The
Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (www.acsp.org) seeks
statements of qualifications from analysts interested in designing,
collecting and analyzing student-education related data drawn from
accreditied university urban planning schools in North America.
The RFQ (linked here)
asks for submissions of qualifications no later than 7 September 2007,
for work to be conducted November 2007 through July 2008.
Submissions of statements of qualifications, as well as any inquiries, should be directed to:
Professor Charles Hoch, Chair
ACSP Planning School Assessment Task Force
College of Urban Planning & Policy
University of Illinois, Chicago
412 South Peoria St.
Chicago, IL. 60607
chashoch@uic.edu
P: 312-996-2156
F: 312-413-2314
On
22 April 2006, the ACSP Governing Board discussed the proposal for
planning school performance measurement and made decisions as described
in this 18 May message from ACSP President Mickey Lauria:
Dear ACSP Planning Educators,
The ACSP Governing Board has been considering a Planning School
Performance Measurement process for over two years now. In April,
in San Antonio, the Governing Board discussed this issue at length and
voted to take initial steps to initiate a system for collecting and
disseminating data about planning schools. This will be done in
increments, under the direction of a new ACSP Task Force, informed by a
poll of our member schools and with multiple opportunities for
Governing Board involvement and review.
While I am aware that this is a contentious issue, I am also aware that
there is much support of the ACSP taking control of this process
(especially given recent initiatives by others to proceed without our
guidance) to ensure that such a process works to the favor of our
diverse membership, not a select few. The Board and the Task
Force understand that this must be done very carefully. There are
many pitfalls to be avoided. We are optimistic that the ACSP is
the best organization to do this and that this Task Force and the
Governing Board are up to the task.
The Academy and the Profession Committee first brought the subject of
school performance measurement before the Board in April 2004.
After reviewing the material the Board requested that a diverse Working
Group be established to respond to the many concerns expressed by the
Board and to develop a more detailed proposal to bring to the
Board. At our Portland Governing Board meeting in October 2004,
we had another lengthy discussion of the Working Group's draft outline
of principles used to construct such a project. Subsequent to
that discussion, the proposal went through a number of iterations with
a final proposal being distributed to board members on September 17,
2005. At the Governing Board meeting in Kansas City (10/26/05),
the Board considered the following motion but deferred decision until
its Spring 2006 meeting:
The committee recommends that ACSP initiate a program of Planning
School Performance Measurement based on the proposal of its working
Group and consisting of three studies (Reputation, Faculty
Accomplishment, Student Data) to take place in a six-year cycle. We
further recommend that a committee be assigned to prepare a Request for
Qualifications for contractors to undertake a Reputation study, with
the intent that the Governing Board would select the contractor at its
spring meeting.
As incoming President, I sent out an electronic version of the
committees report and recommendation to your regional representatives
in early November of 2005. The intent was to enable the regional
representatives to share the full proposal report and recommendation
with their region schools and faculty. I also requested that the
Academy and Profession committee set up a web-site with the proposal
and answers to frequently asked questions.
./Urban%20Planning%20School%20Performance%20Measurement.html
A month prior to the spring 2006 Governing Board meeting I decided to
resend that report reminding the regional representatives of my earlier
request that they share it with their region schools and faculty for
feedback for our upcoming discussion in San Antonio. Not wanting
any room for omission, I also sent the proposal, report and
recommendation directly to program chairs and to all ACSP affiliated
faculty members recommending that they provide feedback to their
regional representatives for our upcoming board discussion. At
the same time, Bruce Stiftel acting on behalf of the Academy and
Profession committee added a blog to the proposal web-site.
http://acsppspm.blogspot.com/
At the Governing Board meeting in San Antonio (April 22, 2006), the
tabled motion was reconsidered. The Governing Board discussed the
issues at great length (much of the discussion on Planet and elsewhere
was reiterated and discussed) and decided to proceed with the
initiative as amended. The motion was amended to start with the Faculty
Accomplishment phase first and to begin to identify potential
contractors by the time of the Fall 2006 meeting, so that they could be
involved in the discussions of indicators and methods.
During the new business portion of the meeting, I laid out my agenda as
ACSP President. This agenda (in future e-mails you will be
hearing about the other items on my agenda) included a detailed
proposal and projected budget for the Planning School Assessment
Project (my renaming of the initiative). The Board held another
lengthy detailed discussion of the initiative (again reflecting the
electronic discussions of our professorate). At the end of this
discussion, the project had been significantly amended and the Board
voted unanimously (with two abstentions) to support the following
process for moving forward:
An ACSP Planning School Assessment Task Force will be appointed with
members including a broad range of opinions on the issues
involved. This Task Force will prepare us to undertake a project
of data collection and dissemination concerning faculty accomplishments
at planning schools. They are to develop a series of measures
concerned with faculty output and resources available to schools, with
attention to consistency with PAB requirements. They are also to
prepare a draft RFQ to solicit qualifications from potential
consultants who might be chosen to conduct the faculty accomplishment
study, and if the Governing Board approves, they will distribute this
RFQ in the hope of bringing a short list of potential consultants to
the Board.
Following the Board's charge, I have appointed the following members to the Planning School Assessment Project Task Force.
Charlie Hoch (Chair), University of Illinois at Chicago, PAB Board member <chashoch@uic.edu>
Randy Crane, University of California at Los Angeles <crane@ucla.edu>
Linda Dalton, California Polytechnic State University at San Luis
Obispo Academy and the
Profession Committee member <ldalton@calpoly.edu>
Ann Forsyth, University of Minnesota, ACSP Working Group on PSPM <forsyth@umn.edu>
Sharon Gaber, Auburn University, ACSP Board member <gabersl@auburn.edu>
Dowell Myers, University of Southern California, ACSP Board member <dowell@usc.edu>
I have charged them with two tasks:
First, to briefly survey planning program administrators on the
following questions (to be answered after discussion with institutional
research staff at their institutions): 1) Does your institution
use or plan to adopt a set of comparator institutions against which you
will be required to benchmark your planning program? 2) What
measures/indicators/benchmarks do you use? 3) Where do you get your
data? 4) Are there data you'd like to have that are not currently
available? If so, what? This information should be used to
help with the second and main task.
Second, following the second board motion above, develop the measures,
the RFQ, and screen and invite applicants for the Fall Board meeting.
Your leadership has heard and understands the many perspectives voiced
on this matter. We have deliberated about them at considerable length,
and believe we have set up a process that will result in a set of
actions which will be important to the healthy future of our
schools. We encourage you to continue to provide input and
feedback, especially through the new Task Force chaired by Charlie
Hoch, but also to your Regional Representatives and officers
Mickey Lauria, President
Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning
Professor, City and Regional Planning
College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities
236 Hardin Hall
Clemson University
Clemson, SC 29634-0528
864-656-0520
Mlauria@clemson.edu
Material posted on this site November 2005 follows:
The
Working Group on Planning School Performance Measurement (PSPM) was
formed in April 2004 at the request of the Governing Board of the
Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP), in order to
consider development of a U.S. national system for collecting and
disseminating data on accomplishments by university programs offering
credentials in the field of city/community/urban/regional/rural/town
planning.
The Working Group filed a proposal for PSPM
with the ACSP leadership on 17 September 2005, calling for a
wide-ranging program aimed at portraying school performance across the
full range of objectives sought by urban planning schools. Three
separate studies are envisioned on a six-year cycle looking at: student data,
faculty work, and reputation. The population of schools studied
would be those offering PAB-accreditited degrees at the bachelor and/or
master level. Emphasis would be placed on data
from national sources to maximize comparability and to minimize burden
of data assembly on schools. This proposal is to be discussed at the April 2006
meeting of the ACSP Governing Board in San Antonio.
***Share your views on PSPM at the ACSPPSPM blog***
[Text of PSPM Proposal] [Reasons Behind the Proposal] [Members of the Working Group] [FAQs] [ACSPPSPM Blog] [Links]
Reasons Behind the Proposal
1) A national system of
compartive data on school performance would provide faculty with
realistic gauges of the relative quality of our work. Internal school deliberations would be better informed, and would therefore likely lead to better decisions.
2) A national system of comparative
data on school performance will allow schools to make believable
strategic arguments to the administrations of their universities.
As a field, urban planning is disadvantaged within universities
because we cannot provide systematic data on school performance from
reliable national sources. Internationally, universities
increasingly rely on such data, and are increasingly sensitive to the
need to move their programs to higher levels of performance. In the US,
academic programs that are not assessed by the National Research Council
and do not have discipline-specific national performance
data, often find that universities are reluctant to invest in
them.
3. A national system of comparative
data on school performance would improve the visibility of our
profession and lead to stronger student recruitment. The
principal fields we compete with for students all have regular national
studies of school performance, while urban planning does not. Public
Affairs programs are rated bi-annually by U.S. News and World Reports. Architecture and Landscape Architecture programs are rated annually by Design Intelligence. Civil Engineering is included in the National Research Council
studies of program quality. The publicity and visibility of these
studies draws students to those fields, and away from planning.
Members of the Working Group
The ACSP Working Group on Planning School Performance Measurement consists of:
Linda Dalton,
AICP, Executive Vice Provost and Professor of City and Regional
Planning, California Polytechnic State Universsity, San Luis Obispo
<ldalton@calpoly.edu>
Ann Forsyth, MPIA, Professor and Dayton Hudson Chair of Urban Design, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities <forsyth@umn.edu>
Frederick Steiner,
FASLA, Dean and Henry M. Rockwell Chair in Architecture, School of
Architecture, University of Texas at Austin
<fsteiner@austin.utexas.edu>
Bruce Stiftel, FAICP, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, Florida State University (Working Group Chair) <bruce.stiftel@fsu.edu>
Dawn Terkla, Executive Director of Institutional Research, Tufts University <dawn.terkla@tufts.edu>
Nohad Toulan, FAICP, Dean Emeritus, College of Urban and Public Affaris, Portland State University <toulann@pdx.edu>
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Would these studies lead to a ranking of planning schools?
No. School performance on approximately thirty measures would be
reported, with no aggregation across measures. Individual schools will
undoubtedly do better on some measures than others. Schools and
users of the studies will apply their own views to assessing the
importance of the various measures. In a 2004 study, fully one-half of the 84 graduate planning schools studied showed up in the top-10 on at least one of the nine measures of faculty productivity examined.
2. Will both accredited and non-accredited planning programs be studied?
The proposed studies would examine only schools that have planning
programs accredited by the Planning Accreditation Board. It is
important to note, however, that PAB would not participate in the
provision of data, nor would it be involved in conducting the analyses
or publicizing the results.
3. How will different university missions be treated in the studies?
Data would be reported separately for those schools that offer only
undergraduate degrees, and for those schools that offer graduate
degrees. In addition, schools
will be identified by their university's Carnegie
Foundation category. Among the 30+ measures to be reported are
indicators pertaining to teaching, scholarship, design, outreach, and
reputation. By their nature, schools with different missions will
show different profiles among these many measures. Schools that
emphasize community engagement, for instance, will likely perform well
on outreach measures; schools that emphasize research will likely
perform well on scholarship measures, etc.
4. Will there be separate assessment of schools that grant doctoral degrees?
The proposed PSPM system would not attempt to distinguish doctoral
degree-granting institutions. As there is no national system for
recognizing doctoral degrees in planning, it would be very difficult to
identify these schools with accuracy, and collection of secondary data
from national sources would be impossible.
5. How did all this get started?
In 2001 the ACSP Executive Committee (now Governing Board)
declined to accept an invitation from US News and World Reports to add
Urban and Regional Planning to that magazine's rankings series.
In 2004, following discussion of PSPM at the Leuven ACSP:AESOP
conference, and with awareness of a forthcoming study of planning school faculty publication and citation data,
the Governing Board asked the ACSP Committee on the Academy and the
Profession to examine how ACSP should properly respond to the issue.
The Working Group was formed by that Committee.
6. Who will be treated as a faculty member of the schools involved for the purposes of data collection?
The
census of faculty will be drawn from the annual submissions of "50% or
greater in planning faculty" reported by the schools themselves to ACSP
for the
purpose of dues assessments and mailing list maintenance. This
reporting program has been in place for more than 15 years and has been
used to generate listings in the various Guides to schools that ACSP has published.
7. What areas of school performance would be assessed?
There are three proposed studies: student data, faculty work, and
reputation. Student indicators would include measures of
admissions selectivity, student financial aid availability, degrees
awarded, demographic characteristics of degree recipients, and success
on the AICP exam among graduates. Faculty work indicators would include
measures of publications, citations, fellowships, awards, exhibitions,
and service to government and professional panels. Reputation
indicators would include ratings of educational program quality in nine
areas based on a survey of planning faculty. Full details
are presented in the Working Group proposal.
8. Would faculty rate their own schools?
The reputational survey would not allow faculty to rate any school
where they now work or where they previously studied or worked.
9. Who would carry out the PSPM studies?
ACSP would issue separate Requests for Proposals for each of the three
studies. Contractors would be selected by the Governing Board, on
the advice of an ACSP committee.
10. How would results be disseminated?
With the approval of the Governing Board, results of each of the three
studies would be released as reports of ACSP and posted to the ACSP
website. The authors of these studies might seek to have articles based
on them published in journals.
11. How can I influence the decision of whether to go forward with this proposal?
The ACSP Governing Board will consider this proposal at its meeting in
San Antonio on 22 April in conjunction with the annual APA conference.
Views expressed to members of the Governing Board will influence this decision. Members of the Working Group
and the ACSP Committee on the Academy and the Profession would also be
interested in your views and would attempt to reflect them in the
evolution of the project.
Links
The proposal of the ACSP Working Group on Planning School Performance Measurement
[ACSPPSPM Blog]
2004 JPER study of graduate planning school faculty publications and citatations (24(1):6-22)
September 2004 comments on the 2004 JPER study (24(1):22ff)
December 2004 comment on the 2004 JPER study (24(2))
December 2004 response to comments by the authors of the 2004 JPER study (24(2):128-130)
ACSP Governing Board
National Research Council 1995 study of Research-doctorate programs.
NRC materials on its 2007 round of Research-doctorate program assessments.
US News and World Reports Public Affairs graduate program rankings.
Design Intelligence Architecture and Landscape Architecuture program rankings.
Australian official materials on the
Research Quality Framework
New Zealand official materials on the
Performance-based Research Fund
UK official materials on the
Research Assessment Exercise
M Tewdwr-Jones and R Johnson on RAE 2008 in
Environment and Planning B 32(3; 2005):317-322.
RAE
2001 Town and Country Planning results.
(London) Times Higher Education Supplement World University Rankings
Shanghai Jiao Tong University Academic Ranking of World Universities