Now here’s a first, an academic admitting why objective, rigorous, externally supervised assessment of student performance sparks “terror” in the hearts of the professoriate:
When we perform assessment for “them” [parents, boards of regents, taxpayers, legislatures], the consequences are much more terrifying because we do not control who uses these data or the purposes of their use. One of the uses of assessment for “them” is for accreditation, which can bring particularly negative consequences. We wake up in the middle of the night with visions of newspaper headlines publicly disclosing our poor performance. (Inside Higher Ed)