Beyond Accreditation: Designing and Implementing Meaningful Quality Assurance and Continuous Improvement Systems (AAQEP Program Evaluation in Education)

In a higher education landscape that seems to be increasingly focused on accreditation and accountability, administrators, faculty, and staff in higher education institutions expend considerable resources engaging in assessment activities in response to the demands of compliance-oriented external forces. Beyond Accreditation: Designing and Implementing Meaningful Quality Assurance and Continuous Improvement Systems presents an alternative paradigm for consideration: the primary purpose of assessment systems should be to provide program improvement, with the resulting data serving as supporting evidence for compliance-oriented requests.

The book is intended to provide a foundation of background knowledge to empower programs, regardless of size or disciplinary context, to engage in the processes associated with assessment in pursuit of continuous improvement. It supplies data and other information in three distinct ways throughout the book. In some chapters, candid dialogues between the authors are presented in a conversational tone. In others, a more philosophical and sometimes historical perspective provides background knowledge informing why certain things are done and the purposes those activities serve. The remaining chapters present a practical approach to engaging in assessment, from identifying signature assessments to analyzing and reporting on data, all within the overarching context of designing an assessment system that serves continuous improvement efforts.

The accountability mindset that has taken hold in education, and in higher education in particular, has fostered a view of assessment as a complicated, challenging, and burdensome enterprise that is done to us in pursuit of compliance. Throughout the book, assessment is presented as something to be done in pursuit of continuous improvement. The authors hope that its contents prove useful to anyone in search of assistance in these efforts.

Perfect for courses such as: Educational Program Evaluation; Teacher Education; Education Policy; Teacher Education Policy; and Human Resources in Education.

Sunny Duerr earned an MS in applied statistics and research methods from the University of Northern Colorado and a PhD in psychology with specialization in behavioral science research methods from the University of Rhode Island. Dr. Duerr is currently the Assistant Dean for Assessment and Accreditation and Director of Compliance for the School of Education at the State University of New York at New Paltz, and was instrumental in establishing and being part of the leadership team of the SUNY Educator Preparation Providers’ Assessment Consortium. Dr. Duerr has been volunteering as an accreditation review team member and team lead since 2014, first with CAEP and now with AAQEP, and has also been serving as an accreditation commissioner with AAQEP since 2023. For fun, Dr. Duerr teaches graduate courses in research methods and statistics, plays video games, and builds things out of wood.

Jamar Pickreign earned an MSEd in Mathematics Education and a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction/Mathematics Education from the University of Kansas. Currently the Associate Dean for Assessment and Accreditation in the School of Education, Health, and Human Services at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, Dr. Pickreign has been facilitating and guiding continuous improvement efforts since 2007. He was instrumental in establishing and being part of the leadership team of the SUNY Educator Preparation Provider’s Assessment Consortium (EPPAC) since 2014 and continues to teach courses on assessment in education. He enjoys a good single-malt, bicycle riding, and playing the electric bass.