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I
n April 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in
Education, commissioned by Secretary of Education T. H.
Bell, began its report with these words:
“Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world.”
The commission’s report, titled A Nation At Risk, with its
alarming rhetoric and clarion call for change, turned the national spotlight on the need for educational reform and gave
impetus to reform efforts over more than two decades.
Now another commission, this one appointed by Secretary
of Education Margaret Spellings, has sounded similar alarms
about higher education in its report, A Test of Leadership. Is
this, to quote Yogi Berra, “deja vu all over again”? Might educators and policymakers be forgiven for expressing “reform
fatigue” and wondering whether another commission report can
make any difference?
“Reform fatigue” is understandable, but it is not forgivable.
Political and educational leaders need to reflect on what we’ve
learned since 1983, digest this report, consider its implications,
and then act to meet their responsibilities.
Paul E. Lingenfelter is president of the State Higher Education
Executive Officers (SHEEO) organization. Previously he was vice
president for the program on human and community development at
the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and, prior to
that, deputy director for fiscal affairs at the Illinois Board of Higher
Education. He retains the copyright for this article.
13
HOW
SHOULD
STATES
RESPOND TO
A TEST OF
LEADERSHIP?
B y Pau l E . L i n g e n f e lt e r
What Have We Learned Since
A NATION AT RISK?
First, the global knowledge economy has arrived as predicted, and it is gathering steam. In The World is Flat, Tom
Friedman persuasively explains how technology and business innovation have given us, for the first time, a truly global
economy. Capital now skips from country to country in search
of able workers at the lowest possible price. And that’s not
just at the low end of the economic spectrum—people around
the globe are acquiring advanced knowledge and skills as the
means to a better life. Just like U.S. factory workers, our knowledge workers must be worth their cost in the world economy or
their jobs will inexorably move offshore.
A Nation At Risk got some of the details wrong, however.
For instance, it worried about competition from Japan. In 1983
few expected that by the beginning of the next century, the fastest-growing economies in the world would be in Brazil, Russia,
India, and China. Goldman Sachs now predicts that by 2050,
their collective economies will be larger than the combined
economies of the G-6—the largest industrialized nations today
—the United States, Japan, the U.K, France, Germany, and
Italy.
Second, we’ve learned that complacency about educational attainment is dangerous and unwarranted. The earlier
report took comfort in our wide lead over European nations
in postsecondary participation, but the U.S. now ranks behind
six other countries in the percentage of degree attainment for
24-to-35-year-olds. And another threat looms: Neither China
Change ● January/February 2007
nor India was mentioned in A Nation At
Risk, but each now produces, from its
larger population base, roughly three
times as many college graduates as the
U.S. Our comfortable advantage over
other nations was lost in a single generation. Without intensified effort and
renewed determination, the next generation will fall well behind our global
competitors.
Third, what we considered “aboveaverage” educational attainment a generation ago has become mediocre today.
In 1946 the goal of universal education
beyond high school seemed idealistic
when it was enunciated by the Truman
Commission, which the President set
up to explore the responsibilities of
U.S. higher education in post-war society. Now, the average American must
have the knowledge and skills formerly
needed by only the top 20 percent of students. In developed countries, universal
postsecondary education has become
essential for individual and national
prosperity.
Fourth, we’ve learned that educational progress is slow and hard. The
American people did not ignore A
Nation At Risk. Twenty years of effort
have made a difference, even though
other nations have improved more rapidly than the U.S. But we’ve discovered
no quick fixes or easy solutions. We’ve
struggled with denial and resistance and
learned that every reform strategy has
what Paul Hill and Mary Beth Celio, in
Fixing Urban Schools, call a “zone of
wishful thinking,” in which reformers
assume that once a single aspect of educational practice is changed, other essential conditions will automatically fall
into place. To the contrary, assembling
and implementing all the ingredients
of a successful intervention is painfully slow, at best. Educational progress
seems to take all the wisdom, discipline,
and perseverance we can muster.
Fifth, the issues identified in A Nation At Risk—the content of school curricula, student aspirations, time on task,
and teaching— still are relevant and
require attention. Although it took 20
years for us to address curricular issues
seriously, many state and national initiatives now motivate or require students
to prepare for college or work by taking
a rigorous high-school curriculum. Student expectations have risen (80 percent
of high-school sophomores expect to
14
get a baccalaureate
degree), but the aspirations and participation of able students
in low-socioeconomic-status families
still lag well behind
those of their more
advantaged peers.
Despite progress in the elementary grades, we still fail
to require or inspire high school
students to devote adequate time to
instruction and homework. Since A
"Reforms" that fail
to touch what
students and faculty
do and how they do
it won't change the
results of
the system.
Nation At Risk we have accumulated
compelling evidence that good teaching
makes a difference; we have developed
a robust consensus on the essential components of good teaching; and we have
learned how to prepare, employ, and
retain good teachers. But we still have
failed to implement broadly the changes
necessary for widespread teaching excellence.
Why is the Commission's
Report Important?
A Test of Leadership contains few
surprises for those who have followed
higher-education policy in the United
States over the past quarter century. Its
findings and recommendations focus
on six familiar issues: access, cost and
affordability, financial aid, learning,
transparency/accountability, and innovation. The report’s importance lies not in
fresh analysis but in calling for an end to
complacency.
Public discourse about higher education has been astonishingly shallow.
Many educators are in the habit of quoting The Economist and other supporters
who congratulate the United States for
having the “world’s finest system” (or
non-system) of higher education, while
warning that it will deteriorate without
more money. In response, policymakers,
blithely accepting the claim of world
leadership, have been dismissing the call
for additional resources as special pleading from a valued, but notoriously insatiable, interest group. They note that The
Economist (using statistics of dubious
validity from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)
also reports that U.S. higher education
spends twice as much per student as the
OECD average.
Higher education does get a lot of
attention in the United States, but the
national media, and too often policymakers, have focused obsessively on
admissions policies and costs at the most
selective institutions. These institutions
are an invaluable asset, but most of the
Change ● January/February 2007
nation is educated elsewhere. A recent
McKinsey analysis indicates the top
private institutions educate only 2 percent and public research universities 7
percent of undergraduates. And although
their market share is larger in graduate
education, even there the most selective
institutions educate only 22 percent of
the total. Significant improvement in the
education of the average American is the
most urgent imperative of the 21st century for higher education.
But the most spirited public discourse
has been about money. Rising tuitions
and concomitant demands for more
student financial aid have prompted intemperate public exchanges between educators and members of Congress. And
the commission report weighs in on this
topic, opining that “public concern about
rising costs may ultimately contribute
to the erosion of public confidence in
higher education.”
While money is important, neither
less money spent nor more money provided is the answer. The bottom line is
whether the American system of higher
education can deliver the level of educational attainment needed by the people
of the United States in the 21st century.
That bottom line will surely take more
money, but it will just as surely require
changes in how higher education sees
and performs its mission.
What Should States Do?
Ultimately, of course, learning and
the advancement of knowledge depend
on students, faculty, and the institutional
context in which they do their work.
“Reforms” that fail to touch what students and faculty do and how they do it
won’t change the results of the system.
But the primacy of faculty and students
does not diminish the responsibility of
the states to create the conditions necessary for their success. Whether or not
American higher education passes A Test
of Leadership depends a great deal on
how the states respond.
Although both federal and state policies and investments shape the conditions under which students and faculty
work, the states—the “owner-operators”
of public institutions—have more influence on what happens locally. State
standards and policies shape preparation
for college. State appropriations provide
most of the support for instruction in
public institutions, and state policies
The Commission’s Recommendations
To the disappointment of some and
the relief of others, the commission’s
recommendations stop well short of a
detailed set of mandates for reforming
higher education. But they do outline
the critical issues and point toward the
necessary changes. For one key question—what the maximum Pell Grant
should be—the commission even
sets a specific, ambitious target—70
percent of the average in-state public
tuition (up from 48 percent in 20042005), to be reached in five years.
Briefly, the commission’s recommendations are as follows:
Access. The nation should commit
to “improving student preparation and
persistence, addressing non-academic
barriers and providing significant increases in aid to low-income students.”
Steps should include strengthening
high-school preparation, aligning
high-school work with college-level
expectations, expanding administration of the 12th-grade version of the
National Assessment of Educational
Progress to allow the calculation of
state-level results, and reducing barriers to transfer.
Cost and financial aid. Here the advice is that “the entire student financial
aid system be restructured and new
incentives put in place to improve the
measurement and management of costs
and institutional productivity.”
Change ● January/February 2007
The process of applying for financial aid should be simplified, and substantially more need-based aid should
be provided from federal, state, and
institutional programs. Suggestions for
how to improve productivity and manage costs include eliminating regulatory and accreditation barriers, providing
financial incentives for institutions that
increase access and cut costs, and reducing regulatory burdens.
Transparency and accountability.
“Higher education must change from
a system primarily based on reputation to one based on performance.”
The Department of Education should
collect and provide information on
institutional outcomes and student
performance; provide annual reports
on college revenues and expenditures;
and establish a privacy-protected
information system that collects and
analyzes student-level data as a tool
for accountability, policymaking, and
consumer choice. In addition, the report recommends that student learning
outcomes be measured and reported
at the institutional and state levels and
that the National Assessment of Adult
Literacy be administered at five-year
intervals—to a sample large enough to
provide state-by-state results. Finally,
accreditation agencies should make
performance outcomes the core of
their institutional evaluations.
Innovation. The Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) should be revitalized as
one of several means of building a
“culture of continuous innovation and
quality improvement.” In addition,
the use of information technology
in instruction should be encouraged;
federal investments in educational
innovation should be coordinated;
and new, interdisciplinary models of
curriculum development and delivery
should be employed.
Life-long learning. The Secretary
of Education, in partnership with
states and other federal agencies,
should develop a national strategy to
create “better and more flexible learning opportunities, especially for adult
learners.” The report urges the integration of policy, incentives for innovation, new delivery mechanisms, and
the enhancement of student mobility,
subject to rigorous quality standards.
Global leadership in knowledgeintensive professions. To achieve
this, increases are needed in federal
and state investments in science and
engineering; in collaboration among
federal agencies; and in foreign-language training. Immigration policies
should encourage study in the United
States and should permit students with
advanced degrees in needed fields to
remain in the country.
15
Accountability for Better Results
A little more than a year before A
Test of Leadership was released, the
National Commission on Accountability in Higher Education, under the
auspices of the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO),
issued its report, Accountability for
Better Results: A National Imperative
for Higher Education.
Not surprisingly, both commissions called for a new sense of
urgency and in several cases made
similar, even identical, recommendations. But their thrusts differ in subtle
ways. The SHEEO report reflects the
operational perspective of the states,
which govern, coordinate, and directly finance the public institutions
that enroll three-quarters of the U.S.
college students.
Accountability for Better Results
broadly defines the roles and responsibilities of the federal government,
the states, accreditors, trustees, administrators, faculty, and students in
improving educational performance.
The federal government is respon-
deeply influence everything from the
operational resources available to institutions to the price of higher education
and the aid available to low- and moderate-income students. And states appoint
or elect governing and coordinating
boards of public institutions, which allocate resources, set priorities, and are
responsible for ensuring and increasing
institutional effectiveness.
Not much will change if the states
continue with existing approaches and
policies. But if they are determined to
improve educational attainment, the steps
below will help them reach that goal.
• Establish a state agenda Some 40
or 50 years ago the agenda for higher education was clear: educate the baby-boom
generation. The typical state strategy
was to expand existing institutions and
create new ones, especially community
colleges. Currently, although the individual circumstances of the states differ,
the nation faces a greater challenge: to
educate a larger fraction of a still-growing
population to a higher level of attainment.
Greater scale, higher quality, and deeper
penetration are required. But in too many
16
sible for providing educational opportunity and support for research
on a national scale. The states play
a critical role in building a sense of
common purpose; setting explicit
state objectives for participation,
completion, and student learning;
and marshaling state and institutional
resources to achieve these goals.
Institutions provide the instruction,
service, and research to meet state
and national purposes. They need
resources; a clear focus on changing
public needs; better tools for accountability, productivity, and continuous
improvement; and the flexibility to do
their work well.
The SHEEO report argues that
achieving better results requires
explicit goals, shared responsibility, a division of labor, and shared
accountability for improvement. Accountability improves performance,
it asserts, only when clear goals and
rigorous measurement of outcomes
become tools for collaborative selfdiscipline and improvement. .
places, higher-education policy has been
on “automatic pilot” since the period of
rapid expansion ended in the mid-1970s.
A Test of Leadership sketches the lineaments of the task. States need to:
• Improve the college-going rates of
traditionally underserved groups;
• Remove financial and non-financial
barriers to collegiate participation (which
in some states may entail building more
institutions whose core mission is to educate large numbers of students well);
• Increase institutional cost-effectiveness;
• Increase graduation rates;
• Insist on the public reporting of
results;
• Encourage innovation;
• Improve the knowledge and skills of
adults already in the workforce;
• Ensure that learning outcomes meet
the needs of employers and society;
• Sustain the investments and working conditions in public research universities required for world-class research
and the application of knowledge.
To respond to this charge, states need
a clear sense of purpose and a plan,
including specific goals and a thoughtful strategy for pursuing objectives,
monitoring progress, and working for
improvement. For many states, this will
require new initiatives and fresh policy
approaches.
There are signs that this is beginning
to happen. In November 2006, the National Conference of State Legislatures’
Blue Ribbon Commission on Higher
Education issued a forceful report urging
state legislatures to define a broad higher-education agenda and to address the
issues delineated above. In recent years
some states—Oklahoma, Indiana, and
Kentucky, to name three—have established ambitious educational goals and
made measurable progress toward them.
Oklahoma is moving toward its goal
of being at the national average with
respect to the proportion of its citizens
with college degrees by 2010; Indiana
has dramatically increased the percentage of students completing a rigorous
high-school curriculum; and Kentucky is
getting more participation, completion,
and benefit from higher education after
focusing on a broad, but explicit, performance agenda.
• Develop policy capacity. A necessary condition of policy change is
policy-making capacity. As recently
argued by the National Center for Public
Policy and Higher Education in its report
“The Need for State Policy Leadership,”
a strong, relatively independent entity
with a clear charge to focus on highereducation policy and increase educational attainment is needed to:
• Inform elected officials, educators,
and the public about the essential, policy-relevant facts concerning state needs
and performance in higher education;
• Engage business and civic leaders
and keep them involved in public leadership on educational policy;
• Facilitate a process through which
the state establishes meaningful, ambitious, and attainable educational goals
and monitors progress toward them; and
• Work with political leaders, educators, and members of governing boards
to identify and make the changes necessary to sustain progress.
Educational improvement takes time,
focus, coherent action, and professional
expertise. There is no substitute for
gubernatorial and legislative leadership and support, but more is required
for sustainable progress. Educational
Change ● January/February 2007
State coordinating boards,
which do have explicit policy
responsibilities, have sometimes been
thoughtlessly or deliberately designed,
staffed, financed, and used in ways that
ensure that they are weak, rather than
strong, contributors to the decision-making process. Occasionally such agencies
have been too closely controlled by the
executive branch, resulting in a staff with
a short-term perspective and an agenda
with a partisan cast. Good public policy
for higher education requires strong, independent leadership and a perspective
broader than the particular objectives of
any political leader or institution.
Both elected officials and institutional leaders have an interest in making
sure that statewide boards are populated
with able and highly respected citizen
Good public
policy for higher
education requires
strong,
independent
leadership and a
perspective broader
goals and the machinery for achieving
them must transcend terms of office and
shifting political agendas and coalitions.
The supporting coalition for educational
reform must be broad and deep; only
a strong, institutionalized policy entity
can hold such a coalition together long
enough for it to build a working consensus on goals and strategies and pursue
them over time.
Such responsibilities generally fall
within the purview of the existing statewide governing and coordinating boards
for higher education. But too often state
governing boards have not been explicitly charged with (or have not assumed
responsibility for) statewide policy
analysis and implementation. And sometimes they have not acquired the staff capacity to be fully credible and effective
on state policy issues.
Change ● January/February 2007
than the particular
objectives of any
political leader or
institution.
leaders; that they are accountable to key
parties (governors, legislators, educators, and the public); that they have
strong staff leadership; and that they are
trusted and used by governors and legislators to advise on public policy. Too
often institutional leaders have viewed
strong state policy leadership as a threat
to their independence and legitimate
ambitions. But the opposite is true when
a state board maintains a tenacious focus
on the public interest in higher education; creates an open process involving
educational, political, civic, and business
leaders; and demonstrates scrupulous
respect for the different roles and responsibilities of institutional leaders and
elected officials.
After putting in place the tools for
setting goals and sustaining progress, the
states must focus attention and resources
on the most fundamental issues identified by the Spellings Commission: access, cost, and performance.
• Increase access. State policymakers must address every barrier to successful participation in postsecondary
education. Higher-education boards
need to work with their counterparts in
K-12 to improve student preparation
and to align high-school curricula and
assessments with what students need to
succeed in college. They also need to
inform middle-school students about the
importance of preparing for higher education, encourage their aspirations, and
monitor their academic progress.
Even if the federal Pell Grant reaches
the goal of equaling 70 percent of public, four-year tuition, as the Spellings
commission recommended, most states
will also need to substantially increase
their commitment to need-based financial aid to ensure that well-prepared
low-income students enroll in, persist
in, and graduate from college in a timely
manner. While a few states have strong
need-based financial-aid programs, most
will find it necessary to improve and
expand them.
At the same time, as the commission
so strongly argued, states and the federal
government must simplify the process
of obtaining financial aid, making sure
that low-income students know aid is
available before they “self-select” out of
higher education. Concomitantly, states
should make sure institutional support is
sufficient to fund services for all the students who are prepared to enroll.
Life-long learning, another focus of A
Test of Leadership, is also an important
issue for state higher-education policy.
Simply educating “college-age” students
will not adequately populate the future
American workforce with knowledge
workers—most of the workforce for the
next quarter century is already over 25
years of age. Some states have a large
population of adults who lack the basic
skills necessary to earn a living, help
17
their children succeed in school, and
contribute to the economy.
State policy must encourage and support innovative, high-quality approaches
to meet this need, such as Kentucky’s
virtual university and its aggressively reengineered delivery system for adult basic education. The growing proprietary
sector (with substantial public support
through student aid) is making a strong
contribution in high-demand areas. Nonprofit institutions can benefit from their
innovations—such as a tightly structured
curriculum for core courses, the use of
technology and instructional coaches,
and flexible scheduling—to serve a
broader constituency more effectively.
• Lower costs. According to A Test
of Leadership, “Our higher education
financing system is increasingly dysfunctional. State subsidies are declining;
tuition is rising; and cost per student is
increasing faster than inflation or family
income.” Educators and policy leaders
obviously need to find a new consensus
on the question of money.
Although some may wish or imagine
otherwise, substantial increases in educational attainment will be virtually impossible without more public investment.
Equally clearly, no amount of money can
make increasing attainment easy or “automatic.” Just as for other sectors of the
economy, higher education must strive
to become much more productive within
existing resources. Because resources are
limited, higher education is also obligated
to specify the benefits to be generated
from any additional investments.
State policymakers can help increase
productivity in higher education by
ensuring the efficient transfer of credits
and eliminating regulations that add cost
and reduce institutional agility without
adding equivalent or greater public value. Policymakers also can increase the
system’s productivity by casting a more
critical eye on investments in popular
but expensive initiatives, such as merit
scholarships and new graduate or professional programs.
Institutions must reallocate resources
from lower to higher priorities and
implement more efficient, innovative approaches to routine operations. Publicly
visible reallocation and productivity
initiatives within institutions send a very
positive message to the external supporters of higher education. In the early
1990’s, when the “Priorities-Quality-Pro18
ductivity” initiative in Illinois reallocated
resources toward institutional priorities,
the state responded by increasing its own
commitments. In Maryland this past year,
State and
institutional goals
have no meaning
and no effect unless
they can be
expressed and
monitored in terms
of measurable
outcomes.
specific commitments by the university
system to increase productivity were followed by more generous state funding.
States can contribute to more effective
institutional management by assuring
that the money saved through productivity gains will be available for other
educational priorities. It is unrealistic to
expect institutions to do the hard work
of increasing productivity if they do
not get to use the savings.
Finally, educators and policymakers must strike an appropriate balance
among the interlocking elements of
financial policy: tuition, appropriations,
and student aid. The prices students are
charged, total state spending per student,
and state financial aid vary substantially
among the states. In some, increased
appropriations and/or increased tuition
(balanced with need-based student aid)
will surely be required to support growing enrollment demand and to improve
outcomes. In others, better outcomes
might legitimately be expected by using existing financial resources more
effectively, even while restraining tuition
increases in order to achieve optimal
participation.
• Improve performance. A Test of
Leadership asserts that “higher education must change from a system based
primarily on reputation to one based on
performance” and then proposes actions
to improve transparency and accountability at the institutional, state, and
national levels. Why focus on performance? Because when institutional status is based on reputation, which in turn
is based on selectivity, we simply continue to educate the students whom we
have always served well. To the extent
that competition for stronger students
and faculty becomes an end in itself, it
makes higher education more expensive
without adding more value to society.
A Test of Leadership emphasizes the
need to develop more extensive consumer information about performance, along
with better access to that information
for students and parents. How can such
information help improve performance?
Better information can make students
wiser consumers and motivate institutions to focus on important issues. But
better consumer information can’t do the
whole job. The number and variety of
factors affecting student choice and the
limited local or regional choices available to many students reduce its power
to improve performance.
States and institutions need to do
more. Both A Test of Leadership and Ac-
Change ● January/February 2007
countability for Better Results propose
improvements in the availability and use
of data as a means of monitoring performance and informing policy and practice
in institutions and states.
State and institutional goals have no
meaning and no effect unless they can
be expressed and monitored in terms of
measurable outcomes. For higher education, the key outcomes are participation,
completion, and student learning. Student preparation and institutional affordability are means to those ends. State
policymakers need to monitor all five of
these variables. They need to know how
many students are adequately prepared
for college, how many of them enroll,
and whether low- and moderate-income
students are enrolling and succeeding at
the same rates as similarly well-prepared
upper-income students. They also need
to know how rapidly and successfully
students complete degrees and certificates, and they should be able to track
students through the various pathways
they take among different institutions of
higher education.
All of these questions require a student-level data system, which both commissions recommended at the national
level. Some critics have opposed such
a national system, worrying about the
protection of student privacy and/or the
extent of federal involvement in the details of higher education. Whether or not a
national student-level data system emerges, the states should develop their own
capacity for monitoring student progress,
including the means of following students
through K-12 and into and through higher
education. Any serious effort to increase
educational attainment will be enhanced
by giving states, schools, and colleges
feedback on how both the system and individual students are performing.
Student learning—the most important performance objective—is the most
complex and difficult area to assess,
since students pursue many different
learning objectives in postsecondary
education. It is especially challenging to
assess value-added learning, and some
of the most important learning objectives—critical thinking and creative
problem solving, for instance—are particularly elusive. But we are developing
the capacity to address these challenges
in a reasonable and productive way.
Many professional fields have already
done the work of defining learning objecChange ● January/February 2007
tives and assessing whether students have
met them. Academic leaders in the
Association of American Colleges and
Universities have developed well-articulated goals for general education, and
useful assessments of general learning
have been developed by various psychometric firms. Finally, the National Survey
of Student Engagement has proven to be
a useful tool for assessing educational
process in colleges and universities.
The most critical work in assessing student learning must occur at the
institutional level. Faculty need to take
greater collective responsibility for defining institutional and program learning
objectives and choosing the assessment
tools they find credible and useful for
improving instruction. In response to the
growing national and state-level interest
in this issue, the National Association
of State Universities and Land-Grant
Colleges (NASULGC) and the American Association of State Colleges and
Universities (AASCU) have launched an
initiative to develop and implement voluntary institutional systems for assessing
student learning.
Comparable assessment of learning
at the state level is also necessary for setting public goals and crafting policy. In a
project supported by the Pew Charitable
Trusts, five states participated in a pilot effort to assess learning for a random sample
of students from different types of institutions. The commission recommended
that more states launch such projects, and
Secretary Spellings has responded by saying that the Department of Education will
provide financial support to encourage
states to do so. The State Higher Education
Executive Officers are preparing to assist
and promote such efforts.
While systematic and rigorous institutional assessments of student learning are
absolutely essential for increasing authentic educational attainment, it is equally essential for state policymakers to avoid the
temptation of using learning assessments
as a fine-grained tool for calibrating institutional effectiveness. Institutions are
naturally motivated to admit students who
learn easily and to exclude those who are
less likely to succeed. It would be counterproductive to the larger public purpose
of increasing educational attainment to
create additional incentives for excluding
students who require additional attention
and assistance.
Conclusion
Like A Nation At Risk 23 years ago,
A Test of Leadership sounds an alarm
to be ignored only at the peril of future
generations. Without question, the states,
the federal government, colleges and
universities, and the American people
have the capacity to respond to these
challenges and create an even better
future. With a strong sense of common
purpose among public leaders and educators, clear goals, measured results, and
shared responsibility and accountability
for performance, we will succeed. C
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National Commission on Accountability in Higher Education (2005). Accountability for Better Results—A National Imperative for Higher Education. Boulder,
CO: State Higher Education Executive Officers.
Pathways to College Network (2004). A Shared Agenda, A Leadership
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