Implementation is controlled through the Chancellor's Office for the California Community College system in Sacramento, with the Board of Governors responsible for establishing administrative guidelines and regulations; the Matriculation Unit within that office is responsible for ensuring implementation of those guidelines and regulations throughout the system.
There are a number of issues related to the concept of student assessment. In a good compilation of essays dealing with these issues, Bray and Belcher (1987) categorize them under three different headings as issues of: (1) accountability and political issues; (2) assessment practices and testing; and, (3) the impact of assessment on students and the institution itself.
Accountability and political issues involve the responsibility of the community college to the local community, taxpayers, and to students. The community college, according to legislative intent, must be accountable to all its constituencies by providing quality services that make effective use of taxpayer money, serve the needs of the local community, and provide students with the optimum possibility for success.
For example, Casey (1987) discussed the problems of accommodating testing to students with various disabilities. In many instances, nationally-normed tests have been shown to be biased toward different groups, including males and Euro-American students. With disabled students, this is also a problem. Tests may not indicate their actual capacity to succeed in classes, because of time and other limitations that do not arise during actual class conditions.
Although developing a skills prerequisite system is not an actual part of the assessment component, it is the foundation of the assessment process. Students are being assessed in relationship to the standards established as guidelines in the skills prerequisite system.
In a study focused on a school in the California system itself,...