Lurching toward authentic assessment: Stories from the battlefield

From the Chronicle of Higher Education, news of ongoing efforts to improve the assessment of teacher training programs. From the article:

Before long, nearly every state should have the capacity to do the kinds of analysis that Louisiana has done, tracing schoolchildren's academic performance back to their teachers' teachers.

To many observers, these databases are a long-overdue step toward a real understanding of the quality of higher education.

But other people say poorly designed analyses might do more harm than good. The standardized tests that underlie these reports are themselves controversial, of course. Beyond that, some education deans worry that states will crunch the numbers in crude ways that misidentify teachers' effects on their students.

And now, for the rest of the story...