Review of "Measuring college learning responsibly: Ac- countability in a new era"

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Shavelson, Richard J. (2010). Measuring college learning responsibly: Accountability in a new era. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Pages: 238. Price: 25.50 CAD (paper).In his book, Measuring college learning responsibly: Accountability in a new era, Shavelson sets out to provide a summary and critical evaluation of creating learning assessment and accountability systems that support the improvement of teaching and learning and at the same time systems that will provide external accountability. He claims that this book presents alternatives to existing methods of learning assessment and accountability systems that aim to significantly improve college teaching and learning and for delivering information to external audiences. He has been developing the ideas for this book with targeted groups such as policy makers in educational, governmental, and public institutions, for almost 20 years. The history of learning assessment and its development is chronologically organized and smoothly transitions into the topic of accountability. A summary of each of the book's chapters follows.In Chapter 1, the policies regarding post-secondary learning assessment are discussed, followed by Chapter 2 where Shavelson explores measuring learning in post-secondary education. In Chapter 3, readers are provided with a history of learning assessment from the 19th century to the present. Here, the author refers the College Learning Assessment (CLA), which he helped to develop. All of chapter 4 is devoted to a more in-depth discussion of CLA. Chapter 5 provides the author calls two exemplary campus assessment- of-learning programs. Here, readers are introduced to these programs along with the post-secondary institutions (Alverno College and Truman College) that host them. The chapter also provides a case study of four universities. Chapters 6 through 10 expand the discussion of the topic of learning assessments and their accountability in post-secondary institutions. Chapter 6 stresses the importance and urgency of increasing the accountability of information in post-secondary institutions. Chapter 7 explains accountability is and as suggested by the chapter title, State Higher Education Accountability and Learning Assessment, Chapter 8 explores state universities and assessment policies. Finally, Chapters 9 and 10 deal with post-secondary institutions' accountability outside of, and within, the United States. Here, the author presents the importance of measurement tools to evaluate teaching effectiveness due to the need for assessing postsecondary institutions' accountabilities.For some time now, there has been a serious need to develop instruments that assess the quality of learning and teaching. However, the questions of who should be held accountable for such developments and how should they be held accountable serve as roadblocks to quality assessment instruments and accountable conductors. We also know that learning is a quality that is intangible. Consequently, parts of learning should be assessed has been a question rather than what learning should be assessed and in ways (p.133). Moreover, those accountability measurement instruments currently available are at times overused and in some cases, deemed as inadequate. Thus, Shavelson takes this historical background as his opportunity to provide some possibilities for previously unanswered questions.The author is considered extremely credible in this field; however, since the author was involved closely with the development of CLA, his vision and opinion regarding CLA could be considered biased. Therefore, additional assessments of CLA would likely add to the assessment of the accountability and validity of the instrument. …