To the Core: College Composition Classrooms in The Age of Accountability, Standardized Testing, and Common Core State Standards

Abstract

An explanation of the history of standardized tests in the US reveals the ways they have shifted from tools of articulation to tools of accountability not only in K–12 classrooms but also in higher education. Understanding the competing interests at play and the potential effects of the Common Core State Standards at the college level is crucial to reasserting assessment as a teaching and learning practice instead of a system of accountability.

Notes

¹ Many thanks to RR reviewers Maureen Daly Goggin and Duane Roen for their insightful feedback on earlier versions of this essay.

² As evidence of this increase, we can look to the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), which has grown the number of participating higher education institutions to seven hundred from its inception in 2002. Further, CAE (Council for Aid to Education), the organization that administers the CLA, is working with those developing Common Core State Standards Assessments to ensure alignment between their standardized tests and those used at the college level such as the CLA.

³ For more on the role of the National Defense of Education Act on the shape of rhetoric and composition as a field, see Strain.

⁴ It is important to note that of equal importance may be the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which required a report on the Equality of Education Opportunity. This report resulted in a nation-wide standardized test administered prior to the first NAEP, the results of which can be found in The Coleman Report (Coleman).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joanne Addison

Joanne Addison is Associate Professor of Writing Studies in the Department of English at the University of Colorado Denver. Her research interests include empirical methods and methodology, computer-based and online writing instruction, and student retention. Her work has appeared in Written Communication, Computers and Composition, English Education, and College Composition and Communication as well as edited collections.

Sharon James McGee

Sharon James McGee is Professor and Chair of the Department of English Language and Literature at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Her scholarship focuses on research methods/methodologies, writing across the curriculum, and writing program administration. Her work has appeared in Writing on the Edge, College Composition and Communication, and edited collections.

Together they are working on a book that argues for reasserting the agency of teachers and students in the practice and assessment of writing instruction.