Assess THIS

Corporate Jet Hire Educationalism
Say what you’re going to do
Do it.
Say what you did.
Prove it.

Accountability.

Ultimately it's all
about delivering a
good college education,
right? According to
the inspectors, the
commission, the
validators.

Assessors. .
They should know.
Nuns with Rulers.

It’s about compliance,.
necessary evil, SACS
and I guess funding and
accreditation and staying
in business. in these turbulent
times and even when the
sun shines: then,
too.

What is IT we hope to
provide in a Liberal Art
education as opposed
the majors and minors
of liberal arts vocation
and career & resumes
a um?

I've been interested in how
a term, word, will change sign
(value) as it is used/abused
UP the hierarchy of levels.

What's "good" for me is not
necessarily GOOD for WWC
and GOOD for WWC may
not be GOOD for Western N.C:
systems within systems within
system—but each having a
radically differing value from
the one above and below as
above not necessarily below..

“Collaborative Genius,” says
Keith Sawyer, demands an
environment that can encourage
failure and recognize the resource
in confusion and the liability
of too much clarity.

Factor that in to our compliance
program: meta-& multi-level
assessmentalism. how to build
ice-cream parlors in hell and do
no damage to hot and cold.

For me—assessment&evaluation.
it’s industrial strength cleansing ability
is a Not Good in what-it-is I attempt
to do.

Higher up the hierarchy of learning,
(in my colleague’s courses, say) it’s
very good motivation, a stimulus
package.

Now: what kind of language can do
justice to the values on all levels
without us getting messed up by
the terms we use?

Assess
Evaluate
Grade
Accountability
Consistency,
Accuracy
Coherence...

all in the evaluation family, if not in assess-
mentalism (which often gets collapsed with
evaluation, Don Ray reminds me: so-called
mere description naturally infused with
tacit, implicit, under cover and unexamined
values)

Really: it's a delightful problem, if we could
put IT in PLAY. But I confess, it threatens
and scares me: its finished product emphasis
eclipsing "front end" generativity and
the mothers of invention. .

If these values (unredeemed) dominate the
whole deal, then the wiggle room and sloppy
trial & error it TAKES to get better and GOOD
is smothered—damaging both sides of the
desk and across the aisle, damnit.

Listen to the SOUND of The Accreditation Czars.
their language.

What are we calling Liberal Art if not the ability
to hear and to think Of any misery in the sound
of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land Full of the same
wind That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow, And,
nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not
there and the nothing that is.

(Ripping-off a little Wallace Stevens
reconfigured to fit my screed,
a crime of passion. Pathetic)

xxxooo, Sam