City College of San Francisco - California Competes

THEME II
In an effort to facilitate student progress, the Koret project has experimented with allowing students who
successfully complete the linked courses to skip over the next level of composition (English 92) and move
directly into English 94. An assessment of the success of these students in English 94 has shown mixed
results. Some students are clearly ready for the more advanced class, while others clearly need the additional
development provided by English 92. At the same time, the effort to assess the outcomes of the
Koret project itself has been difficult and not as productive as anticipated. That assessment has used both
traditional outcomes measures (e.g., success rates for students in Koret classes compared to students in
regular sections of English 9 and 90) and extensive use of focus groups of students, faculty, and even tutors
involved in the project. While the faculty and students clearly value the Koret experience and believe it is
having a positive effect, the hard data is not as convincing. The combination of the need to better assess
the readiness of individual students for more advanced classes and the desire to develop more accurate
skills-based assessments of the Koret program itself has led to the development of a pilot portfolio review
project (see the Theme I essay for more information about this project).
The second pilot assessment project involves English 96, the last course in the sequence before the transfer-level
1A. One of the primary goals of the curriculum redesign has been to orient the pre-collegiate
reading and writing courses to specific skills required for academic success as students transition into both
the transfer-level writing courses and their other college-level studies. The Department has developed
expectations for the types of readings that will be used at each course level in an effort to integrate the
teaching of reading and writing and to ensure that students develop their abilities to master the type of
reading assignments they will encounter in college-level classes across disciplines. Therefore, in Spring
2005, the Department piloted a common reading assessment in nine sections of English 96 to assess the
students’ independent reading comprehension, using a combination of objective questions and essay
responses. This is a very focused and limited assessment that the Department hopes it can use to more
effectively determine the various levels of comprehension that can be expected of students as they prepare
to enter the transfer-level sequence, and, eventually, to help the Department to develop interventions
throughout the sequence to improve those skills and measure those outcomes.
Are grades enough During the workshops conducted on the new accreditation standards, many faculty
and administrators questioned the need for expanded assessments related to the SLO paradigm, stating
that grades given by faculty are adequate for assessment. Grades are certainly one of the tools faculty can
use in assessing instructional effectiveness. However, grades are the evaluation of progress by individual
students, not an overall assessment of instructional effectiveness and aggregate student learning. Grades
can be used as a basis for SLO assessment (in addition to other types of assessment) when they are coupled
with strategies for improvement. However, in the discussion of the need for other types of assessment, the
discussion inevitably came around to “show me the evidence.” That is to say, if we are going to become
actively engaged in a major effort to assess learning outcomes beyond the methods we currently use, said
the workshop participants, then you are going to have to convince us that this effort will produce meaningful
outcomes other than simple compliance with the Accrediting Commission’s new standards. In some
ways, the workshop participants were asking for evidence of effectiveness in much the same way the new
standards require institutions to provide evidence of effectiveness. As the College-wide discussion about
outcomes assessment continues, it will be important for faculty to guide professional development opportunities
that focus on their learning about different ways to assess outcomes and how that can improve
teaching and learning. The experience of the English Department suggests some evidence of the benefits
for certain types of outcomes and programs promoting those outcomes.
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