NCLB for grownups

On Tuesdays and Thursdays we get quick, down and dirty, what’s goin’ on entries. So here’s one. I’m completely perplexed by the new language we’re having to start using in the workplace. I blame it all on George W. Bush – that hellcat – by (indirect) way of Margaret Spellings. After No Child Left Unharmed, she turned her sights on higher education. Like so many industries before us, higher ed said “no-no-no, we can police ourselves…at least let us try.” Hence the arrival of assessment, or as we call it ass-ass-ment. Because it’s asinine. Get it? I won’t get onto a long tear about assessment now, although I could, but I’d just like to put some of the words out here that I cannot figure out. They all sound the same to me. Take one word from column A and combine it with a word from column B and you’ll have a term you can salt into your program assessment plan. But I’ve no real idea how they differ or even what they really mean. Can anyone reading this help me make up some definitions?
A
Course
Program
Learning
B
Goal
Objective
Outcome
The entire enterprise seems idiotic. Why not just focus on what’s actually going on in the classroom? How’s that for an idea? This stuff is like looking at the very first holograms. Every now and then, if you hold it just right, for just a nanosecond, you can see the whole picture. But mostly what you see is just shards of an idea.