Progression Policies

I continue to be contacted by students, lawyers, and (rarely) faculty members about progression policies. I am actually quite happy when students call because that tells me these folks are critically thinking. Most of them tell me they have found my articles in research databases and want to talk about the results. I am very happy that students, when they have questions, are going to the literature to look for answers. This is a great change from what we see reported in the literature that nurses most frequently ask other colleagues when they have questions in the clinical setting.¹ I do hope this spirit of inquiry follows these students into their careers.

I continued to be troubled, however, that so many students are having trouble with graduating, being certified for graduation, etc. - based on the fact that they can't achieve a cut-score on some end-of-program predictive test. I put together an explanation of why this is not a good idea and posted a link on this page.

As can be seen on this page, many schools are being involved in court actions, protests, and other negative situations over their use of progression policies and high-stakes testing. If anyone has news links to other sites with related news, please email me.

1.  Pravikoff, D. S., Tanner, A. B., & Pierce, S. T. (2005). Readiness of U.S. nurses for evidence-based practice. The American Journal of Nursing, 105(9), 40-51.