City College of San Francisco - California Competes

THEME II
Over half of the colleges reported that one of the first steps they took was the development of some type
of common examination administered to students enrolled in a specific sequential basic skills class. To
develop these assessment tools, the faculty focused on the core skills and competencies that students
needed to succeed in the subsequent course. In effect, the faculty dealt with learning outcomes for two
classes to assess the effectiveness of instruction in one class. While no single assessment instrument can
be expected to fully measure the learning outcomes for an entire course (let alone predict with complete
accuracy student success in a subsequent course), the act of developing these assessment tools produced
much clearer delineations of the intended outcomes for courses, insights into how to assess those
outcomes, and, most important, how to improve those outcomes through course modifications and
improvement in instruction. These were not efforts to “teach to the test.” They focused on the faculty’s
use of the results of the assessment to improve their students’ learning. As Carnegie Foundation resident
senior scholar Lloyd Bond, a highly respected expert in assessment, summarized this phenomenon,
“You start with the test, and work backwards to what goes on in the classroom.” The experience that
the CCSF English Department had with the implementation of its common exam for English 94 is an
excellent example of this process and its potential consequences. 6 While the English Department started
with a single purpose—assessing a limited set of outcomes in a crucial course in the reading and composition
sequence—the results of that assessment led to a thorough revision of the course and a reassessment
of the other courses in the sequence.
Many community college English departments use holistically graded essays or portfolio reviews as a
significant exit measure for a course. While state regulations specify that California community colleges
cannot have “exit tests” for courses, these exams or portfolios frequently are so heavily weighted in calculating
the term grade that the exam or portfolio has been, de facto, a kind of exit test. These holistically
graded exams or portfolios are supposed to reflect the validity of a course’s objectives. The variations in
student success on these exams are generally attributed to the expected variations in student achievement,
differences in instructional quality, or, in some cases, the variability or the quality of the exam or portfolio
evaluation process. Rarely does the assessment seem to reflect back on the validity of the essential
objectives of the course itself. The CCSF English Department, through a combination of serendipity
and strategy, found that when such assessment tools are chronologically distanced from the end of term
and their impact on individual student’s success or failure is minimized, they can much more effectively
direct faculty attention to the integrity of a course outline and their own classroom practices.
The context. English 94 is an integrated developmental reading and writing course in the middle of a
five-course composition sequence ending with English 1A. English 94 is two levels below 1A. Given the
size and diversity of the College’s student population, English 94 accounts for approximately 20 percent
of the composition offerings, with between 37 and 44 sections scheduled every semester. Historically,
English 94 has been the “problem class” in the College English composition sequence. Because students
enter English 94 through one of three pathways—English 92, the previous course in the sequence; ESL 82,
the final course in the ESL sequence; and directly from testing and placement—the course presents faculty
with a challenging heterogeneous student population with highly varied linguistic, writing, and thinking
skills compounded by deficiencies in college success skills. In addition, over the years, the English
sequence has undergone many transformations that range from abolishing an old de facto tracking
system, designed to distinguish between transfer and vocationally oriented students, to efforts to maximize
students’ ability to use a broad range of sequential courses to meet transfer institutions’ general
education written communication requirements. As a result, some of these sequential course outlines
have what one faculty member typifies as an “everything but the kitchen sink approach” to defining the
expected outcomes. This, in turn, provides for extremely divergent interpretations of the course’s priorities
by the many faculty teaching the very large number of sections.
6 This description of the English 94 initiative at CCSF is partially adapted from a Listserv essay titled “Course-Based Assessment
as a Catalyst for Curricular Change.” Learning Assessment Listserv. Published 19 May 2004. Accessible at
266 CITY COLLEGE OF SAN FRANCISCO