Purdue pauses standardized testing roll out

Editor's note: This story has been corrected. An earlier version incorrectly stated that an oversight committee recommended a specific standardized test, the CLA Plus. In fact, the committee and university faculty are not recommending any particular test.

Purdue University officials may have another year to fully implement a standardized testing program for incoming freshmen and graduating seniors.

A plan to pause a large scale roll out of such a measure was submitted April 1 and approved by university officials.

Instead, the new agreement will implement "Phase 1" of the roll out to a sample size of incoming freshman, unlike a pilot administered during Boiler Gold Rush this school year, where students took six different tests.

The plan was drafted by an oversight committee and approved by Purdue Provost Debasish Dutta. In February, however, Purdue President Mitch Daniels and the Board of Trustees set an April deadline for the committee to recommend a full scale roll out by next semester.

The new agreement, obtained by the Journal & Courier Wednesday, instead designates a much smaller, incremental rollout to 360 incoming freshmen, while simultaneously encouraging the university to survey stakeholders "to build a consensus definition of critical thinking" by May 1.

Since taking office in 2013, Daniels has asserted that a test to measure student growth in critical thinking from their freshman to senior year would prove the value of a Purdue degree. Faculty, however, have been reluctant to so quickly endorse any specific method without first establishing exactly what the university wants to measure.

For the upcoming phase, at least, freshmen will take a commercial standardized test such as the Collegiate Learning Assessment Plus, a 90-minute test that measures critical thinking and communication skills used at 169 institutions nationally.

The Office of the President and the Office of Institutional Research, Assessment and Effectiveness will administer the tests, collect the results and forward them to a Research Design Team formed to assess critical thinking.

Kirk Alter, vice chairman of the University Senate and a member of the oversight committee, said the new agreement will be discussed during the trustees meeting this week.

"This is a good compromise between the parties," Alter said in an email Wednesday. "The president and Board of Trustees get the next phase of standardized testing, from a pilot last fall to phase I, and the faculty gets the assurance that we will pursue this from a much more thorough and academically sound approach."

A message to the Board of Trustees was not returned as of Wednesday evening.

The Board of Trustees will discuss other issues during its meeting Thursday and Friday:

•Approval to plan, finance, construct and award contracts for the Innovation Design Center

•Approval of contract to build a seventh high-performing computer cluster

•Update on Purdue Moves, including the Purdue Polytechnic Institute and growing the computer science program

•Appointment of a director for Purdue Research Foundation