Opinion

JENNIFER CALFAS

EDITOR IN CHIEF

AARICA MARSH 

and DEREK WOLFE 

EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS

LEV FACHER

MANAGING EDITOR

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

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the University of Michigan since 1890.

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s editorial board. 

All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Ben Keller, Payton Luokkala, 

Aarica Marsh, Anna Polumbo-Levy, Melissa Scholke, Michael 

Schramm, Stephanie Trierweiler, Mary Kate Winn, 

 Derek Wolfe

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

Protecting political expression

A

s we rapidly approach the Uni-
versity’s bicentennial, Central 
Student Government is tak-

ing the chance to look 
back at the historical-
ly significant changes 
that University stu-
dents have inspired 
in higher education 
for our country over the years. One of 
those major changes was the collection 
and release of course evaluation data.

The history of course evalua-

tions at the University is undeniable. 
Course evaluations were established 
for students, by students, in 1969. 
Anyone who indicates otherwise is 
spreading a false narrative.

What’s more, Prof. Tim McKay 

provided members of the Senate 
Advisory Committee on University 
Affairs, and subsequently CSG, with a 
1969 student viewpoint in The Michi-
gan Daily that clearly explains the 
true history of course evaluations. 
Students, with the University’s sup-
port, established the Association for 
Course Evaluation, which offered stu-
dents access to course evaluation data 
and counseling to help their peers 
obtain a reliable student perspective 
on courses in their selection process.

After seeing the success of the ACE 

office, every single department in LSA 
— then referred to as the Literary Col-
lege — requested copies of the results, 
which were then used for promotion 
and tenure decisions. Individual pro-
fessors also began approaching the 
ACE office hoping to obtain the stu-
dent feedback for their own benefit, 
and their graduate student instruc-
tors’ benefit. The history here is 
unquestionable; 
students 
brought 

this service and offered it for the bet-
terment of all, and now students are 
unable to access that very service.

On Oct. 26, the Senate Advisory 

Committee on University Affairs 
voted to continue denying students 
access to course evaluation data, in a 
shortsighted and disappointing deci-
sion that does not reflect the origi-
nal purpose of course evaluations. 
Instead, they have attempted to 
indefinitely postpone student access 
to this data by calling for a new 

instrument with no clear timeline. 
While we appreciate the Faculty Sen-
ate’s willingness to collaborate mov-
ing forward, this vote represents a 
roadblock to ensuring informed aca-
demic decision-making by students.

The University currently stands at 

odds with its peer institutions because 
it doesn’t provide course evaluation 
data to its students. Harvard Univer-
sity; Yale University; Princeton Uni-
versity; the University of California, 
Berkeley; Pennsylvania State Univer-
sity; University of Virginia; New York 
University; Stanford University; the 
University of Chicago; Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology; California 
Institute of Technology; Columbia 
University; Duke University; the Uni-
versity of California, Los Angeles; and 
countless other institutions are all 
successfully providing their students 
with course evaluation data, while 
our own administration is not. Once 
leaders in course evaluation, the Uni-
versity has since fallen far behind our 
country’s other top schools.

The CSG Executive Board has never 

wanted this to be a battle between 
professors and students, and we have 
worked hard to make that abundantly 
clear. Our goal is to share the true nar-
rative surrounding course evaluation 
data and its historical significance, 
which clarifies why we have course 
evaluation data in the first place.

We are focused on ensuring that 

students ultimately have access to 
course evaluation data. The current 
evaluation instrument certainly has 
room for improvement, and the CSG 
Executive Board will readily partici-
pate in the proposed University-wide 
committee to review the current 
evaluation instrument. However, we 
will not accept an outcome that does 
not give students access to the data 
that was, without question, originally 
collected to support students’ course 
selection decisions. That being said, it’s 
also unrealistic for us to enter a course 
evaluation review process and expect 
that a radically different instrument 
will somehow satisfy all involved.

For that reason, we will stand res-

olute in ensuring full student access 
to course evaluation data by the 

time of course selection for Fall 2016 
courses, whether it is provided by the 
University or a student organization.

We fully recognize the role that 

students must play in this. Ever since 
the school transitioned from paper 
to electronic course evaluations, 
student feedback has dropped nota-
bly. Even still, according to a report 
given to SACUA ahead of their vote, 
the decline in response rates has had 
no statistically significant impact on 
the evaluations. That being said, it’s 
important to note that course evalu-
ation data will only be helpful for 
future students and faculty if cur-
rent students take it seriously, but it 
is equally important to recognize that 
students need to be incentivized to 
take course evaluations seriously.

What incentivizes students to legiti-

mately care about and be invested in 
course evaluations today? Currently, 
nothing tangible. What would incen-
tivize students to do so? Giving class 
time for students to fill them out or 
requiring students to fill out their 
course evaluations before they receive 
access to the data are two options. 
These are solutions that CSG is ready 
to support, but using statistically insig-
nificant decreases in student partici-
pation in course evaluations to argue 
against their release is disingenuous.

Moving forward, CSG President 

Cooper Charlton will be meeting with 
representatives of SACUA and Univer-
sity administrators to discuss our next 
steps regarding course evaluation data 
this week. At the meeting on Wednes-
day evening, we will maintain our 
commitment to the release of course 
evaluation data to the students of the 
University, signifying a return to the 
original purpose of course evalua-
tions. Additionally, we will call for the 
University to release the data to stu-
dents through academic advisors for 
the current course selection period, 
and for full access to the data by the 
selection period for the fall of 2016. 

CSG President Cooper Charl-

ton, Anushka Sarkar, CSG chief 

programming officer and Sean 

Pitt, CSG chief of staff on behalf 

of the CSG Executive Board.

D

espite being a historically 
liberal institution, the Uni-
versity fails to include the pro-

hibition of political 
or intellectual dis-
crimination in its 
anti-discrimina-
tion policy. Across 
campus, the lack 
of 
institutional 

protection 
for 

unpopular opin-
ions 
— 
includ-

ing conservative 
views — can have 
a chilling effect on 
class 
discussion 

and student expression.

In all academic fields, discussion is 

critical to understanding the nuance 
of claims presented about the world. 
In some disciplines, like public policy 
— which strives to educate students 
not only on current policies but also 
on how to change them — understand-
ing multiple angles of divisive political 
issues and working with people who 
hold opposing viewpoints is essential.

Discussions in my Ford School 

of Public Policy classes regularly 
prompt dialogue on contentious 
political issues like minimum wage 
laws, detention of terror suspects and 
the far right’s influence in Congress. 
Here, disagreements are political, 
and discussions often reveal ideol-
ogy if students participate honestly. 
Group discussions can become more 
heated than average if one or two 
students disagree with the rest of 
their peers, and students may avoid 
expressing views that might conflict 
with the opinions they believe their 
professors hold.

Despite the opportunity for dis-

agreement, faculty members require 
students to participate in discussion, 
and give participation considerable 
weight toward final grades. Most Pub-
lic Policy professors who I have come 
into contact with have been ame-
nable to a diverse range of opinions. 
But, when students can’t be sure how 
accepting a professor will be, they may 
elect not to express their views at all.

Susan Collins, dean of the Ford, 

told me in an interview that most 
policy schools across the country tend 
to have greater liberal representation, 
and past surveys of Ford students 
show that relatively few self-identify 
as Republicans. Despite this, Collins 
believes that Ford students should be 
exposed to a wide range of viewpoints.

“I feel very strongly, and this is a 

view shared widely around the build-
ing,” Collins said, “that as a policy 
school, it’s really essential that people 
hear and understand and grapple with 

a range of perspectives, but in particu-
lar political perspectives.”

Even still, Collins said that stu-

dents have expressed to her their 
discomfort in expressing their views 
in class when they didn’t think any of 
their classmates shared them.

As a Republican in the Ford School, 

I can certainly relate to these students. 
One of my policy classes spends a 
considerable amount of time in small 
group discussions, where, in my expe-
riences, the majority of group mem-
bers have tended to share similar 
views on topics, and I’ve tended to dis-
agree. Sharing my opinion to a group 
of people who believe the opposite can 
be intimidating, and has been met, on 
occasion, with sarcastic, less-than-
flattering remarks.

I tend to be outgoing and outspo-

ken, and probably more willing than 
average to share my thoughts with 
those who might disagree. If I was 
afraid of sharing my opinions with 
liberals, I probably wouldn’t have 
identified myself as a Republican in 
the Daily so many times over the past 
two years. But when my peers don’t 
take my opinions seriously or make 
negative comments, it makes me 
think twice before choosing to par-
ticipate in class discussion again in 
the future. If I have occasionally felt 
too uncomfortable to share my opin-
ion in class, I can only imagine how 
my Republican peers might feel.

In most classes, faculty members 

seem to do their best to encourage dis-
senting opinions and highlight mul-
tiple sides of arguments. This isn’t just 
inclusive; it’s good pedagogy. To the 
extent that the Ford School aspires to 
produce effective public servants, it 
should strive to ensure its students can 
effectively communicate in institu-
tional environments with far greater 
intellectual diversity than the Public 
Policy school itself. It can’t do that if 
only one side of every issue is afforded 
serious consideration.

Despite expressed openness to 

ideas from all areas of the political 
spectrum, it’s clear that the school 
has a long way to go if it truly wants 
to become as tolerant of different ide-
ologies as it strives to be. A solid first 
step toward this goal doesn’t have to 
be Ford-specific: Adding political and 
intellectual discrimination to the Uni-
versity-wide nondiscrimination policy 
could go a long way to assure students 
their views will be respected.

Should the University continue to 

neglect this issue, the Public Policy 
School should draft an anti-discrim-
ination policy of its own that specifi-
cally prohibits discrimination based 
on political expression or ideology, 

and strengthens existing measures 
to promote an inclusive environment 
conducive to active, vocal participa-
tion from all students, regardless of 
background or identity.

But making the Ford School as 

diverse in political thought as the 
government bodies many Ford stu-
dents want to work in after gradua-
tion will require much more than a 
one-off policy change.

The Ford School should increase 

representation from political con-
servatives and Republicans. Better 
outreach to right-leaning student 
organizations will help students who 
don’t already have a network of Pub-
lic Policy students to tell them about 
the program or help them through 
the application process.

Even more importantly, the Pub-

lic Policy School needs to become a 
place that can credibly claim to pro-
spective students an acceptance of a 
wide range of viewpoints. This might 
include framing class discussions to 
highlight both sides of an argument, 
or assigning a paper in one of the 
required classes that asks students to 
argue a policy position they don’t sup-
port, prompting them to give serious 
consideration to an opposing point of 
view. It may also encourage faculty 
to avoid party-line generalizations 
that tempt students to think about 
Republicans and Democrats as being 
homogenous groups without ideologi-
cal variation, pitted against each other 
without room for compromise.

This isn’t to say that conserva-

tive students can’t find a place at 
the Ford School, or benefit from the 
excellent classes it offers. On the 
contrary, I think that students hold-
ing 
underrepresented 
ideologies 

have a unique role to play in making 
the Ford School even better than it 
already is. By creating an environ-
ment in which students challenge 
each other to develop best possible 
policy solutions, the Ford School can 
more effectively produce leaders who 
know how to work through the grid-
lock that plagues government today.

I doubt that this can happen 

in classes where the viewpoints 
expressed are frequently the same, 
either because there are too few stu-
dents who disagree, or because the 
ones who disagree don’t feel comfort-
able expressing their views. Progress 
on this issue will benefit not only cam-
pus conservatives but also the Public 
Policy School itself, by helping it pro-
vide a more comprehensive education 
for all of its students.

— Victoria Noble can be 

reached at vjnoble@umich.edu.

VICTORIA 
NOBLE

 “Netflix and chill” could start 

getting a lot harder

FROM THE DAILY

A 
 

solution to fix standardized testing practices has recently 
bubbled up. On Oct. 24, the Obama administration admitted 
it had pushed too far in holding state schools accountable 

based on their students’ standardized test scores. In light of this 
acknowledgment, the administration called on Congress to include 
specific measures that address the overemphasis on standardized 
testing in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act — a bill 
previously termed No Child Left Behind. Two different versions of the 
ESEA were reauthorized in July by both the House and the Senate, and 
the fate of the bill lies in the two chambers’ ability to compromise.

As part of Obama’s Testing Action Plan, 

which accompanied this announcement, by 
January 2016, the Department of Education 
will release a guidance plan for all states 
and districts detailing how to assess what 
standardized test practices will be fair, 
valid and efficient. These developments are 
especially compelling in the context of the 
disagreements surrounding the Michigan 
Student Test of Educational Progress, the 
new state-required standardized test that 
replaced the 44-year-old MEAP. The recently 
released and abysmally low M-STEP results 
indicate there are significant issues with 
the exam. To set Michigan students up for 
successful academic futures, the Michigan 
Legislature should use the results of this 
year’s M-STEP, combined with the guidelines 

set in the Testing Action Plan, to revise this 
new state-required test, and other state 
legislatures should follow suit.

Unlike 
the 
MEAP, 
the 
M-STEP 
is 

administered 
in 
the 
spring, 
which 
is 

advantageous to students because it tests 
them on material they just learned, rather 
than testing them on material they learned 
three months ago the previous spring. Another 
promising attribute is that the M-STEP aimed 
to incorporate Common Core standards by 
allowing schools to conduct the test online and 
including short-answer questions, in contrast 
to the MEAP, which only used multiple choice. 
These factors should have combined to create 
a “better” standardized test, but as Michigan 
students’ unbelievably low test scores reveal, 
this new test is very far from perfect.

In a phone interview with The Michigan 

Daily, 
Pamela 
Davis-Kean, 
professor 
of 

psychology and education at the University, 
said she takes the results with a grain of salt. 
Davis-Kean explained that by the time the 
federal government had made clear in 2014 the 
Common Core standards that state tests had 
to meet, there was little time for the state to 
actually create the new test. Also concerning 
is that M-STEP removed time restrictions on 
students taking the test. Most students took 
eight to 11 hours to complete the test, and some 
took even longer. This large range inherently 
causes unreliability in the data. 

“In general, no matter what the results are, 

they’re not going to be indicative of anything, 
because it wasn’t pretested — it didn’t go 
through the usual validations that most tests go 
through,” Davis-Kean said.

Guidelines explained in the Testing Action 

Plan could help solve some of the problems 
faced in creating and administering the 
M-STEP. The plan states $403 million would 
go toward creating state assessments that align 
with college and career-readiness standards. 
A separate $25 million will go to projects that 
help states develop new assessment models 
that would allow them to “address pressing 
needs they have identified for developing and 

implementing their assessments.” Now with 
the resources of both more time and more 
money, the Michigan Department of Education 
is better prepared to improve the state-required 
test than it was at the beginning of the 2014-15 
school year.

Calling for the state to place a cap on the 

amount of time districts and schools can spend 
testing, which the Testing Action Plan does, 
would discourage redundancy in the different 
tests schools are currently administering, 
and would therefore serve as a good first step 
toward greater efficiency. By limiting the 
time spent on standardized tests, the Obama 
administration will allow teachers to offer 
more content-based instruction that hones 
in on skills such as reading comprehension, 
critical thinking and rhetorical analysis. 

Rather than requiring students to spend an 
excessive number of hours taking a myriad 
of standardized tests, a returned emphasis 
on class content will give students a greater 
breadth of knowledge and skills than teaching 
to a standardized test allows. 

The plan makes several other much-needed 

calls to action aimed at state governments, 
local districts and individual schools. One 
important aspect of the Testing Action Plan is 
that it encourages states to release test results 
in a timely manner and to make clear to parents, 
students, teachers and administrators what 
these results can be used for. More timely 
access to statewide and individual results 
can help students and teachers make changes 
to curricula and individualized teaching 
strategies for specific student needs. 

In addition, the Testing Action Plan 

emphasizes flexibility in teacher preparation for 
these tests. The plan states, “as in other areas, 
we believe that student learning as measured 
by assessment results should be a part, not the 
sole determinant, of determining the quality of 
a particular program.” Instead of implying that 
educators should be “teaching to a test,” the 
plan seems to suggest that teacher performance 
should not be assessed solely based upon their 
students’ testing performance. After over a 
decade of overemphasizing the importance 
of student test scores in teacher evaluations, 
this is a refreshing and critical point for the 
government to concede.

Evaluating the results of the M-STEP 

demonstrate the Testing Action Plan is a long-
overdue call for states to not only place a cap on 
the amount of classroom time schools require 
of students, but also create a state-administered 
test that is more efficient and effective in 
measuring student achievement. The ideal test 
would encompass Common Core standards 
and would go through extensive preparatory 
procedures before being given to students as to 
avoid the mistakes of the M-STEP. Streamlined 
testing will produce useful data and allow for 
teachers to do what’s more important — focus 
on teaching content in the classroom.

Course evals were created for students

New testing plan a good (M-)STEP 

Obama initiative will help fix Michigan exam

Jackie Thomas/Daily

