On September 20, 2006, The Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College, Columbia University will release at the National Press Club its Report to Journalists On Covering the Assessment of Learning Outcomes in Higher Education. The report guides journalists about how to cover details of higher education they way they cover K-12 schooling.

Journalists’ lack of attention to learning outcomes is not surprising since most colleges and universities don’t devote much time or many resources to the issue either. ... Nevertheless, the debate around measuring learning outcomes is growing louder and occurring in more places across the country.

Features of testing and accountability are deeply embedded in the elementary and secondary educational landscape. They do not readily lend themselves to replication in higher education. Higher ed campuses must find ways of their own to speak to parents, students, policymakers, and taxpayers about what students learn.

The debate will likely intensify with the release later this year of a report by the U.S. Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education.

The Secretary formed a panel to examine accessibility, affordability, accountability, and quality in higher education.

The executive summary of the Hechinger Report states that draft of the commission’s report decried a “remarkable absence of accountability mechanisms to ensure that colleges succeed in educating students.”

These two reports may have the potential to focus higher education on learning. That's good and leaves a giant opening for TabletPC users to demonstrate recordable, storable academic performance promptly.

Tablet PC Education Blog