Criminal Justice Department Has Been Asking Graduating

¶ … Criminal Justice Department has been asking graduating seniors to take an exit exam as a measure of departmental learning outcomes. How could that tool be used to determine if the criminal justice major is effective? Please assess, in detail, in the context of this week's chapter readings.

An exit exam could indeed be extremely effective in assessing whether the criminal justice major is effective in a range of capacities. First of all, it will test simply how much of the learning outcomes and themes each student absorbed. The key part of this aspect of the exam is that it will properly assess how much was retained. Given all the years of certain criminal justice programs at certain facilities (ranging from two to four), it will see what the major learning themes and ideas were experienced the highest level of retention for individual students and whether students were able to capitalize on that retention, as students in an academic environment and then later as professionals working the field of criminal justice.

It's so important to determine whether or not these learning objectives were understood and accessible by students, because ultimately the exam is going to elucidate two types of students: those that absorbed the material and those which did not. After graduation, those two students are going to turn into professionals in the field of criminal justice. There will thus be two types of professionals: those which experience success at reducing crime and making the world as safer place, and those which do not. This is vital information that educational institutions absolutely need to know: the stakes are extremely high: making the world a better, safer place. Since this is an objective they should truly want to achieve, they should want to know which of their educational tactics and techniques are most effective at accomplishing this by creating informed individuals who are leaders in the profession and who can create real change.

Very simply put, assessment is absolutely pivotal, because is something is going to be achieved it should be able to be measured. "If a criminal justice program is intended to accomplish something, we must be able to measure that something. If we want to reduce fear of crime, we need to be able to measure fear of crime. If we want to increase consistency in sentences for drug offenses, we need to be able to measure that" (Maxfield & Babbie, 2011). Sometimes the most challenging aspect of building a thorough criminal justice program is by finding relevant ways to measure what it accomplishes. This is a task which absolutely cannot be underestimated, as real results, and real performance should be able to be subjected to some sort of analysis and scrutiny. Not simply to reassure oneself that results have indeed been achieved, but so that results can be better understood and so that the entire field can benefit.