ASSESSING OUR ASSESSMENTS: A COLLECTIVE QUESTIONING OF WHAT STUDENTS NEED-AND GET

<p>What follows is a colloquium whose participants are all doctoral candidates at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). They are students of rhetoric and composition who are also teachers advocating for their own students, presenting, in public forums, arguments and testimony about current and proposed assessment practices in CUNY. United against screening assessments that would keep some students out of mainstream courses, senior colleges, even college altogether, they nevertheless represent a range of perspectives, not least of all because of their sensitivity to tlie complexity of the issues they address. Recently, they presented as a panel at a conference called "Confronting Extremes" and sponsored by the CUNY Grad Center's English Students'Association. Their presentations were compelling (and would fill an issue of JBW), but so was tlieir conversation over coffee afterward, and so we asked them to develop an online discussion that would run about the length of an article and air the issues they were wrestling with in a way that could engage a national readership. Here's what they said:</p>