Evaluating College Programs Using Measures of Student Achievement and Growth

Within the context of the national debate on improving the quality of college general education programs, this paper provides a brief review of the validity and reliability of some measures of general education outcomes of college attendance. It reports on research to improve the accuracy of concordance estimates of mean gains based on analysis of 22, 4-year, longitudinal studies, using instruments from the College Outcome Measures Program (COMP). It examines sensitivity to treatment effects of mean gains across all levels of entering ability. It presents evidence that institutions can collect and use outcome data in ways that may lead to changes that increase student performance.