by Jan Schwartz

The Lumina Foundation released a report this week that unveils a framework for measuring student learning.  (The Foundation is a private, independent foundation that helps to expand access to education beyond high school).  It’s a framework for defining the knowledge and skills that students should acquire before earning an associate degree, a bachelor degree and a master degree and they are calling it the Degree Qualification Profile.

I was thinking about where career school diplomas or certificates would fit into this profile because the profile is meant to be useful regardless of the student’s field of study.  My sense is that the associate degree profile would be appropriate, but then when I think about what constitutes a passing grade is in some schools, I wonder.  The third bullet in the profile for applied associate degrees is: “Generates substantially error-free (bold mine) products, reconstructions, data, etc. or juried exhibits or performances as appropriate to the field.”  Because of the number of school site visits I’ve done for accrediting agencies, both national and specialized, I’ve seen what various schools consider passing grades.  Many of them are at 65%, and most at 70%.  How do we rationalize it being ok for students to be mediocre?  A 65% means the student doesn’t know 35% of the material and a 70% means they don’t even know ¾ of it.  These percentages do not qualify for substantially error-free in my mind.

I don’t understand the reasons behind a minimum level of knowledge to be able to, well, sort of make it.  Do we think that someone who gets out of school knowing only slightly more than half of the material will get a job? And if they happen to score one, even for a little while, how does that reflect on the profession?

Thoughts?

Photo credit: Flickr, Travis_Simon