Gallagher, C.. “Being There: (Re)Making the Assessment Scene. ” College Composition and Communication 62.3 (2011): 450-476. ProQuest Education Journals, ProQuest. Web. 27 Feb. 2011.
Because this article was focused on assessment, I thought it would be a good companion piece to the Driscoll and Wood readings. In this article Gallagher discusses the current scene of assessment in general but with a particular focus on writing assessment. He argues that assessment is now dominated by the “neoliberal logic” of market fundamentalism with private companies too often dictating how students should be assessed and pushing for standardization. He argues that this scenario undermines faculty assessment expertise while favoring the expertise and products of the testing industry. Gallagher also argues that the field of rhetoric and composition studies finds itself in the defensive position in this debate because our discourse too often focuses on “stakeholders”. He goes on to propose “a rewriting of the assessment scene that abandons the stakeholder theory and asserts faculty and student agency in the form of leadership for writing assessment.” Gallagher, like many other faculty members in this field and others is frustrated by the recent push toward standardization and the loss of freedom and independence of faculty in creating their own curricula and assessments, and he puts the blame not only on private educational testing companies who pursue their own profits above authentic student learning, but he also blames faculty and educators for allowing this dynamic to occur without challenging the underlying logic and ideology of such a system. While this piece is interesting, it is also a bit long and dry, and it is more applicable to abstract assessment theory rather than hands on practical tools for teaching.
WOW. Assessment as profit, as business. I had not thought about that. I wonder just how much of this is impacting students/teachers? And I have often wondered about the tests that are required like the GRE and others. Who creates these? On what basis? Can or should a person’s whole life or at least major parts of it be so impacted by a test someone somewhere created? I have often had grave reservations about this and now there’s the business side to it all. A friend just took the LSAT. There were a couple of thousand persons there taking it at about $130 per person. Security was tighter than much you would find in D.C.! This test will play a significant role in determining who gets in law school and who doesn’t. I know we have to have means of assessment. But when it becomes BIG business, that causes me great concern. Thanks, Jennifer, for raising this and other issues. Bass
But what allowed these businesses to prosper? They may be filling a gap created by other outside entities such as state goverments trying to provide some level of standardization. If the state or the institutions are unable or unwilling to actually provide the resources to achieve this, than it provides an opening for businesses to fill the gap. Hopefully these testing products are backed by experts in their rspective fields.