What does validation of the assessment measures mean?
Both the state officials and those at SACS expect that the measures used to assess student performance will be valid. Measurement validity, it must be recognized, is a topic on which there are a number of competing perspectives, none of which are likely to be satisfied with the contours of the current situation. Generally, a valid measure is one that accurately captures the student’s performance on the outcome. Even this view is a simplification, however. For the purposes of the current implementation, SACS requires that the assessments not be the product of a single instructor – it hopes to produce intersubjective validity by making the measurement the product of a group of faculty or some independent group. The state wants universities to establish the validity of the measurements they use by corroborating student performance on the measurements with other indicators of student performance. Here the aim appears to be reaching some form of predictive, concurrent or convergent validity
