission procedures may penalize students who spend time on multidisciplinary projects or in work-based learning programs through which they develop and use knowledge in applied contexts, rather than covering a traditional college-preparatory syllabus. For fear of jeopardizing students' chances of admission to selective colleges, some teachers and administrators are reluctant to pursue reforms even if they believe students would benefit from these reforms in other ways. A report by the National Governors' Association describes the problem:
On the one hand, postsecondary institutions are avoiding revising admissions standards until they see what shape the reforms will take and how widespread they will be. On the other hand, many states and school districts are reluctant to pursue reform efforts more aggressively until they are sure that higher education admissions processes will accommodate their students. (Houghton, 1997, p. 9)
Admissions offices in higher education institutions are ill-equipped to evaluate applicants whose transcripts and application materials include evidence of contextual learning such as competency profiles, portfolios, or evaluations of interdisciplinary projects or workplace learning (Conley, 1996). Yet university admissions officers also recognize the need to accommodate these changes, as they may no longer be able to rely on a transcript which lists grades and Carnegie units in particular subjects. Some states are therefore allowing applicants to public universities to submit alternative evidence of what they know and can do. In addition to broadening access to public higher education, the hope is that these alternative measures also will be at least as effective as traditional measures in predicting students' success after they are admitted to college.
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Students who have had a nontraditional curricular experience in high school may be at a disadvantage when traditional measures are used as the basis for college admissions. |
Colleges have developed elaborate procedures to evaluate prospective students' potential, and their practices have become standardized at most four-year colleges in the U.S. With slight variations, students are required to provide a uniform set of application materials which includes a copy of the high school transcript (a student's cumulative grade point average [GPA] and class rank, as well as a list of completed courses), scores from standardized achievement tests (such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test [SAT] or the American College Testing [ACT] assessment), letters of recommendation, and an essay.
High school grades and standardized test scores are often given the strongest weight in deciding whom to admit because these two measures have been found to correlate positively with quantitative measures of success in college (first-year grades in particular). In the jargon, high school grades and standardized test scores are said to have "predictive validity."
Over the past 30 years, empirical estimates of predictive validity have revealed that, taken together, high school GPA and standardized test scores explain somewhere between 25 and 45% of the variance in freshman year college grades (Morgan, 1990; Ramist & Weiss, 1990). This range might be thought of as a baseline to gauge the suitability of alternative measures used in the college admissions process. At the same time, traditional measures of high school achievement have been criticized on grounds other than their predictive validity.
For example, high school GPA has been criticized for its lack of standardization (Augustine, 1997; Finn, 1997; Ravitch, 1995). Because the curricula taught from school to school and state to state may differ dramatically, comparisons of high school grades may disregard the underlying differences in course difficulties both within and between schools. Furthermore, the strictness or leniency with which teachers assign grades may vary dramatically, not only between districts and schools, but also within schools and academic departments. This discrepancy is borne out by widespread evidence of grade inflation (The College Board, 1998; Mullen, 1995; Ziomek & Svec, 1995).
At the same time, standardized tests have been criticized both for their technical quality and their consequential utility. In terms of technical quality, some have argued that students who can pay for test preparation services can artificially boost their scores on standardized tests (Stockwell, Schaeffer, & Lowenstein, 1991), while others have argued that tests are poor indicators of what students have learned before entering college (Kessel & Linn, 1996). With respect to consequential utility, some have argued that a reliance on standardized testing discriminates against students in terms of gender, ethnicity, and income (Crouse & Trusheim, 1988).
The debate over the merits of standardized testing continues (Allalouf & Ben-Shakhar, 1998; Stricker, Rock, & Burton, 1996; Willingham, Lewis, Morgan, & Ramist, 1990). In contrast, the use of letter grades and Carnegie units has received relatively little scrutiny. Few explicit claims are made that grades and course units are valid representations of student learning; there is only belief that they contain a degree of predictive validity in the context of college admissions. Yet, by themselves, GPAs from course units predict only a small fraction of the variance in college grades. If grades and course titles are not ideal guides for college admissions, it might reasonably be asked whether there is anything better.
Furthermore, students who have had a nontraditional curricular experience in high school may be at a disadvantage when traditional measures are used as the basis for college admissions. For example, some high schools have moved towards integrating subject areas to teach concepts in a holistic way. A course called "Integrated Science/Math" may be listed on a student's transcript. Admissions officers wonder what this course is about; does it meet the level of science and math required for college preparation? How does "Applied Calculus" meet the standards and level of regular calculus? How do admissions officers evaluate the two years of a youth apprenticeship that a student completed in a biotechnology company? Has that student learned the science concepts necessary to be prepared for college? Such questions are cause for concern to students and their parents. Guidance counselors and high school faculty wonder whether they are doing students a disservice by encouraging them to explore alternative curricula, while university admissions counselors are unsure about what students know and can do upon completing these unconventional high school courses (McCormick, Alt, & Geis, 1998). These issues have led some institutions and states to explore alternative procedures such as competency-based or proficiency-based assessments for use in college admissions. (The terms competency-based and proficiency-based are used interchangeably unless otherwise noted.)
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Institutions and states developing alternative admissions procedures may continue considering a few traditional factors for admission, but their primary emphasis is
building upon academic and skill standards at the K-12 level, design-ing proficiency-based admission standards that incorporate ex-plicit proficiencies or competencies across a range of disciplines, and communicating clearly what know-ledge and skills students should master prior to attending college. The new admissions processes look beyond course requirements, grade point averages, and standardized test scores to specify the types and levels of knowledge and skills that students must demonstrate prior to entering college. (Education Commission of the States, 1996, p. 2)
In a recent survey by the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO), approximately 14 states report that they have begun discussions or are considering using competency-based admissions (Russell, 1998). SHEEO researchers suggested viewing the use of competency-based admissions criteria along a continuum, rather than as the polar opposite of using traditional admissions approaches. According to their report, state actions range from creating exploratory task forces (New York, Iowa) to piloting projects in which competency-based admissions procedures can be used in lieu of traditional methods (California, Wisconsin) to passing state legislative mandates for implementation in the coming years (Oregon, Washington).
Four states are currently in the forefront of both discussing and implementing competency-based admissions policies and procedures: California, Wisconsin, Oregon, and Washington. Each of the four states has taken a different approach to designing proficiency-based assessment systems or policy options. In California and Wisconsin, competency-based admissions and transcript initiatives emerged from a series of pilot studies and special projects. They were not part of a redesign of the whole K-16 system; instead, they focused specifically on how secondary school reforms (e.g., integrated academic and vocational courses, international studies, or teaching "habits of mind") might be translated into criteria for admission to the four-year universities involved. In Oregon and Washington, in contrast, the new admissions policies and practices are directly linked to K-16 reforms which include new assessment standards for graduation from high school.
In 1998, a research team from NCRVE visited each of these four states. The information describing these four initiatives was drawn from individual and group interviews; observation of key meetings; analysis of documents, reports, and research; and small-scale analyses of particular aspects focusing directly on career-related learning. While all four of these states are in the early stages of development, the perspectives gleaned from their initial efforts identify key issues and implications for policy development.
