This volume of New Directions for Institutional Research--the first in a series of annual supplements--is intended to help institutional research, assessment professionals, and others involved in assessment.

Chapter topics include:

1. Assessment and Accountability in America Today: Background and Context
2. Measurement Validity and Accountability for Student Learning
3. The Voluntary System of Accountability for Accountability and Institutional Assessment
4. The Texas Experience with Accountability and Student Learning Assessment
5. VALUE: Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education
6. Rising to the Challenge: Developing a Survey of Workplace Skills, Civic Engagement, and Global Awareness
7. Sharing Responsibility for Student Learning

Everyone in this growing group of administrators, faculty, and staff is constantly pursuing two goals: improving programs through the development of internal assessment tools, and answering external demands to account for the quality of student learning and related aspects of institutional functioning. The chapter authors, all leading researchers, provide a historical and conceptual perspective on assessment in higher education and examine some of the tools being developed to make institutional assessment meaningful and useful.

This is the first volume in a series of annual supplements in the of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Institutional Research. Always timely and comprehensive, New Directions for Institutional Research provides planners and administrators in all types of academic institutions with guidelines in such areas as resource coordination, information analysis, program evaluation, and institutional management.