Background on System-Wide Assessment
  

The University Faculty Senate passed three resolutions over the past two years which indicated opposition to a common, uniform, system-wide assessment of General Education. University Faculty Senate President Joe Hildreth summarized the basic objections to system-wide assessment as follows: 

1. Faculty should be responsible for the curriculum. If a System-wide test is administered, faculty will be forced to teach to the test and lose the control of the curriculum. 

2. The Faculty Senate supports campus-based assessment. It is inappropriate to move ahead with System-wide assessment before we have had the opportunity to implement or evaluate campus-based assessment.

3. Faculty are concerned that the assessment data will be disclosed in such a way that inappropriate comparisons between campuses with widely different missions will be made. Instead of improving teaching and learning, this could damage it.

4. The cost of System-wide assessment will be expensive. Our University has already absorbed too many unfunded mandates from the past. In a time of severe financial stress, the return of this assessment initiative will not be worth the cost. 

Early this calendar year, Chancellor King announced to the University Faculty Senate that he had asked the Provost to organize a meeting with faculty from the University Faculty Senate and the Faculty Council of Community Colleges to discuss their objections to system-wide assessment. Associate Provost Don Steven was to co-chair this meeting and to co-chair a subsequent task force charged to develop a memorandum of understanding on how assessment in general might take place.  The task force includes administrators, faculty from the SUNY stae-operated colleges, and from the SUNY community colleges.

Before this task force report was complete, in June 2003, Trustee Candace DeRussy attempted to introduce a Board of Trustees resolution calling for common uniform system-wide assessment. In response, the Chancellor proposed his own version of such a resolution which was passed by the trustees. A copy is available on this web site.


From: SUNY UFS - Hildreth, Joe 
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2003 17:15 
Subject: Resolution On Assessment

Today the SUNY Board of Trustees passed Chancellor King's resolution on assessment. Stephanie Gross, the student Trustee, asked to have the resolution tabled, but the motion failed due to no second. She presented the only no vote. I was not allowed to speak during the meeting before the vote, however, I did speak with Chancellor King, Provost Salins, Don Steven, Candace de Russy and Kimberley Reiser for 15 minutes before the meeting. 

During this pre-Board meeting, I expressed my opposition to the resolution. Among the points made were:

1) The Faculty have acted in good faith by bringing our concerns to the table.

2) The Task Force has engaged these concerns and progress has been made.

3) The whole issue now needs to be shared with the Executive Committees and the entire Senate. This is good process. It is not good process to now move a resolution. This will certainly result in strong faculty opposition.

The pre-meeting ended without agreement.

I am very disappointed in this action. The University Senate has acted in good faith and this has not been honored.

Joe Hildreth


Subsequently the task force has continued to work on a memorandum of understanding. However, some faculty from various campuses believe that at this stage the SUNY faculty should simply refuse to cooperate any further with the assessment process.