Standardized Test Proposal for Texas Colleges Stalls (HT:DF)

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/05/01/critical-thinking-test-mandate-colleges-stalls/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=alerts&utm_campaign=News%20Alert:%20Subscriptions

Standardized Test Proposal for Texas Colleges Stalls

• by Reeve Hamilton

A proposal requiring Texas public universities to administer a standardized test, one that has been the subject of significant national debate, appears to be stalled, but the debate over the assessment appears to be far from over.

The Collegiate Learning Assessment, launched in 2000 and run by the Rand Corporation's Council for Aid to Education, purports to measure the critical thinking, writing and analytical skills gained in college by testing students as entering freshmen and exiting seniors. It has been a major flashpoint in higher-education circles since the 2011 release of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, a book by social scientists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. They found that more than one-third of those who took the test did not show significant improvement in these areas over four years in college.