Balanced Scorecard For Education Assessment

In choosing a method to evaluate an academic unit, there are multiple choices to consider. This paper begins with a discussion of the decision process that one college of engineering took along the path of deciding how to assess their newly formed strategic initiative. The four sets of performance measures that compose Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorecard provide fundamental structure for institutional goals and seem promising in the context of assessment for education improvement. With assistance from administration and faculty, a comprehensive scorecard can be assembled accounting for several specific assessment objectives. An extensive, quantitative model as such would provide a clearer understanding of education system dynamics, support formal experiments, evidence value-added practices and factors for success, identify opportunities for intervention, and so better inform policy decisions. An example will be presented of a Balanced Scorecard applied to the University of Oklahoma College of Engineering’s strategic initiatives.