Category Archives: Access

by | February 12, 2016 · 12:56 pm

Speak up for faculty (and students) at Mount Saint Mary’s University

By now you’ve likely heard the news from Mount Saint Mary’s University about their recently hired president’s plan to improve the university’s retention rates and the aftermath. I’ll summarize below in case you haven’t followed it. If you have but haven’t yet signed this petition to Mount Saint Mary’s University to reinstate two fired faculty members, we encourage you to add your name. It’s an important statement in support of colleagues whose due process and academic freedom have been violated as ominously as any time I can remember.

Here’s a nutshell version of Newman’s retention plan–

  1. Early in the fall semester, identify students who are at risk–academically, emotionally, financially–of leaving the institution.
  2. Encourage them to drop out as quickly as possible so that you never have to report them as matriculated.
  3. Ergo, improve retention by reducing the number of “dropouts.”

[It’s worth a minute to look at President Simon Newman’s background before we keep going. Notice anything missing? Any experience whatsoever with higher ed before being appointed as president of a university. Anywho….]

To make matters worse, President Newman had an email exchange with campus leaders in which he said some controversial (yes, that’s understatement) things, the most disturbing of which was:

“This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t. You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads.”

When that quote showed up in the Washington Post and Inside Higher Ed, the story suddenly became national (read: embarrassing). And when President Newman learned that two faculty members–one tenured, one tenure-track–had leaked emails (one of the faculty was the advisor to the student newspaper), he fired them without any hearings, investigations, or procedures whatsoever. Clearly, his fundamental ignorance about how universities work and what faculty do made it seem logical for him to fire people who were “disloyal” (his word).

This is why we fight to protect tenure (and due process for colleagues with/without tenure). Signing this petition is a simple way to help. Indirectly, it’s also a statement on behalf of students who spent a lot of time, money, and emotional energy committing to a school run by somebody with such profound disregard for their well-being that he could think, much less say, what he did.

PS: In case you’re curious, the president tried to identify students to “drown” via a survey (as reported in Inside Higher Ed) that will make your skin crawl if you know anything about privacy or research ethics.

[Updated 5 pm Fri: The university has announced that it will reinstate the fired faculty in hopes of beginning what the president and board call a healing process; the board has reaffirmed their support of the president. The fired tenured faculty member says he has no intention of returning to the university.]

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Filed under Academic Freedom, Access, free speech, Inside Higher Ed, Retention, Tenure, Uncategorized

by | August 24, 2012 · 2:06 am

If this is the first you’re hearing of this, surprise!

I’m reposting an article from this morning’s (Thurs) Inside Higher Ed in full. And without further comment unless people want to discuss it. Click the link to the original if you want to follow all their internal links. Otherwise, happy reading!

Creditworthy in the Keystone State
August 23, 2012 – 3:00am

Pennsylvania’s regional public universities are gearing up to serve more adult students, and will use prior learning assessment and stackable credentials to help meet that anticipated demand.

Work force development is a priority for the 14 universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, in part because they are often the only public game in town. Many lack nearby community colleges, especially the universities in the state’s central and northern regions,  so the four-year system sports a healthy suite of associate degrees and one-year certificates, along with the standard fare of bachelor’s degrees.

“We offer the best of both worlds,” says Christopher Reber, executive dean of Clarion University’s Venango College campus.

Those academic programs attract large numbers of nontraditional students, for whom the potential to earn credits for their learning outside of the classroom can be a big draw. The system already does prior learning assessment, but plans to expand through a new partnership with the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL). System officials expect students will seek and receive credits for learning on the job, from technical training programs, in the military or from other sources, including massive open online courses (MOOCs), according to John Cavanaugh, the system’s chancellor.

“We’re going to open it up to any kind of prior learning that people are bringing,” Cavanaugh says. However, he stresses that by working with CAEL, the system will be able to ensure that it issues credits for college-level learning that matches up with the system’s academic course offerings. “You’re still going to have to demonstrate that you’ve got the learning before that translates to credit.”

The Pennsylvania system will be perhaps the largest public university partner to sign on to Learning Counts, CAEL’s portfolio-based prior-learning service, an official at the council says. Through Learning Counts, students fork over $500 for an online course on how to put together a portfolio that collects and describes their prior learning. For an additional fee of $250, faculty experts review those submissions and can issue recommendations worth up to 12 credits.

However, not all colleges accept prior-learning recommendations, even if they come from CAEL, which is generally considered to be an industry leader. So the council has enlisted over 100 partner institutions that have agreed to defer to Learning Counts and issue full credit for successful portfolios. The Pennsylvania system is joining that group, Cavanaugh says.

Credit for MOOCs?

One reason many colleges are skittish about granting credits for prior learning is because to do so is to acknowledge that the academy doesn’t have a lock on college-level learning. Some faculty members also view the process warily, arguing that it can be an academically suspect money grab and a weak substitute for college.

Prior learning could also threaten professors’ jobs.

“It changes who generates the credits,” says Steve Hicks, an English professor at Loch Haven University and president of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, the system’s primary union. “Potentially there’s a job loss there.”

Hicks says that representatives from the faculty union met with system officials about Learning Counts and prior learning. While he says they were “concerned” about the plan, they have yet to take a position on it.

Cavanaugh and other administrators defend their approach, and say chief academic officers have been busy vetting how prior-learning credits will align with curriculums. Furthermore, Cavanaugh says the system has long granted credit to students who take College Level Examination Program (CLEP) tests, which are administered by the College Board to measure college-level learning. So the portfolio approach isn’t such a stretch.

“The notion that this is credit for living is just not the case,” he says.

The system held lengthy discussions about whether it should grant credit for MOOCs, according to Cavanaugh. CAEL has predicted that many students will seek credit for MOOCs, and the council plans to include those courses in credit recommendations if students can demonstrate that they have received college-level learning. Eventually the system decided it was on board, as long as MOOC credit submissions receive the Learning Counts stamp.

“We fully expect to see people putting them in the portfolios,” says Cavanaugh.

Daniel Hurley praises the system’s plan to ramp up prior-learning assessment, and its proactive approach with new forms of online learning. Hurley, director of state relations and policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, says the system and other regional publics can play a leading role in prior learning, in part because they enroll many students who might benefit from the process.

The system is also not alone in helping community colleges on work force development. Hurley says that 42 percent of the association’s members issue two-year degrees. “It’s really about meeting demand.”

Up the Ladder

It’s a long way from Edinboro University to the nearest community college — like two hours.

The university is close to Erie, where county leaders have pushed hard for a new two-year college. But that idea tanked last year, after a saga described in an Education Sector report. So the university decided it had to step up its technical job training options. This fall Edinboro will launch a new associate degree in applied technology.

But Edinboro’s evolving approach is more ambitious than just a few isolated academic offerings, says Julie E. Wollman, the university’s president. It is working with technical trade schools, most of them small for-profits with ties to local industries, to help students get credit for previously earned technical certificates when they enroll at Edinboro.

Sometimes students arrive at the university years after having attended a trade school.

“A lot of people get a certificate at one of those places and go right to a job,” Wollman says.

To advance in their careers, even jobs on the floor of a manufacturing plant, they often need the sort of training only a college can provide. Edinboro treats the prior learning students bring from their jobs and technical trade certificates as the core of their major, Wollman says. And they can earn up to 27 prior learning credits. Then the university offers students classes that help them bolster their communication, analytical, business and mathematics skills.

“What they’re bringing is the major,” she says. “What we’re really providing is the general education.”

An hour down the road, Clarion’s Venango campus has developed similar ways for students to enroll with credits from their work experience. And both institutions are designing their sub-baccalaureate credentials to be stackable, meaning students can complete a certificate or associate degree, leave to take a job, and then seamlessly return to continue working toward a bachelor degree.

Reber calls the approach a “ladder” of credentials. To create credit pathways at Clarion, his campus has collaborated with several technical institutions and employers, including the Precision Manufacturing Institute and FirstEnergy Corporation.

Clarion is also introducing online degree completion programs, including an associate in industrial technology and a bachelor’s in technology leadership. The online coursework is particularly handy for adult students who work full time. And it’s not surprising that students might prefer to keep their jobs and enroll online, rather than attending Clarion as traditional students. Some of the Venango campus’s employer partners pay a guaranteed $60,000 salary to associate-degree holders from the university, and will cover tuition for employees who finish their bachelor’s degree.

For Venango and Clarion, as well as for other universities in the system, one benefit of work place partnerships is a boost to enrollment. Located in Oil City, the campus is surrounded by an aging population, and adult workers are generally conscientious students.

“It’s a win-win,” Reber says.

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Filed under Access, APSCUF, Budget, Budget Cuts, Collective Bargaining, Corporate University, deliverology, Education reform, Inside Higher Education, MOOCs, on-line schools, PASSHE, Program elimination, Retrenchment, shared governance

by | June 16, 2012 · 2:03 am

They just never get tired of it

As we all know by now, Governor Corbett’s budget-slashing attacks aren’t aimed solely at PASSHE. He seems willing to destroy any school system at any level if doing so hurts teachers’ unions and allows his private/charter school patrons to make more money.

This account of the situation in nearby Reading, PA from today’s Huffington Post is enough to infuriate even the most heartless person–except members of the Corbett administration, apparently.

As always, the Governor, in a radio interview, tries to pass off the attacks as “tough decisions”:

Representatives from Corbett’s office did not return requests for comment, but Corbett did address the budget on a recent radio program. “You have to make tough decisions, and nobody really likes them,” Corbett told Q106.9-FM.

No, it’s not a tough decision to sell off our schools, systems, students, their families, their futures, teachers, their careers, and the health of our entire Commonwealth to his friends. That’s a really easy, lazy decision, and it’s long past time for him to be at least honest about it. He should have to make clear to voters that he knows when they voted for “fiscal responsibility,” they weren’t voting for him to cut millions of dollars out of school budgets so kids in “America’s Poorest City” couldn’t go to pre-kindergarten. And we should make clear to him that’s not what we meant too.

I better stop there before I say something unprofessional (!).

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Filed under Access, Budget, Budget Cuts, Budget Deficit, charter schools, Collective Bargaining, Communities, Education reform, K-12 Education, PASSHE, Privatization, Public education, Public employee unions, public employees, Shock Doctrine, Teacher unions, Tom Corbett, Unions

by | June 12, 2012 · 12:38 pm

Contact the House Government Committee — and tell your Representative

It is critical that we contact members of the House Government Committee today (6/12/12) to stop HB 2442, 2443, 2444, and 2446.  In the coming week, we need to contact our legislators so that the bills do not continue in the process of becoming law.  Many lawmakers are trying to limit the amount of multi-recipient email messages so you will need to send some of them individual messages.  I am providing a sample letter and clickable contact names below.

Now is the time to be active!

In Solidarity,

Lisa Millhous, President of WCU APSCUF

  • House Bill 2442: Deregulates student activity fees, no longer making them mandatory for any student to pay. Students can elect not to pay by signing a form at the start of each semester.
  • House Bill 2443: Prohibits institutions from providing free or reduced tuition for spouses, children, same sex partners, or relatives of employees of the institution or any other.
  • House Bill 2444: Prohibits the System from executing any contract for construction, repair, renovation and maintenance projects, unless the System submits a written request for an exception to the Department of General Services and the department determines, in writing, that an emergency exists and failure to execute a contract would be detrimental to the health or safety of students, employees, or the public.
  • House Bill 2446: Prohibits paid sabbaticals for professors.

TO:  Members of the House Government Committee (clickable links after message)

SUBJECT:  Vote No on HB 2442, 2443, 2444, and 2446

Dear Members of the House Government Committee –

Each of these bills (HB 2442, 2443, 2444, and 2446) will independently harm the State-owned universities, whom you have been entrusted as a steward for the People of this Commonwealth.  Together with the other bills of the so-called “keep tuition affordable” legislative package they jeopardize my ability as a faculty member to help my students achieve their full potential.  Without funding and the ability to generate funding there is no way that we can maintain our quality.

These bills will have far-reaching ramifications and deserve thoughtful debate.  Please take the time to be a good steward of our public resources and consider the destructive outcome that could occur as a result of these bills.

I urge you to vote NO for HB 2442, 2443, 2444, and 2446.  These bills are not ready to leave committee.

Sincerely,
Lisa Millhous
Taxpayer in the Commonwealth of PA and Employee of West Chester University of PA

TO:  dmetcalf@pahousegop.com; eevankov@pahousegop.com; ggrell@pahousegop.com; mhahn@pahousegop.com; rkauffma@pahousegop.com; Tkrieger@pahousegop.com; mmustio@pahousegop.com; broae@pahousegop.com; jstern@pahousegop.com;

Committee Leadership:

Committee Members:

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Filed under Access, APSCUF, Benefits/Benefit Cuts, Education reform, Public education, public employees, West Chester University

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by | May 2, 2012 · 12:08 pm

On Whether University Presidents Can Afford to Take Overtly Political Stances

Kevin Kiley in today’s (May 2) Inside Higher Ed considers the firing of LSU’s President Lombardi, ostensibly for taking stances that were politically contentious–opposing Gov. Bobby Jindhal’s budget-slashing and governance-shifting maneuvers, and so on.

There’s so much I’d like to say about why this is relevant to our current situation as faculty (and students and staff and managers) at WCU, but the article says most of it.

All I’ll add is this. If upper management isn’t going to defend us from attacks by idealogues whose purpose is to denigrate (or even kill) public higher education, or from the education reform [sic] cabal the major goal of which is to privatize and commercialize public education for their own profit, then we have to do it ourselves. The time to sit by and wait for our leadership to lead is over. 

I can understand why Inside Higher Ed wouldn’t make that argument for us.

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Filed under Access, Advocacy, APSCUF, Budget, Budget Cuts, CFHE, Collective Bargaining, Corporate University, Education reform, Inside Higher Ed, PASSHE, Private higher education, shared governance, Tom Corbett

by | May 1, 2012 · 12:22 pm

A non-presidential post from Steve Hicks

Sometimes even the most official officers need to say things that they prefer not to have attached to their offices. [OK, I’m done with that riff!]

Since the state APSCUF blog has rules, particularly governing length of posts, I wanted to offer this forum to Steve to say some things that aren’t within that limit. So here ya go. You can read the original version here. Or here:

Over the past week plus “at APSCUF” (which is less of a place than a state of mind — sort of), quite a bit of time has been spent looking at PASSHE’s new system of performance funding, which goes into effect this fall.  New in this system is a series of optional choices for the universities.  One of those — under “Stewardship” — is “Instructional Productivity.”

(Digressive paragraph) Several times at this weekend’s APSCUF Legislative Assembly, faculty went to the microphone to tell us “that’s a horrible term, don’t use it.”   One speaker suggested, strongly, that we use “workload” instead, because “that’s what it is.”  The problem with all this argument about terminology is that it isn’t “our” (as in faculty or APSCUF’s) language, it is PASSHE’s language, codified in PASSHE documents, approved by PASSHE’s Board of Governors (in January 2011), and used in all the documents forwarded by the Dixon Center for universities to use in determining their performance indicators.  They will continue to use it, no matter what we call it.

(Back to central point) This discussion of instructional productivity, er workload, centers on numbers from the state system showing the average CalUP faculty member generates 758 credit hours per year.  That’s #1 in the system by almost 2 standard deviations — next is Slippery Rock at 652.  Cheyney is lowest at 469.  At Assembly our most knowledgeable person said that Carnegie II.A institutions have an average of 589 — which is East Stroudsburg’s average (they rank 9th in the system, telling you how well we do; our unweighted average is 599).

Should instructional productivity be a performance indicator?  Probably not.  But our best early analysis of the options to university managers is that this is one they will all pick.  It is one that is clearly attainable (many other options seem unattainable).

This morning on *CBS Sunday Morning* they had a piece on college costs.  They interviewed the president and a student from Sarah Lawrence, amongst others — the most expensive college in the country, according to the story — and both talked about how the personalized attention from faculty was the great attraction of the university.  The president said it wasn’t faculty salaries that drove their price so high, but the fact they had to hire LOTS of faculty to keep that small class experience.

The point was made on the Assembly floor that CAL no longer can claim that kind of experience.  758 represents an average of 21 students in EVERY class CAL offers.  Of course, that would mean that EVERY faculty member teaches 12 courses, that no one has any release time to run a program, chair a department, do research…which we know isn’t true.

It means that every student sits in a class with a lot of other students — not Sarah Lawrence.  What it IS like is Penn State — a comparison made on the floor as the 758 number is almost exactly what the behemoth university in State College has as their average, too.  Although we hate it, WE ARE PENN STATE!

This is where we are in public higher education in Pennsylvania, and the US, today.  In the *New York Times* today, Frank Bruni cites an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development statement: Thirty years ago, the U.S. led the world in the percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds with the equivalent of at least a two-year degree; only Canada and Israel were close.  As of 2009, the U.S. lagged behind 14 other developed countries.”  We don’t generate the number of degrees we need to stay with, let alone ahead, of the rest of the world because we make higher education both unaffordable and inaccessible.

How?  By defunding higher ed, both in Pennsylvania and across the country.  Last year PASSHE took an 18% cut in funding from the state; we’ve been asked to give back 5% more this year; and for 12-13 the current proposal from the Governor is a 20% cut.  This is after what even the State Senate  Appropriations Committee has admitted has been at least a decade of defunding.  Tuitions have risen and PASSHE’s Board and then the universities have responded with higher tuition AND a cut in their needed expenditures (it’s known in budget-tuition talk around the System as “the Gap” — the difference between the income from tuition and state appropriation and the real cost to sustain the current apparatus — and it’s been over $20 million every year I’ve been state APSCUF president).  It’s a squeeze from both ends.

This squeeze leads to more “productivity,” which, yes, means more faculty workload.  There’s no one else to squeeze in an academic institution: there are only so many copiers, paperclips, and backroom workers.  The real business is students and faculty.  Though you’d be surprised how little of an institution’s budget is actually for that part of the business (one set of numbers makes it to be in the 20-30% range and declining annually).   Classes grow, faculty have more students, the way we teach changes.

Who wants to go to college to sit in a large class, or sit in their dorm on their laptop in “distance” learning, or go to college where no one connected to the university even acts like they want to know their name?  College education is a labor intensive exercise.  As the labor economist from George Washington University said, we haven’t found a way to make it anything but labor intensive.

It serves no one to be more productive at some point: even an English professor (like me) understands the rudiments of the law of diminishing returns.  There’s a reason that all the PASSHE institutions have long advertised themselves to students (who are either the consumers or the product in the productivity model — that one can’t tell says much about how well the model applies) as familiar, know-your-name, private school model institutions.  No one has ever said “we are and want to be like (Carnegie) research (i) institutions, with large lecture halls and grad students in front of smaller classes.”

Cal has reached the point of diminished returns.  PASSHE should be careful about walking the other 13 institutions in their footsteps, given their current financial state.

Our students deserve quality education.  They deserve personalized attention.  They deserve a real opportunity to become what they want to become, not the plumber or carpenter that is the Corbett Administration concentration (which is NOT what students who choose to go to college want to do).

Using instructional productivity to distribute dollars and to show who is performing best will not have a positive outcome.

We all deserve better.

— Steve

 For what it’s worth, I couldn’t agree more–except for one thing. While Steve is certainly correct that PASSHE uses the term instructional productivity to describe, um, whatever it’s describing by using a term that means nothing, I was one of the people on the floor of the Legislative Assembly cheering the call to reject the term as often and loudly as possible.
Of course, that might be why I’m not President of anything. And that might be for the best.
–Seth

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Filed under Access, Advocacy, APSCUF, Budget Cuts, CFHE, Collective Bargaining, Corporate University, deliverology, Education reform, Inside Higher Ed, Instructional Productivity, Office of the Chancellor, PASSHE, Penn State University, Performance Funding, Privatization, Tom Corbett

by | April 5, 2012 · 9:38 am

Let’s hope this isn’t precedent setting

Not the news I wanted to wake up to on an otherwise pleasant Thurs morning. In today’s Inside Higher Ed, a story about a unionized cadre of part-time instructors (the union is an AFSCME affiliate) at the City Colleges of Chicago who have ratified a contract including merit pay for “student outcomes” (read: standardized test results); the merit pay replaces their longevity raises.

I’m willing to listen to the union’s explanation for why they accepted this, but the way it’s reported in this story isn’t very convincing. And any educational plan that Rahm Emmanuel endorses is probably horrible.

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Filed under Access, Advocacy, AFSCME, Collective Bargaining, Contingent faculty, Inside Higher Ed, merit pay, Public education

by | February 14, 2012 · 12:45 am

If you needed more evidence that our Chancellor may not be on our side…

…beyond the nearly empty letter sent from his office last week in response to the Governor’s budget proposal, read this article to see what it looks like when a Board of Regents mobilizes against even less substantive a threat then we faced last year and face again this year.

In short, the article explains a situation brewing in Florida, in which the Republican chair of the Senate Budget Committee is threatening to cut the budget for the University of South Florida by 58% if USF won’t hand off one of its branch campuses to him (essentially) to become a part of Florida’s state-owned system (which, by the way, is where our esteemed Chancellor came from, if you remember). Anyway, Senator Alexander is a well-known thug, and everybody knows it, and everybody knows he can’t possibly do what he’s threatening.

At the same time, within a couple of days after his announcement, upper administration/management across the entire USF system had mobilized, sent out angry alerts to faculty, students, alums, staff members, and so on, and begun organizing a response.

In Pennsylvania, the Governor makes an entire predictable speech promising to assault our system for the second year in a row, and our upper leadership response is to agree that the Governor’s position is generally right, but that he’s being a little mean to us.

For those of you who haven’t figured it out yet, you’d better start getting this now. We can count on the Office of the Chancellor for nothing helpful to the majority of the system. He simply refuses to fight for us. His record is one of throwing us under any bus that passes by. And all while maintaining his position as the highest paid public employee in PA.

We can’t fire him, and I can’t imagine anything he could do that would make the Governor happier (so he ain’t getting fired). But the implications for students, faculty and staff, residents of PASSHE campus locations, and community members, are clear. If we’re going to keep our system from getting butchered by a bunch of thugs who couldn’t care less about it, we have to do it ourselves.

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Filed under Access, Advocacy, APSCUF, Budget, Budget Cuts, Communities, Office of the Chancellor, PASSHE, Public education, Student activism, Tom Corbett

by | January 14, 2012 · 3:41 pm

Starting to think about strategy and tactics for the upcoming budget battle

As you should know by now, Governor Corbett has put in a request that PASSHE return about $20 million of our 2011-2012 budget allocation to the state. That’s on the heels, remember, of a 19% reduction in our budget already, and in spite of a sizeable rainy day fund that’s designed precisely to respond to situations like this one.

You should also know by now that the Governor’s next budget proposal address is scheduled for February 7. In it, we have no reason to believe he’ll do anything other than propose idiotically draconian budget cuts again for next year. Clearly he has no interest in the health or quality of public higher education in his state, even though his job mandates that he must. And just as clearly, nobody in the Office of the Chancellor or the on the Board of Governors seems inclined to fight with him about this anywhere near as avidly as the situation calls for. Their track record is terrible, so we shouldn’t expect much help from that direction. As long as we have an unsettled contract situation, anything the state does to butcher the budget strengthens PASSHE’s bargaining position (in their myopic calculus), so…

It’s clear, therefore, that just like last year, the brunt of beating back these budget attacks falls on the students, faculty, staff (thank heavens AFSCME is generally pretty well-organized!), and communities in which our universities operate. The people who actually depend on the success of the universities, that is, in the most direct and obvious ways have to be the ones who keep it from being devastated by any number of politicos who seem simply not to care what happens to it. As long as junket jobs exist, and as long as there’s a system that acts as a pawn in the chess game that seems to pass for budget and policy debates in the Commonwealth, they’re happy.

With all that said, although we have a lot of work to do over the next several months, I want to emphasize in the rest of this post one basic concept that I think needs to frame everything else we do. And that concept is, as I put it in a Facebook post to a KU student activist–

Remember who the opposition is: the Corbett Regime and their neo-liberal allies in the Chancellor’s Office. Not the people who disagree about whether it’s better to do civil disobedience or voter registration.

There are going to be actions of all kinds happening on our campuses over the next few months. Some of you will find some of them distasteful–either because they’re too aggressive or not aggressive enough; because they’re ‘paralyzing by analyzing’ or underinformed; because somebody didn’t coordinate with somebody else before scheduling two events at the same time. You get the idea.

But understand this. Every time you dismiss or attack somebody who’s on the same side you are because you don’t like their tactics, you’re making the Governor’s attacks work better. Unfortunately for sane people everywhere, Governor Corbett and his allies have easier pathways to make things happen than we do. They have convenient access to the channels of power that we don’t. We only make it worse for ourselves when we squabble and bicker with, rather than collaborate and encourage, our allies.

More to come, I’m sorry to have to say…

 

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Filed under Access, Advocacy, AFSCME, APSCUF, Budget, Budget Cuts, Collective Bargaining, Communities, Contract Negotiations, Corporate University, Office of the Chancellor, PASSHE, Privatization, Public education, Public employee unions, public employees, Shock Doctrine, Student activism, Tom Corbett, Tuition increase, West Chester University

by | January 6, 2012 · 9:25 pm

For-profit, on-line education just doesn’t work as well

Just in case you’re wondering, yes, it’s important for us to keep track of K-12 educational policy for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that advocates for bad educational policy often look there, where evidence is very difficult to collect (and therefore claims are hard to dispute!), to support some of the bad ideas we fight at the college level every day.

I know many of you are more supportive of on-line, distance education than I am. It’s hard not to be, and I respect–in the abstract and at times in practice–that it can be done well. But nobody has yet made a convincing case to me–or anybody else, really–that switching to on-line, distance education in order to control educational costs is a good idea.

What evidence we can trust is making a very strong case that on-line K-12 education is exactly the terrible idea we thought it was. Today’s (Jan 6) New York Times, in the article “Students of On-Line Schools Are Lagging,” reports that:

About 116,000 students were educated in 93 virtual schools — those where instruction is entirely or mainly provided over the Internet — run by private management companies in the 2010-11 school year, up 43 percent from the previous year, according to the report being published by the National Education Policy Center, a research center at the University of Colorado. About 27 percent of these schools achieved “adequate yearly progress,” the key federal standard set forth under the No Child Left Behind act to measure academic progress. By comparison, nearly 52 percent of all privately managed brick-and-mortar schools reached that goal, a figure comparable to all public schools nationally.

Within these numbers are two important points–

1. On-line, for profit education simply isn’t working.

2. Maybe even more important for those of us who advocate for public education in all its forms, charter schools do not work better than traditional public schools, a claim that the Corbett administration makes in spite of the evidence, as do educational reformers like Arne Duncan and the gang.

Improve working conditions for teachers. Improve learning conditions for students. Fight poverty. Schools would magically work a whole lot better. It’s not complicated.

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Filed under Access, Arne Duncan, Budget, charter schools, Communities, Education reform, on-line schools, Privatization, Public education