Date of Award

12-2015

Type

Dissertation

Major

Doctor of Education

Degree Type

Doctor of Education in Curriculum and Leadership

Department

Counseling, Foundations & Leadership

First Advisor

Deirdre Greer

Second Advisor

Michael Richardson

Third Advisor

Dr. Burhanettin Keskin

Abstract

Systematic data collection is a fundamental requirement for the accountability of teacher preparation programs since it has been strongly associated with accreditation standards and the need to drive continuous improvement. Electronic assessment systems have become increasingly valuable for colleges of education since it provided a non-biased evaluation of competency, more reliable scoring, and scientific judgment to drive improvement. However, teacher preparation programs are having difficulties to implement effective assessment systems that are powerful enough to drive a change and to meet standards

The researcher in this study extended previous research in relation to the subject of electronic assessment systems, their users, and their ability to meet NCATE standards and explored their ability to meet CAEP standards as perceived by assessment coordinators. The impact of using different types of electronic assessment systems (commercial, hybrid, and in-house) on meeting NCATE Standard 2 and CAEP Standard 5.3 as perceived by assessment program coordinators was also investigated. Moreover, the commitment of leadership at higher education institutions to provide needed support to comply with the national standards for data requirements in education was also examined.

A survey was sent to assessment coordinators at NCATE accredited colleges of education nationwide. This opinion survey covered a range of requirements by NCATE Standard 2 and CAEP Standard 5.3 in order to identify key indicators that contributed to specific variables related to the use of electronic assessment systems at the surveyed institutions. A Likert scale was developed to answer the survey questions. A quantitative research analysis was conducted using SPSS statistical software. SPSS runs ranging from descriptive statistics and analysis of variance (ANOVA) to Canonical Correlation were used to analyze the data.

The first finding of this research was that colleges of education are now utilizing more commercial electronic assessment systems to address their data collection and accreditation needs. Participants in this study were more likely to recommend commercial electronic assessment systems over hybrid and in-house systems. This was evident by the higher Net Promoter Score (NPS) obtained by the commercial systems.

The level of satisfaction of assessment coordinators that their system facilitated compliance with NCATE Standard 2 varied across the different requirements of the Standard. The average perception of assessment coordinators about the ability of their system to facilitate compliance with NCATE Standard 2 fell between “Well” and “Moderately Well” ratings using a 6-point Likert scale. The level of satisfaction of assessment coordinators that their system will be able to facilitate compliance with CAEP Standard 5.3 also varied across the different requirements of the Standard. Collectively for all three components of the Standard, the average perception of assessment coordinators fell between “Moderately Poor” and “Moderately Well” ratings using the 6- point Likert scale. About 53% of participants in this study indicated that they spent less than 50% of their time to data collection, management, analysis, and reporting related to program approval and accreditation efforts. The majority of participants (72%) reported minimal or inadequate personnel support by their institutions to manage their assessment systems. Finally, the results indicated two statistically significant canonical correlations between NCATE and CAEP variables.

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