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Critical Thinking: The Other National Deficit

My wife bought me this t-shirt for my birthday several years ago, perhaps just before I retired from a career leading a team of researchers who conducted administrative policy studies at a large public university. Toward the end of my career, the university participated in a national test of college learning outcomes called the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). Ideally, the CLA assesses the knowledge and skills of entering freshmen and then reassessed their knowledge and skills four years later to measure the educational value added in a true pre-post test. But, because we were in a hurry for results that could be published on a public dashboard to be used in a re-accreditation visit, we instead tested samples of entering freshmen and graduating seniors who had similar high school percentile ranks and SAT scores. Results showed the critical thinking skills of our graduating seniors, compared to entering freshmen, showed slightly less improvement than the national average for graduating seniors at other universities. University leaders were concerned about this finding and were discussing ways to improve at the time I retired. (1/8)

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