Daily Archives: September 30, 2011

by | September 30, 2011 · 2:23 pm

PASSHE schools, including WCU, do well in US News yearly rankings

If you missed this post yesterday on the state APSCUF blog, check it out. SEVEN PASSHE schools are ranked among the top regional universities, FIVE in the top 100.

And yet, ironically, you’re not hearing a word about this from the Office of the Chancellor or from any local management that I know of. Why? Because maybe it might call too much attention to the quality of the faculty and students? I dunno…  Maybe because it demonstrates that the Chicken Little crisis rhetoric coming from management is, er, um, maybe a little hyperbolic? Kevin Mahoney and the KU-Xchange crew have laid out the notion of Shock Doctrine and its application in the our system in enough detail that I don’t need to rehash it all here.

If you’re not subscribed to the state APSCUF blog so you get notification of new posts, you should do that by clicking here. And if you’re on Facebook and haven’t yet liked the official APSCUF group, you should do that by clicking here.

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Filed under APSCUF, Budget, Budget Cuts, Office of the Chancellor, PASSHE, Shock Doctrine

by | September 30, 2011 · 1:26 pm

Mike Rose responds at length to Education Reform

For those of you not familiar with Mike Rose, he’s a Professor of Education at UCLA who has written several influential books about literacy education and the politics of school over the last 25-30 years. He’s one of those rare thinkers and writers who’s able to say very incisive and critical things while maintaining a tone that’s respectful and at times even affectionate, even when he’s talking about people he strongly disagrees with.

This link goes to a series of essays Prof. Rose posted at the indie-news-blog-service Truthdig; I don’t know how I missed it until now because I read Truthdig pretty faithfully and it’s been up for months.

There are several, and the series is a long read to do in one sitting, but each of them has at least one gem of an argument in it, if not more, and I can’t recommend highly enough that you spend some time with it. If you’re an angry rabble-rouser like me, you’ll find moments of calm hope. If you’re cynical and feeling burned, you’ll find moments of inspiration. If you’re starry-eyed optimistic (or believe that all’s well and those of us who struggle are just paranoid–although if you’re that person you probably don’t read this blog!), you’ll find reasons to be more concerned.

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Filed under Access, Advocacy, charter schools, Communities, Education reform, K-12 Education, liberal arts, Mike Rose, Privatization, Public education, public employees, Teacher unions