Grading the College: A History of Evaluating Teaching and Learning
A comprehensive history of evaluation in American higher education.

In Grading the College, Scott M. Gelber offers a comprehensive history of evaluating teaching and learning in higher education. He complicates the conventional narrative that portrays evaluation as a newfangled assault on the integrity of higher education while acknowledging that there are many compelling reasons to oppose those practices. The evaluation of teaching and learning, Gelber argues, presented genuine dilemmas that have attracted the attention of faculty members and academic leaders since the 1920s. Especially during the peak era of faculty authority that followed the end of the Second World War, significant numbers of professors and administrators believed that evaluation might improve institutional performance, reduce the bias inherent in traditional methods of supervision, strengthen communication with laypersons, and encourage a more deliberate focus on the distinctive goals of college.

Gelber reveals the extent to which professors and academic interest groups participated in the development of our most common evaluation instruments, including student course questionnaires, achievement tests, surveys, rubrics, rankings, and accreditation self-studies. Although these efforts may seem distant from the present era of shortsighted scrutiny and ill-conceived comparisons, Gelber demonstrates that the evaluation of college teaching and learning has long consisted of a set of intellectually sophisticated questions that have engaged, and could continue to engage, faculty members and their advocates. By providing a deeper understanding of how evaluation operated before the dawn of high-stakes accountability, Grading the College seeks to promote productive conversations about current attempts to define and measure the purposes of American higher education.

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Grading the College: A History of Evaluating Teaching and Learning
A comprehensive history of evaluation in American higher education.

In Grading the College, Scott M. Gelber offers a comprehensive history of evaluating teaching and learning in higher education. He complicates the conventional narrative that portrays evaluation as a newfangled assault on the integrity of higher education while acknowledging that there are many compelling reasons to oppose those practices. The evaluation of teaching and learning, Gelber argues, presented genuine dilemmas that have attracted the attention of faculty members and academic leaders since the 1920s. Especially during the peak era of faculty authority that followed the end of the Second World War, significant numbers of professors and administrators believed that evaluation might improve institutional performance, reduce the bias inherent in traditional methods of supervision, strengthen communication with laypersons, and encourage a more deliberate focus on the distinctive goals of college.

Gelber reveals the extent to which professors and academic interest groups participated in the development of our most common evaluation instruments, including student course questionnaires, achievement tests, surveys, rubrics, rankings, and accreditation self-studies. Although these efforts may seem distant from the present era of shortsighted scrutiny and ill-conceived comparisons, Gelber demonstrates that the evaluation of college teaching and learning has long consisted of a set of intellectually sophisticated questions that have engaged, and could continue to engage, faculty members and their advocates. By providing a deeper understanding of how evaluation operated before the dawn of high-stakes accountability, Grading the College seeks to promote productive conversations about current attempts to define and measure the purposes of American higher education.

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Grading the College: A History of Evaluating Teaching and Learning

Grading the College: A History of Evaluating Teaching and Learning

by Scott M. Gelber
Grading the College: A History of Evaluating Teaching and Learning
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Grading the College: A History of Evaluating Teaching and Learning

Grading the College: A History of Evaluating Teaching and Learning

by Scott M. Gelber

Overview

A comprehensive history of evaluation in American higher education.

In Grading the College, Scott M. Gelber offers a comprehensive history of evaluating teaching and learning in higher education. He complicates the conventional narrative that portrays evaluation as a newfangled assault on the integrity of higher education while acknowledging that there are many compelling reasons to oppose those practices. The evaluation of teaching and learning, Gelber argues, presented genuine dilemmas that have attracted the attention of faculty members and academic leaders since the 1920s. Especially during the peak era of faculty authority that followed the end of the Second World War, significant numbers of professors and administrators believed that evaluation might improve institutional performance, reduce the bias inherent in traditional methods of supervision, strengthen communication with laypersons, and encourage a more deliberate focus on the distinctive goals of college.

Gelber reveals the extent to which professors and academic interest groups participated in the development of our most common evaluation instruments, including student course questionnaires, achievement tests, surveys, rubrics, rankings, and accreditation self-studies. Although these efforts may seem distant from the present era of shortsighted scrutiny and ill-conceived comparisons, Gelber demonstrates that the evaluation of college teaching and learning has long consisted of a set of intellectually sophisticated questions that have engaged, and could continue to engage, faculty members and their advocates. By providing a deeper understanding of how evaluation operated before the dawn of high-stakes accountability, Grading the College seeks to promote productive conversations about current attempts to define and measure the purposes of American higher education.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781421438160
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date: 06/23/2020
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 248
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.86(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Scott M. Gelber is an associate professor of education and (by courtesy) history at Wheaton College. He is the author of The University and the People: Envisioning American Higher Education in an Era of Populist Protest and Courtrooms and Classrooms: A Legal History of College Access, 1860–1960.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction. Grading the College
Part I. Teaching
Chapter 1. Teacher Evaluation
Chapter 2. Student Course Evaluations
Part II. Learning
Chapter 3. Testing
Chapter 4. Rubrics, Surveys, and Rankings
Chapter 5. Accreditation
Part III. Accountability
Chapter 6. The Evaluation of Teaching and Learning since 1980
Conclusion. How Should Colleges Be Evaluated?
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

Julie A. Reuben

Grading the College is a fascinating and valuable book. Gelber has created an incredibly lucid account of past efforts to evaluate teaching and learning in higher education, showing paths that should be avoided as well as promising routes that may be worth revisiting. This is an essential read for anyone who cares about higher education.

Robert L. Hampel

Scott M. Gelber painstakingly explores the twentieth-century quest to measure the effectiveness of higher education. Who knows if individual professors teach well? How can anyone evaluate an entire campus? Everyone interested in those questions today should read this book. Enlivened by vivid examples from several dozen colleges, Grading the College deserves an A+.

John R. Thelin

Gelber's detailed historical analysis of topics that cut across the higher education landscape stands as an original, comprehensive horizontal history. Grading the College tells a great, important story. It shows persuasively that writing about the past is directly pertinent to the present in matters of policy and accountability deliberations.

Christopher P. Loss

Grading the College offers more evidence as to why Scott Gelber is one of our finest historians of higher education. Combining rigorous research, sharp analysis, and elegant prose, Gelber unearths the deep and surprising backstory of the current assessment craze. A rich and relevant scholarly intervention: A+.

Ethan W. Ris

An original and substantial contribution to the historiography of higher education. As far as I know, this is the first book-length narrative to explore the origins and evolution of the chief strands of evaluation that pertain to undergraduate education, especially in terms of teaching and learning. This book will appeal to historians of education, as well as scholars focused on policy and organization.

From the Publisher

An original and substantial contribution to the historiography of higher education. As far as I know, this is the first book-length narrative to explore the origins and evolution of the chief strands of evaluation that pertain to undergraduate education, especially in terms of teaching and learning. This book will appeal to historians of education, as well as scholars focused on policy and organization.
—Ethan W. Ris, University of Nevada

Gelber's detailed historical analysis of topics that cut across the higher education landscape stands as an original, comprehensive horizontal history. Grading the College tells a great, important story. It shows persuasively that writing about the past is directly pertinent to the present in matters of policy and accountability deliberations.
—John R. Thelin, University of Kentucky, author of A History of American Higher Education

Grading the College offers more evidence as to why Scott Gelber is one of our finest historians of higher education. Combining rigorous research, sharp analysis, and elegant prose, Gelber unearths the deep and surprising backstory of the current assessment craze. A rich and relevant scholarly intervention: A+.
—Christopher P. Loss, Vanderbilt University, author of The Convergence of K–12 and Higher Education: Policies and Programs in a Changing Era

Scott M. Gelber painstakingly explores the twentieth-century quest to measure the effectiveness of higher education. Who knows if individual professors teach well? How can anyone evaluate an entire campus? Everyone interested in those questions today should read this book. Enlivened by vivid examples from several dozen colleges, Grading the College deserves an A+.
—Robert L. Hampel, University of Delaware, author of Fast and Curious: A History of Shortcuts in American Education

Through this thoroughly researched, well written, and timely book, Scott Gelber demonstrates that only by understanding the history of college teaching, learning, and evaluation will we escape the quagmire that comprises the present-day effort to assess higher education in America.
—Charles Dorn, Bowdoin College, author of For the Common Good: A New History of Higher Education in America

In this well-written and thoroughly researched book, Gelber persuasively argues that professors themselves have actively sought useful forms of evaluation for at least a century and offers insights into how and why faculty should shape evaluation practices in the future.
—Margaret Nash, University of California, Riverside, editor of Women's Higher Education in the United States: New Historical Perspectives

Grading the College is a fascinating and valuable book. Gelber has created an incredibly lucid account of past efforts to evaluate teaching and learning in higher education, showing paths that should be avoided as well as promising routes that may be worth revisiting. This is an essential read for anyone who cares about higher education.
—Julie A. Reuben, Philllips Brooks Center for Public Service and Engaged Scholarship, Harvard University, author of The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality

Margaret Nash

In this well-written and thoroughly researched book, Gelber persuasively argues that professors themselves have actively sought useful forms of evaluation for at least a century and offers insights into how and why faculty should shape evaluation practices in the future.

Charles Dorn

Through this thoroughly researched, well written, and timely book, Scott Gelber demonstrates that only by understanding the history of college teaching, learning, and evaluation will we escape the quagmire that comprises the present-day effort to assess higher education in America.

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