What Do the New ABA Standards on Learning Outcomes and Assessment Mean for Law Schools?
On February 3, the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates voted to approve changes to ABA standards related to learning outcomes and assessment that will have significant implications for law school curricula. The purpose of this post is to explain the changes and how law schools might want to adapt in light of those changes. Future Law:Fully blog posts will further explain learning outcomes, the difference between programmatic learning outcomes and course-level learning outcomes, and best practices for developing learning outcomes.
The Standards affected are 302, 315, 204, and 314 (I’ve taken them out of numerical order to address similar topics together). There is a lot to unpack here, but I will start with the high-level concepts.
Standard 302(a) – In addition to restating existing minimum learning outcomes, this Standard now clarifies that these are programmatic outcomes (that is the skills, knowledge, and abilities students should have upon completing law school) rather than course-level learning outcomes.
Standard 302(b) – A law school must establish course-level learning outcomes for every course it offers, and they must be specific and measurable.
Standard 302(c) – Every section of a required course must have the same minimum learning outcomes.
The focus of the changes to Standard 315 is on a law school’s own assessment of its program of legal education. (Note the use of the term “assessment” here is not to be conflated with the assessment of student attainment of learning outcomes, which is the subject of Standard 314, which will be addressed in a subsequent post.)
The substance of this revision is best summarized by the new language itself: “A law school shall conduct ongoing evaluation of the efficacy of its program of legal education, including individual course learning outcomes, in achieving its programmatic learning outcomes.” In essence, a law school should be looking at the interrelationship between course-level and programmatic learning outcomes. Currently, course-level law school learning outcomes — to the extent they are articulated at all — do not generally align with one another or with programmatic learning outcomes, and scaffolding is severely lacking. The changes to Standard 315 may create an incentive to ensure programmatic and course-level learning outcomes are aligned.
The rubber hits the road with revised ABA Standard 204. As discussed above, Standard 302 mandates both programmatic and course-level learning outcomes, and Standard 315 requires law schools to review their learning outcomes and student attainment of those learning outcomes.
Standard 204 now requires schools to prepare a “Standard 315 report” in connection with the ABA site visit addressing a school’s evaluation of its course-level and programmatic learning outcomes. (For those unfamiliar with the ABA’s function in legal education, in addition to creating the Standards, ABA site visits are conducted every 10 years to determine if a law school is compliant with accreditation requirements.)
While the revised Standards 302, 315, and 204 focus on course-level and programmatic learning outcomes, Standard 314 focuses on assessment of student learning (or student attainment of learning outcomes) and, particularly, the role of formative assessment.
(For anyone unfamiliar with the term, “formative assessment” means assessment for purposes of improving learning, in contrast to “summative assessment,” which is for purposes of evaluating learning. Law schools famously employ summative assessment — typically a high-stakes final exam that may be the sole determinant of a student’s grade — almost exclusively. That has changed to some extent in recent years, with law schools instituting internal policies requiring some level of formative assessment, but there are plenty of law school classes that continue to rely on a single, all-or-nothing final exam.)
Standard 314(a) – There is a subtle language shift here that may prove to have some significance — the Standard previously stated that “A law school shall utilize both formative and summative assessment methods in its curriculum . . .” and now states that such assessment methods must be used “throughout its curriculum.”
In addition, Interpretation 314-2 was amended to strike out the language, “A law school need not apply multiple assessment methods in any particular course.” So, while the Standards do not explicitly require the inverse, the door has been cracked open a bit.
Standard 314(b) – At least one formative assessment is now required in every course in the first third of a law student’s academic career (e.g., in every 1L course for a typical full-time student).
In my next blog, I’ll focus on: setting aside the ABA requirements, why should those of us who care about legal education care about learning outcomes and formative assessment? And after that, some tips for law schools on how to respond to these new requirements.
