Look in the Mirror

Over the years, I have served on many not-for-profit boards.  My first such experience was shortly after I graduated from the CUNY Graduate School.  I joined the alumni association and ultimately served a term as President.  Most members of this board were recent graduates which I don’t think is unusual. Many of us thoroughly enjoyed our graduate experience and joining the alumni association was both an opportunity to stay in touch and to give back.  Subsequent to that experience I joined a number of other boards, most of which relate to schools and education in general.  I also interact with boards in community, business, government, religious, and educational settings.  For the most part I am very impressed with those individuals who serve on boards.  The pro bono work involved is much needed and much appreciated.

Board members often get reviewed at the end of their term prior to an assessment being made as to whether the person should be reappointed to another term. The criteria of work, wisdom and wealth are very much alive and the proportions vary greatly among not-for-profit organizations.

What I have seen less often is a board reviewing itself and its overall record of accomplishment and assessment of what works, what doesn’t work, and what should happen next. And yet this assessment and this conversation can be particularly invaluable.

Why am I writing about this now? In my role as Vice President of my local school board, I have spent much of today reviewing and collating the individual assessments of my fellow board member and my assessment as well.  The Board does such an evaluation every year and I have now completed three such evaluations (including this one) and this is my first opportunity to collate the responses.  The extensive list of topics in this evaluation covers Board Relations, Superintendent Relations, Community Relations, Staff and Personnel Relations, the Instructional Program, Fiscal, and Goals.  Within those heading there are a significant number of specific topics covering all aspects of the Board’s responsibility.  Board members are requested to check the appropriate box and rate the Board on a scale of 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest).  Questions include “Board members are prepared for meetings,” “Board members always demonstrate the educational well being of children as the top priority,” “Board members arrive at meetings on time,” “Board members respect the confidentiality off executive sessions,”  “The Board provides an effective orientation program for new board members,” “All board members demonstrate an understanding of the existing body of policy,” “The board works and plans with the superintendent in a spirit of mutual respect, trust, confidence and cooperation,” “The board encourages community assistance at meetings,” “The board uses established procedures for staff complaints and suggestions to the board,” “The Board provides sufficient resources for independent evaluation of programs,” “The Board employs clear policies on sound fiscal management,” and “The board establishes clearly defined annual goals.”  I have probably listed only ten percent of the actual questions but it does give a clear idea of how in-depth this self-analysis is. And what follows the tabulations of the results is a board conversation, at our annual retreat, on our performance.

Looking at the individual responses from my colleagues on the board and compiling them into a summary gives me even greater respect for this process and for this school board. All of us serving on a not-for-profit board need to take the time to review the work and the effectiveness of the board.  This is especially important in this era of outcomes assessment; our outcomes also need to be assessed.  I am certain that the end result of this process if taken seriously is an even more effective board, which of course was the purpose to begin with.

A Grating Exam

Anytime a semester ends, there are always multiple conversations about final examinations.  And final exams come in all sizes and shapes.  Not surprising, faculty focus their attention on the quality of the student work be it in response to short or multiple choice questions or in response to essay or term paper assignments.  Students tend to talk about whether an exam was “fair”: in other words did it cover the materials that the students were responsible for.  After that, the students tend to focus on whether the exam was clear or confusing and whether it was easy or hard.  Certainly there are extremes in all these categories but for the most part, faculty view the students’ work to be reasonable and responsible and students view the examination to also be reasonable and responsible.

A few weeks ago, I received a call from a friend who is also dean of a professional school.  Quickly the conversation evolved into a discussion of final examinations.  But this conversation was very different.  Normally as noted above, discussions regarding a final examination tend to focus more on the quality of the students work, and the fairness of the exam.  But this dean was focused not just on fairness but rather on exam appropriateness.  The dean’s point was that a faculty member had given an “F” exam, one which did not in any way cover the key points of the course.  On this exam, according to the dean, the student could receive a 100% and you would still not have any concrete notion as to whether the student did or did not understand the critical course material or did or did not achieve the course learning goals.

In higher education, for the most part, exam development is the purview of the faculty member teaching the course.  Exams are sometimes (but only sometimes) included in the teaching portfolios presented by candidates for reappointment, tenure, and promotion.  Exams are sometimes created by groups of faculty where there are multiple sections of a course and a common final exam.  But these examples account for a minority of all the exams given.  Mostly likely the faculty member develops, administers, and grades the exam.  Overall this system works well, but we also know for certain that it doesn’t work perfectly.  And just as there are brilliant exams developed on a regular basis, there are also very flawed exams developed as well.

Outcomes assessment and using exams in part to determine whether learning goals have been accomplished should help minimize the flawed exam problem.  But this is not enough.  Many department chairs and deans review grade rosters on a regular basis.  If there is something out of the ordinary (grades seem extraordinarily high or low), the department chair typically just asks the faculty member.  Chairs and deans need to follow the same procedures with final exams (and perhaps exams in general).  We all recognize that chair and faculty classroom observations are a tried and true method of enhancing a faculty member‘s teaching excellence.  The same type of support can also be invaluable in facilitating the most meaningful examinations possible.  All of us want more “A” students; we should also make sure there are “A” examinations for our students.

Assessing Assessment

I have just made my airline reservations to Fort Lauderdale for the middle of February. This is not a vacation; rather I am serving on an ABA reaccreditation team for Nova Southeastern Law School.  Over the years, I have served as a Middle States periodic reviewer (most recently as the first reviewer for Johns Hopkins and the second reviewer for American); ABA reviewer (most recently for Memphis Law School) and during my earlier life as a business school dean, I served not only on visiting teams but as a member of the Initial Accreditation Committee of AACSB.  I have also been on the receiving end of accreditation visits numerous times—just recently we had 14 reaccreditation visits at Hofstra in the last two years.