At insidehighered.com, there's a good article today about AACU's most recent statement on assessment (pdf).
AACU is holding the line against "assessment for accountability," insisting that the real imperative in higher education is to conduct "assessment for improvement," and maintaining, as we've done at Geneseo, that the latter is itself an accountability measure that should strengthen public confidence even if (because?) it does not produce numbers purporting to make possible cross-institutional comparisons of effectiveness.