Weekly Response: Yancey's "Writing Assessment in the Early 21st Century"

Yancey gives background about how writing was assessed leading up to the last decade or so.  The questions asked are thought-provoking--who should be in charge of assessment, administrators or teachers? What are we assessing? How? I think sometimes the "testing" folks and the teachers don't really stop to think about these things. It's like a machine that just rolls, and no one stops to ask questions about why is it rolling and in what direction and who's driving??

One thing I love about this class is that it's so relevant to everything I'm doing right now. The Writing Committee at NJIT was just tasked with reading the most recent WPA Outcomes Statement. We were asked to write a response to the statement taking into consideration our department, our current syllabi and pedagogy, and our student population. So cool to have just done that and now read about how and why it came about, and what has happened since. I am certain that no one else on the committee except the director has read any of the scholarly articles regarding assessment that we have in this class. There is no one in the department with a background in Composition. Interesting. Yancey says some schools use them as-is, while others adapt them. We have never used the outcomes (or even acknowledged their existence as far as I know), but we're hoping to use them as a guide for a new NJIT Outcomes Statement as we rewrite the curriculum for our FYW program. Am I a nerd, or is that kind of exciting?

We use the St. John's model at NJIT. We evaluate portfolios to evaluate both the students and the program, but I don't think we do a great job of it. St. John's realized through assessment of the program that they need to focus on research skills.  We do, too, but I'm not sure how we came to that conclusion as a department. The University of Kentucky model seem a bit complex, but it lead to solid program assessment and action items for improvement.

The local vs. national question is interesting and, it seems, a little silly. You need both, of course. The question shouldn't be framed as either/or, but how to balance the two. National, though, should be evaluated carefully, if it is handed down by the government.

The portfolio situation is true at the micro-level of NJIT. While Yancey says programs differ as to whether they allow students or teachers or departments to decide what is included in portfolios, whether it's final work or all drafts and notes, and whether it's electronic or print, we differ by class sections. The department requests that certain items be included in the portfolios. Most adjuncts comply, but the tenured folks do as they please, rarely complying with requests of the department. This makes assessment difficult, because there is no consistency among the FYW program final deliverables for evaluation.

Yancey, in note 6, seems to advocate for keeping the decision making regarding outcomes and assessment of outcomes in the hands of the educated professionals, and not in the hands of the federal government. I would agree with her. It seems the more involved the government gets, the less education our children receive.