Accountability in Higher Education and the Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards,2008

In recent decades, an accountability movement has swept through higher education with hundreds of colleges and universities subscribing to instruments that assess academic performance, among them the Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA), the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), and the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). Meanwhile, social work education has proceeded on a tangent, relying on a subjective framework, the Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), to determine the efficacy of professional education. In 2011, the inferiority of CSWE’s strategy came into sharp relief when higher education researchers found that undergraduate majors in social work and education scored far below engineering/computer science, communications, health, humanities/social sciences, and science/math on the CLA; only business majors fared worse (Arum & Roksa, 2011). Disturbingly, the researchers “observe[d] no statistically significant gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills for at least 45 percent of the students in our study. An astounding proportion of students are progressing through higher education today without measurable gains in general skills as assessed by the CLA” (p. 36). Defensively, the President of the National Association of Social Workers editorialized that “increasing student skills in critical thinking, reading comprehension, and writing [are] essential to career success” (Anastas, 2012, p. 3), but failed to note the pernicious influence of EPAS. If social work education is to burnish its academic image, it should institute a validated instrument to assess professional training.

Since its promulgation in 2008, EPAS has been referenced primarily as a backdrop for articles about pedagogy (Grady, Powers, Despard, & Naylor, 2011; Heidemann, Fertig, Jansson, & Kim, 2011; Holosko, Skinner, MacCaughelty, & Stahl, 2010; Morrow, 2011; Regehr, Bogo, Donovan, & Anstice, 2012). Prior to its 2008 iteration, EPAS required social work programs to document learning outcomes of students. Adhering to that format, faculty at California State University, Long Beach determined to evaluate student outcomes through a combination of self-efficacy instruments (the Multicultural Counseling Inventory, the Self-Appraisal Inventory, the Knowledge Inventory, and the Comprehensive Skills Evaluation), complemented by student focus groups, assessments by field instructors, and an alumni survey. This effort to alter educational programming vis-à-vis student performance was interrupted with the introduction of the 2008 EPAS. “The consensus of the Assessment Team members now is that it is as if the team is back at the starting point as we begin to tackle the new standards,” noted the Long Beach academics with regret (Meyer-Adams, Potts, Koob, Dorsey, & Rosales, 2011, p. 504).

The 2008 EPAS modified accreditation standards by replacing learning outcomes with student competencies, the achievement of which was to be determined by educational programs as they saw fit. The most recent version of EPAS, thus, imposed two quite different requirements on social work programs: “measurable educational outcomes, which [have] traditionally been interpreted through a positivist lens” and “a desire to respond to changing practice and educational approaches to diversity and difference, rooted in a postmodern perspective” (Jani, Pierce, Ortiz, &Sowbel, 2011, p. 297). It is noteworthy that postmodernists continue to misconstrue empiricism, applying dated criteria from the humanities that were in vogue during the 1970s and 1980s, a position refuted by Thyer (2008). Karl Popper contended that empirical falsification is logically superior to positivist verification, a position widely adopted by the scientific community (Calhoun, 2002, p. 372). Thus, postmodernists, in disputing positivism, erect the equivalent to a conceptual straw man.

Regardless, postmodernism became formalized in social work accreditation, a repudiation of the profession’s adherence to the logic of science as the optimal method for determining efficacy. Using diversity as a pretext, postmodernism effectively sabotaged the possibility of empirical analysis of social work education:

By substituting “the idea of multiple subjective truths for the notion of singular objective knowledge” (p. 284), postmodernism rejected a research agenda in social work traced back as far as the Flexner “report” a century ago, which suggested that application of scientific methods were key to professional stature.

The 2008 EPAS attempted to reconcile these diametrically opposed epistemologies by identifying ten basic competencies, documented by 41 practice behaviors (PBs) that were to be demonstrated by at least two measures required for each advanced PB, the selection left to each educational program (Drisko, Mariscotti, & Dungee-Anderson, 2012). The result was often represented by a complex matrix of courses cross-listed with more than 40 PBs, an exercise that produced a Byzantine portrait of professional education:

Consistent with postmodernism’s rejection of empiricism, programs were permitted to select any evidence they chose to document student proficiency so long as they provide two indicators. In the absence of validated instruments, a common practice is to employ student self-assessment to determine the extent to which PB objectives are achieved; so long as social work programs meet a threshold established by the program they are in compliance with EPAS. For example, a scale created for each competency, ranging from 0 to 10 with students rating themselves, postclass or at graduation would count as a legitimate “measure” of competency even though self-assessment is a notoriously unreliable method of assessing performance.

In retrospect, it is baffling that EPAS 2008 was constructed in a vacuum, failing to acknowledge the pervasive use of validated assessment instruments in higher education. “The past decade has witnessed an increasing emphasis on the assessment of educational outcomes in higher education” begins a document generated by CSWE’s Commission on Accreditation, yet the report neglects to mention any instruments that were then in use by hundreds of American colleges and universities (Holloway, 2011, p. 1). Similarly, an undated, companion document omits any reference to standardized assessment instruments (Holloway, Black, Hoffman, & Pierce, n.d.). Evidence of CSWE’s self-referential posture, neither of these documents even includes a bibliography citing sources used to justify the construction of EPAS. In this respect, CSWE’s Commission on Accreditation has operated as a closed system, functioning in a cocoon.

A collision between social work education’s insular orientation to professional education and an empirical accountability movement that had spread throughout American higher education was inevitable. One such incident occurred when bachelor of social work (BSW) students’ scores on the CLA were compared to those pursuing other majors. Unlike self-report instruments, the CLA is an analytic exercise that is evaluated according to several factors. Provided a problem and supporting documents, a student is given 90 min to compose a memo proposing a solution to a problem. Problems vary; one, for example, places the student in the role of advisor in a mayoral race where candidates propose to reduce crime by either treating drug addicts or hiring more police officers. After evaluating the documents provided, the student prepares a memo for his or her candidate, which is then scored. The scoring criteria focus on multiple aspects of “critical thinking, analytical reasoning and problem solving” (Arum & Roksa, 2011, p. 22). By design, the CLA not only avoids the sort of fragmentary knowledge typical of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (criticized for cultural bias) by asking students to synthesize information, but also uses real-world problems as the basis for assessment, then evaluates their responses according to real-world skills. In these respects, the CLA reflects the skills that a social worker would be expected to possess in order to prepare a court report, complete a research project, submit a grant application, or testify before elected officials.

That social work students are weak compared to those pursuing other fields of study is not news. Just as BSW students score poorly on the CLA, applicants to master of social work (MSW) programs score lower than almost every discipline on the Graduate Record Exam. Scores reported by the Educational Testing Service show that MSW applicants have a verbal and quantitative combined score lower than every discipline, save physical education, which is lowest; however, the quantitative score of MSW applicants is below that of every discipline, even physical education (Stoesz, Karger, & Carrilio, 2010).

Adopted by more than 500 institutions of higher education (Jackson, 2012), many with undergraduate social work programs, the CLA captured BSW students, for the first time comparing their performance with students studying other fields. In the future, social work educators are likely to encounter other standardized instruments like the CLA. The VSA has been adopted by 520 institutions of higher education, which enroll 7.5 million students and awards 70% of undergraduate degrees. The VSA is comprised of three components: consumer information, student experiences, and learning outcomes (Voluntary System of Accountability [VSA], 2012). For 2012, the NSSE reported on 320,000 students from 577 colleges and universities. The NSSE consists of five components: academic challenge, learning with peers, experience with faculty, campus environment, and high-impact practices (NSSE, 2012). Like the CLA, both of these instruments measure aspects of student experience and performance, which are relevant to social work. Already, educational administrators have used dwindling resources for higher education as a pretext to reevaluate funding priorities; in all likelihood, they will apply the CLA, VSA, and NSSE to gauge social work education in relation to other academic disciplines and make allocations accordingly. A spectacular omission, the social work literature on assessment fails to mention the CLA, VSA, or NSSE.

Because higher education in the United States has a tradition of self-governance, social work education is free to disregard standardized instruments that measure student experiences, faculty performance, and institutional indicators in favor of EPAS, in the process generating a long list of competencies cross-referenced by courses and documented by ersatz evidence. But social work education’s insularity, evident in EPAS, will be revealed as an academic fig leaf once students, consumers, administrators, and policy makers begin to use the CLA, NSSE, and VSA for decisions regarding which institutions warrant student applications, which programs offer the best value for tuition, which academic units have the strongest performance measures, and how best to award scarce tax revenues. In this respect, social work cannot afford to dither any longer with postmodernism in accreditation.

The 2008 EPAS has other pernicious effects. Primary among them is the devaluing of empirical research: If validated, standardized instruments are discredited in efforts to assess professional education—as postmodernists contend—how can faculty and students be expected to fully participate in knowledge development in a data-driven culture? In its flippant dismissal of positivism, postmodern social workers ignore the quite substantial rise in stature of professions that have integrated empiricism in education. For decades, public health professionals have employed epidemiology to protect citizens from illness, attaining stature that social work would envy. Nursing has used research to justify medical specialists, nurse practitioners, and physician’s assistants, to assume tasks previously reserved by physicians. Most recently, nurses used field experiments to lobby for inclusion of the Nurse Family Partnership in the Affordable Care Act, securing an appropriation of $1.5 billion (Bornstein, 2012).

Conversely, rejection of science is an invitation to a netherworld of professional education, devoid of verifiable standards. If formal criteria for admission of prospective social work students and their subsequent assessment are left to subjective, impressionistic criteria, what prevents the incompetent and unethical from graduating? Postmodernists might pause to reflect on the consequences of suspending formal admission standards in favor of open enrollment: “students failing out of a program and owing student loan money for a program that they were not academically ready for—or graduating students that will struggle professionally due to lack of writing and other professional communication and critical thinking skills” (Holmes, 2012, p. 3). Over time, a mediocre professional credential in a competitive labor market will be reflected in low salaries and limited career options, as more capable, prospective students select other careers. American social work is buffered to some extent by state licensure, but that does not necessarily assure upward mobility; given the mediocrity of social work education, it may guarantee a suboptimal floor that is eclipsed by more competitive disciplines. Evidence suggests that stronger students elect other graduate disciplines, leaving weaker applicants to social work (Stoesz, Karger, & Carrilio, 2010).

This status quo is untenable. The welfare state ideal upon which social work has been appended has entered a period of redefinition, a reassessment that upends the assumptions of stakeholders. American social workers may misread contemporary events and revert to traditional bromides, a temptation that would be a mistake. Increasing economic inequality is not an invitation to embrace Marxism, but requires identifying new paths of upward mobility. Increasing ethnic/racial diversity is not an invitation to rhapsodize about postmodern tribalism, but requires the application of empirical methods to assure minority groups full participation in the mainstream. Increasing emphasis on well-being is not an invitation to indulge in moral metaphysics, but requires scientific research to demonstrate effective interventions. Anchored to the welfare state and presuming infinite expansion, schools of social work have credentialed increasing numbers of weak students who are employed by organizations using dated practice methods that fail to pass empirical muster. Exasperated at subpar performance, taxpayers balk at funding for social services; eventually even traditional supporters—liberal Democrats—hold social work at arm’s length. Protected by self-governance from external demands to upgrade performance, social work is, thus, a victim of its own design.

In evading meaningful measures of professional education, postmodernists have employed diversity as a canard. There is no question that Anglo America is being eclipsed by minority populations; indeed, the general population is projected to become “majority minority” about 2040 (U.S. Census, 2012). But a rational response to the demographic shift is not to reject empiricism, but employ it to measure advances, or retreats, in social and economic justice. Empirical research has been used extensively to determine the commercial preferences of clusters of Americans defined by class, race, and ethnicity (Weiss, 2000). Precinct-by-precinct appeals to minority voters were widely credited with President Obama’s reelection in 2012 (Ramirez, 2012). In commerce and politics, applications of empiricism have become routine in assessing minority consumer and political preferences. Social work educators could benefit from similar applications of empiricism vis-à-vis minorities, but postmodernism’s celebration of relativism and subjectivism prevents this.

Social work education should replace the 2008 version of EPAS with accreditation standards that have been validated. A point of departure would be to examine those instruments already widely in use—the CLA, VSA, and NSSE—to determine their construction, content, and application to professional education. Failure to scrap the current EPAS will leave social work educators struggling to comprehend and implement a contradictory, unwieldy, and idiosyncratic framework while superior instruments deployed by others become more ascendant in higher education. As shown by the CLA, continuation with 2008 EPAS leaves professional education vulnerable to assessment by standardized instruments documenting that social work education is inferior to other academic disciplines.