More taser abuse.
I'm sure there will be those saying the guys should have just obeyed and so on. True enough. You should obey the police when being questioned. But does disobeying deserve a death sentence?
When will the question be asked, does a suspect's behavior warrant deadly force? Using the taser needs to be seen in that context, as this latest event shows. The following occurred in Oxford, here in the Dayton/Cincinnati area:
A man died Thursday, five days after police subdued him with stunning device outside a bar near Miami University, a hospital spokesman said.
Kevin Piskura, 24, of Chicago, died shortly after 5 p.m. at University Hospital in Cincinnati hospital, said spokesman Don Crouse.
Police said Oxford officer Geoff Robinson used the device early Saturday morning as he tried to break up a fight.
The Butler County offices of the sheriff and prosecutor are investigating the officer's actions.
"We still request that people refrain from rash judgment and wait until the independent investigation of this event is complete, lest tragedy lead to more tragedy," the Piskura family said in a statement released by the hospital.
Piskura, a 2006 Miami graduate, argued with police after a friend was escorted from a bar, police said. The officer drew his Taser stun gun and told Piskura to stop, and when he did not, police said, the officer used the device and hit Piskura in the chest.
Video from a camera attached to the stunning device shows Piskura getting shocked for about 10 seconds as he rolls around on a sidewalk.
Robinson, 27, has been placed on paid leave pending the outcome of the investigation, Oxford police spokesman Jim Squance said.
Robinson is a Miami University graduate and has been an Oxford police officer for two years. He had taken a refresher course on using a stun gun a week before the incident, police said.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Your Daily Taser
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Why are women earning degrees at higher rates than men?
Terrific piece in Ohio State's student paper The Lantern today by Briony Clare.
According to Census Bureau reports, women are earning degrees at higher rates than men.
I have a theory about why this happens, after the jump.
According to the story,About 33 percent of women aged 25 to 29 had at least a bachelor's degree in 2007, compared with 26 percent of men.
Although there are still more women than men earning degrees from Ohio State, the gender gap is less than the national average.
"Ohio State does not have a huge discrepancy compared to a lot of other places," said Martha Garland, vice provost for enrollment management and dean of undergraduate studies. Garland said OSU's enrollment ratio of males to females is close to 50-50, also a deviation from more disproportionate national figures.
Garland says there isn't a "huge discrepancy" at Ohio State? At Ohio State, since 2001, the percentage of women completing a degree in four years is a whopping 21 points higher than men, at 50% to 29%.
The article discusses some possible reasons..."Nationwide there are scientists and scholars trying to figure it out," Garland said. "Girls always tended to be better students and are able to adapt better to school environments."
...but my suggestion to researchers is to look at literacy rates. Here in Ohio, most of the data I've looked at over the years shows girls k-12 scoring much higher on average in reading than boys. There are plenty of environmental factors to explain this, and there are lots of other possible theories that could explain why men leave college and enter the work force.
But I think literacy levels have a great deal to do with it. Culturally it's more acceptable for girls to read well, to focus on schoolwork, and to succeed in academics at the expense of sports and other extracurriculars. These differences are a significant factor in college success.
I suppose, although I haven't studied the data, that the war might have something to do with it as well? What do you think?
Monday, February 11, 2008
Post Secondary Enrollment and the Governor's Plan for HS Seniors
Eric Fingerhut made some statements in the DDN today that I disagree with strongly. He's either uninformed, making stuff up, or both.
Interviewed by Stephanie Gottsclich, Fingerhut said that high schools discourage partipation in post secondary enrollment option, or PSEO. I would argue that schools don't discourage it at all.
For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, PSEO allows a high school student to leave campus and visit a college campus for coursework that earns college credit and possibly fulfills high school credit at the same time. It would seem to be a model for the dual enrollment programs the governor promoted in his state of the state program.
As Gottschlich points out, PSEO already allows students who choose to go from "senior to sophomore". So when he mentioned this, many educators were scratching their heads, thinking, "we already do this."
Fingerhut argued in the DDN piece that the cost of the program causes schools to downplay it.While participation in PSEO has steadily increased to more than 12,000 students in fall 2007, the number accounts for only 2 percent of all Ohio high school students, according to a March report from the KnowledgeWorks Foundation, a Cincinnati-based nonpartisan education policy research group.
The report, "The Promise of Dual Enrollment: Assessing Ohio's Early College Access Policy," found that participation rates were not equal throughout Ohio and that high schools lose money for every PSEO course taken by their students.
In 2004-05, the state redirected about $17.8 million in state funds from Ohio schools to pay for PSEO courses.
That causes high schools to downplay the program, said Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Eric Fingerhut, whom Strickland charged with carrying out his plan. "Some are working around it altogether and using different programs," he said.
Problem: I don't buy it. Just not true. Schools do a lot of things to counsel students into appropriate options. As a high school teacher, and as a community college instructor who's had PSEO students in class, I know that Fingerhut is wrong about this.
There are lots of reasons students might not take PSEO. Social reasons. Lack of transportation. Or the fact that their high school offers excellent AP programs and arts programs during their senior year.
There is a pilot program that would certify hs courses for college credit by having senior year courses (say, fourth year Spanish) align with courses taught at a local college like UC or OSU. The classroom teacher becomes an adjunct faculty member teaching a college course within the HS walls. Maybe that's what Strickland was talking about. If so, I'm all for it. But it will take a great deal of administrative support.
But it's disappointing to have the governor propose something so poorly defined and have the chancellor speak about it with such ignorance.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Response to Bush's Education Proposals
Bush's signature domestic legislation in NCLB, so it's not surprising that he discussed it and praised is success in last night's State of the Union address, even if the gains are illusory, debateable, and underfunded. Still, with his legacy on the line, Bush wants to make one final push for the law's reauthorization.
He also talked about "Pell Grants for Kids," a cynical attempt to re-brand vouchers for private religious education, the kind of proposal so unpopular it even fails in Utah. And he discussed funding for scientific research, and its effects on higher education.
How does the president argue for the standards of NCLB while also proposing that students be sent to private schools not required to meet the same benchmarks? Educationally schizophrenic if you ask me. Republicans never seem to notice how hypocritical and shallow this pair of policy positions really is.
Here are some responses from around the web to Bush's education-related proposals.
First, Michele at Campaign k-12 pointed me to this interesting piece from George Wood of the Forum for Education and Democracy, which praises the Democrats' silence on education in their responses to the SOTU.
I have yet to see an ‘education president’ (or governor for that matter) that tackled the really hard issues when it comes to our schools. Issues like ensuring that every student is taught by a well-prepared and supported teacher; equalizing funding so that the education you receive is not determined by your zip code; going after higher order thinking skills in our standards and assessments; and supporting parents and communities in being involved in educational decision-making through insisting on both genuine decisions being made at the local level and real time provided for such decision making to occur. These do not fit in a sound bite, but they are the things that matter when it comes to an education.
Finally, I wonder when someone claiming to be an education ‘whatever’ will own up to the fact that schools are not simply tools to fix the economy or prepare children for college. Actually, our schools have a much more important role. We entrust our young to our schools because we believe that in a democratic nation all of the nation’s children must develop the tools to be self-governing. When we graduate young people from my high school there is no telling if they will be doctors, lawyers, poets, mechanics or postal workers. But rest assured; every one of them will be citizens. And they will be called upon to make decisions about the health of our nation that we cannot even begin to imagine. The public school system our democracy demands and deserves rests upon engendering in our children the habits of heart and mind that make democratic life possible. The candidates that talk about these central educational values will be the ones worth listening to—when they again turn their attention to our schools.
The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development had this to say:
We also agree we must do more to help children when their schools do not measure up. But diverting limited public resources toward private school vouchers is not the answer. We need real resources targeted toward the schools and students that need them most. Vouchers as public policy are a failure, no matter what the name.
The Alliance for Excellent Education took this approach to the voucher proposal:
Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia said, “The president, in last night’s State of the Union address, stated the problem straightforwardly; too many students are failing in our current education system. The dramatic case he makes calls for more than a limited action.”
“A new voucher program that merely allows a few students to transfer from failing schools to private ones leaves the bulk of America’s children behind in the same educational mediocrity. By focusing precious resources on systemic reform that improves entire schools, America can deliver a quality education to all its students. Instead of funding limited vouchers and renewing the funding each year at the whim of Congress, the president’s proposal for additional investment could be the start of real education reform that benefits ten times as many students annually and provides lasting economic benefits for generations.”
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Top Ten Education Stories of '07
I've been reading all of the lists of the top stories of '07...but who's writing the list of the top education stories of the year? Don't worry... I've got it covered. After consulting my panel of experts, here's what I've come up with, in no particular order. See what you think, and if there are any I'm missing please add them in the comments.
Top Education Stories of '07
1. Non-reauthorization of NCLB. Passions run high on the controversial law, which critics say has led to a culture of standardized testing, and has not been fully funded. Supporters say it is necessary to hold schools accountable.
House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller blames Bush for being unable to compromise on changes to the law that would grant states and districts more flexibility in meeting the law's requirements. Miller suggests that NCLB may not even be reauthorized in 2008, and may have to wait until Bush leaves office. No tears shed here.
2. Merit pay. Buoyed by the qualified support of Barack Obama and pilot programs in Houston, New York City, and Denver, merit pay has received renewed discussion around the country. Merit pay, or pay for performance, can take many forms, including school wide bonuses (like the recently adopted plan in NYC, or bonuses based on test scores for individual teachers. The fact that these plans have received attention in a presidential campaign means that the idea is growing and becoming part of the national discussion on education reform.
In fact, merit pay has been one of the stumbling blocks in the reauthorization of NCLB. Chairman George Miller became incensed in 2007 when the NEA appeared to reneg on a plan to support merit pay proposal to be included in the draft reauthorization. The NEA is opposed to merit pay.
Meanwhile, merit pay is going on the ballot in Oregon.
3. Bong Hits for Jesus. The Supreme Court ruled that schools had the right to limit speech off of school grounds. It continues a trend of increasing power of schools to intervene in free speech cases. Meanwhile, schools continue to face legal challenges relating to internet and cell phone issues as they relate to students' free speech rights. While the Court has not ruled on these kinds of cases yet, the Bong Hits case seems to indicate that schools have a wide latitude to restrict students' speech.
Read Pierre Tristam's take here.
4. U. S. students fall behind in math and science. In the Program for International Student Assessment, American students were below the average for students in industrialized countries. For Gerald Bracey, this news elicits a yawn.
5. Creationist curriculum gains support of presidential candidates. In a supposedly civilized country, we have candidates running for President--including the current frontrunner, Mike Huckabee--who would rather pander to a religious minority than accept the premises of science. Why is this an education story? Because as the push for national standards grows and grows, the question of what will be taught in science classes in the US becomes a subject of national debate. Will we teach scientific inquiry? Or will we teach religious dogma in the disguise of scientific inquiry? Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee opt for the latter. One leads the field in the polls, and the other in fundraising. Scary.
The next five after the jump.
6. School violence continues. One case, here in Ohio, the other, forever to be remembered in association with Virginia Tech. Both cases remind us that troubled students need regular attention and support. Click through the links for more of my thoughts on this issue.
7. Vouchers rejected at the polls. The vote in Utah has huge significance, especially considering the substantial resources put into it by pro-voucher forces. If vouchers can't get a foothold in conservative Utah, the concept is seriously weakened as a viable issue for conservatives to rally around. I explained why it failed here.
On a related note, here's one of the stupidest statements made about education in 07, from voucher supporter Patrick Byrne:
"I'm ashamed of Utah that this could even be a close vote," said Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, who has donated millions of dollars to support vouchers. "This is parents looking at their kids getting a third-rate education and other kids getting basically a death sentence and saying, 'That's OK by me."'
8. The Supreme Court overturns desegregation plans in Louisville and Seattle. See what I had to say here.
9. Teacher preparation in Texas. Maybe not the biggest story of the year, but a pretty important one. The model used by the University of Texas to train math and science teachers has the potential to radically transform teacher preparation--for the better.
10. Value-added rolls out in Ohio. More and more states are jumping on the value added bandwagon, and with Ohio in the camp, two of the largest states (Pennsylvania being the other) are now using value added models. Value added analysis could radically alter how school districts are perceived and how data is reported about school progress. Potentially revolutionary, but whether the change is for the better remains to be seen.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Do you need college?
Atrios has a point in a post called, Can't outsource the plumber. He argues that from an economic standpoint, more students should opt for what might be called skilled labor that doesn't require a college education:
It's somewhat heretical to say, but I'm one of those who thinks that too many people go to college, though it may be individually rational for them to do so given the signaling nature of it. That is, going to college doesn't really transform people into better works for a lot of jobs, but employers require a college education because it's how people signal they aren't a "complete loser"* who couldn't even manage to graduate from college.
*To be clear, I don't think one needs to graduate from college to avoid loserdom. That's my whole point! It's just that in our society it's become an entrance ticket to a lot of careers even when the education you get in college isn't really training for those careers.
I think this gets to the question of, what is college for? Is college simply to train people for careers? More generally, is school simply to train people for work?
What's wrong with the idea that people who want to work as plumbers still might benefit from receiving an education in art, music, philosophy, literature, or chemistry?
It's well known that the structure of public schooling was originally designed to prepare students for factory life. More and more, business interests are considered in making decisions about curriculum, and every blue ribbon panel on education consists of CEO's and corporate big wigs rather than teachers. What do students need to know to succeed in the economy? At a certain level of course this is fair and appropriate: it's important for graduates of public schools to be able to sell their labor in order to support themselves and move into (or remain in) the middle class. But should higher education be simply a matter of training students for professional jobs?
But at one point school was also intended to prepare students for citizenship. It's a time honored belief that public education is essential to the functioning of a democracy. In order to make intelligent decisions about voting, young people need to be able to read well, synthesize information, and know a great deal about a wide variety of things. A well rounded education is supposed to be part of the great Democratic experiment. See for example, Noam Chomsky discussing John Dewey:
The topic that was suggested, which I'm very happy to talk about, is "Democracy and Education." The phrase democracy and education immediately brings to mind the life and work and thought of one of the outstanding thinkers of the past century, John Dewey, who devoted the greater part of his life and his thought to this array of issues. I guess I should confess a special interest. It just happened that this was for various reasons, his thought was a strong influence on me in my formative years -- in fact, from about age two on, for a variety of reasons that I won't go into but are real. For much of his life, later he was more skeptical, Dewey seems to have felt that reforms in early education could be in themselves a major lever of social change. They could lead the way to a more just and free society, a society in which in his words, "The ultimate aim of production is not production of goods, but the production of free human beings associated with one another on terms of equality." This basic commitment, which runs through all of Dewey's work and thought, is profoundly at odds with the two leading currents of modern social intellectual life, one, strong in his day -- he was writing in the 1920s and 1930s about these things -- is associated with the command economies in Eastern Europe in that day, the systems created by Lenin and Trotsky and turned into an even greater monstrosity by Stalin. The other, the state capitalist industrial society being constructed in the U.S. and much of the West, with the effective rule of private power. These two systems are actually similar in fundamental ways, including ideologically. Both were, and one of them remains, deeply authoritarian in fundamental commitment, and both were very sharply and dramatically opposed to another tradition, the left libertarian tradition, with roots in Enlightenment values, a tradition that included progressive liberals of the John Dewey variety, independent socialists like Bertrand Russell, the leading elements of the Marxist mainstream, mostly anti-Bolshevik, and of course libertarian socialists of various anarchist movements, not to speak of major parts of the labour movement and other popular sectors.
A college education should really mean more than high level vocational training. As Dewey suggests, it should be a lever of social change. It should be about opening minds up to new ideas, helping students think critically about language, about their own place in the world, learning about cultures and ideas around the world and throughout history. We don't talk enough in this country about what education is really for, whether it's for economic viability or for the growth and maturation of the mind. Sure, education can be both, and often it is. But the idea that "too many people go to college" is only true if we are talking about the economic beneifits of college.
If we're talking about what college means (or should mean) to the growth of the mind, then it becomes a basic human right, something that should be available to anyone whose mind is up to it, whether they dig ditches, plumb, frame houses, or teach English literature.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Best Places to Educate Your Children: Akron, Columbus
Ok, these rankings are getting a little silly--recently Business Week ranked the best places to raise your kids, and now Forbes has ranked the best places to educate them. Not the same thing, apparently.
The rankings this time seem to be based mostly on the kinds of educational options available in metro areas, from private to public schools, with colleges and universities thrown in. I'm not really sure what all that's worth since a) at the primary and secondary level you probably only care about the specific school your own child attends, and b) kids can drive or move away to college (although keeping kids at home is increasingly a way to keep college affordable... I see more and more young people commuting to college from their parents' home.)
Anyway, since Forbes ranks Akron and Columbus as the fifth and sixth best, we'll take it. And the fact that Ann Arbor falls in at 10th, four places behind Columbus, makes it even more enjoyable.
Here's what's NOT in the ratings: Equity and integration. It would be interesting to compare these regions to areas written about by Jonathan Kozol in Savage Inequalities and his later works; Washington and St. Louis jump out right away as places where Kozol describes glaring educational inequalities.
The top 10 below the jump, since Forbes makes you wade through an annoying slide show to view the top 20:
1. Washington D. C., Arlington, Va:
With 90% of children enrolled in one of the city's 1,035 public schools (the other 10% are in private schools), a public library system offering 10,650,133 books, and some of the country's most acclaimed undergraduate and graduate programs, it's no wonder Washington-Arlington is ranked at the top of its class.
2. Madison, Wisconsin: Gets an A+ in library popularity?!
3. Cambridge/Farminton, Massachusetts.
4. Baltimore/Towson Maryland.
5. Akron
Although it may not be as saturated with students as some of the other areas on the list, Akron is anything but lacking in the education department. Encompassing 76 districts, Akron offers public and private schooling with 89% and 11% of students, respectively, attending each.
6. Columbus
The Buckeye State gets on the board for a second time with its capital, Columbus. Boasting 6,081,889 books in its library system, Columbus's 284,626 public school students and 28,437 private school students make up a large portion of the town's overall population.
7. Albany-Schenectedy-Troy, New York. Can't hear those places without thinking of Kurt Vonnegut novels.
8. Syracuse, NY.
9. St. Louis, Mo.
10. Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Here's what I mean
I have said many times that I would prefer a teacher ed program in which collegians received a major in a field of study other than education, they earned licensure on top of that liberal degree.
This is what I'm talking about.
In the UTeach program, none of the students are education majors, but rather they major in another field, often in the College of Natural Sciences.
Early recruiting of top natural sciences majors is key. UTeach students have SAT scores that are above the average for the College of Natural Sciences and have higher grade-point averages.
The students are given early and continued field experience. Typical education majors wouldn't visit a classroom until the end of their college career; UTeach students are put in front of a class as freshmen.
"We've come up with a revolutionary idea. And that's that you shouldn't teach if you don't like kids," Marder said.
By comparison, the popular Teach for America program recruits students from all majors and asks participants to commit to two years. But UTeach students leave expecting teaching to be a long-term career.
Since UTeach's inception, the university has doubled the number of math and science teachers that it produces, Marder said.
UTeach teachers also appear to stay in the classroom longer, he said. According to information collected from graduates, about 70 percent of UTeach students are still in the classroom five years after they enter the profession, compared with about 50 percent of teachers nationally.
Because of those numbers, many education experts — particularly those concerned about the country's global competitiveness in math and science — have taken notice.
Already, UTeach-influenced programs have been put in place at Louisiana State University and in California.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Antioch: Conservatives' Cautionary Tale.
Interesting to me how the financial troubles of a small Ohio college can catch the attention of luminaries from the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. But that's what's happened, as the shut-down of Antioch College has become a cautionary tale from coast to coast about the excesses of liberal thought, educational experimentation and social engineering. I suppose some of the attention comes from Antioch's history: Coretta Scott King went to Antioch, for example, and the college was founded by Horace Mann. But that doesn't quite explain the pundits' giddiness in announcing Antioch's demise.
Take Megan Daum of the L. A. Times for example, in an article provocatively called "Who Killed Antioch College? Womyn."
Botstein's not totally wrong, but as members of his baby boom generation are apt to do, he equates "liberalism" and liberals with the demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s, including a six-week campus strike in 1973 during which students firebombed buildings to protest racial inequality at the school. But it was the next iteration of liberal excess that really did the place in. To later generations, Antioch is famous for one thing: its Sexual Offense Prevention Policy.
In 1993, it suddenly became national news that Antioch required anyone engaging in sexual activity on campus to ask for and grant permission throughout every step of the encounter. Conceived by a group called Womyn of Antioch, the policy stipulated that consent could not be granted through body movements, nonverbal responses or silence. Furthermore, it stated that "consent is required each and every time there is sexual activity" and that "each new level of sexual activity requires consent." Translation: dorm room make-out sessions were being punctuated by steamy questions like, "May I kiss you now?", "May I remove your (Che Guevara) T-shirt now?" and "May I … " (you get the idea).
Admittedly, this was the early '90s, a time when many liberal arts campuses were so awash in the hysteria of political correctness that it seemed entirely possible a lamppost could commit date rape. But the attention to the Antioch policy, which got as far as a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, not only came to symbolize the infantilizing dogma of the new left, it turned an already obscure college into a laughingstock.
Well it's convenient to blame the demise of Antioch on political correctness gone wild, except that the sexual permission policy that Antioch adopted happened 14 years ago. It's such an easy and thoughtless argument to make, relying on the college's eccentric reputation and current problems to throw liberal activism under the bus. The NY Times pulls the same act, asking if the "liberal arts" were too liberal. (That piece is beyond the Times' select wall.) Funny how no one ever asks the question about whether it's possible to be too conservative.
Henry Wickham, who at least can speak of some personal experience, eulogizes the college thusly in The American Thinker:
I grew up within ten miles of Antioch College. To step onto its campus was to experience something of a time warp. In the 1960s, it was 1950's beatnik. Since then, it was and always will be 1968. There was something about Antioch's campus that was like one of those colonial villages in Williamsburg where everyone dresses in colonial costumes. Antioch students certainly dressed their part with their studied shabbiness. The Bohemianism at Antioch was always a little too self-conscious and self-congratulatory, and the radicalism conventional and, dare I say, boring.
If you were a high school student with a strong left-wing political philosophy, and if you desired to spend four years at a college that will confirm all of your political prejudices and reward certain righteous attitudes, Antioch College was the place to go. The PC orthodoxies on campus were always stifling and predictable. There was no political, social, or economic issue where anyone could doubt where the Antioch students stood. One could almost mouth the clichés and slogans as they were being spouted.
I'm not sure I disagree with a whole lot of what Wickham has to say about the college: I've spent time in Yellow Springs mostly as a tourist (great place to have lunch and walk around, go to the state park, ride your bike on the fantastic bike trail, or visit agri-touristy Young's Dairy outside the town proper). But the town's environmentalism to take an example, if it's PC and predictable, has also led to thoughtful civic planning, a sense of what their small town should look like (they've kept out chain restaurants in favor of a variety of local styles like The Winds where Yours Truly once ran into localite Dave Chappelle, post crack-up), restrained growth, a rugged determination to keep the place rural, and guess what conservatives--higher home values than the communities around it. If that's PC, so be it--it also is smart local governance and makes a pretty nice, if interesting, place to live.
Likewise if challenging the racism, sexism, and homophobia of the larger culture is PC, it at least has the upside of creating a diverse community: and the town is more diverse by far than most of the small towns around, which is a big part of why white suburbanites raise their eyebrows whenever they hear "Yellow Springs." I can't help but think that the attacks on Antioch are thinly veiled disgust for a place that openly tolerates, or embraces, homosexuals, mixed race couples, the scraggly and disheveled, and a few people that look dragged in by the cat.
So maybe it's too liberal or not--that depends on your tastes, I suppose--but unfortately for the pundits who've chosen to use Antioch as their most recent reason why liberalism doesn't work, that has nothing to do with why it failed. The real reasons have to do with bad management, poor student recruiting (no Antioch rep has ever come to my school) and some failed curricular initiatives. The Dayton Daily News editorial staff has probably the fairest, and most logical, explanation of the school's failure. Here's a bit of what they have to say, but the full article is pretty good reporting on what the east and west coasters are just guessing at:
A couple of years ago, the board instituted a change in the academic structure of the college that was designed to increase enrollment but was followed by a sudden enrollment drop.
(The change eliminated traditional academic departments in a fairly radical approach to interdisciplinary education.)
There's dispute about how much input the faculty had in this decision, and about whether the reform was simply enacted too fast.
What's clear is that the board has ultimate responsibility. One might — in other circumstances — have expected heads to roll.
They didn't, although some trustees have now offered to leave, in the wake of the latest news.
The anger of faculty members and alumni about the closing might be shrugged off as typical Antioch stuff, the acting out of self-styled rebels. In fact, though, people have questions and complaints that would arise even if the Antiochians were a bunch of Republicans.
It's important to keep in mind also, that Antioch's Mc Gregor School, also located in Yellow Springs, offers a fairly radical path to degrees, and is targeted at working adults, and is advertised as "progressive", experiential, and unusual. But guess what: it's doing well. How can two experimental colleges, side by side, in the same wacko town have radically different prospects?
Maybe it has to do with something other than liberalism. But that doesn't make nearly as popular a column in the New York Times.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Strickland keeps tuition down
For the last several years Ohio college students have seen tuition increases year after year.
Good for Strickland on two counts: one, for vetoing special ed vouchers (a horrible idea on several levels), and two for holding the line on tuition. OSU's The Lantern says it best: "Strickland Stops Tuition Increase." And unlike previous Republican attempts to hold down tuition, this wasn't done by simply holding universities hostage and imposing a tuition cap which the universities were forced to end-around in other ways, like a "freshman surcharge." This time it was done through additional funding.
Given the hefty tuition hikes from the last several years, affordable tuition at Ohio's state universities seemed like a pipe dream. Saturday, Gov. Ted Strickland signed that dream into law.
Ohio's two-year, $52.3 billion budget calls for a $350 million increase in funding to pay for a two-year freeze in undergraduate tuition for state universities and community colleges.
Friday, January 12, 2007
More on the Husted plan to replace the Board of Regents
I'm really frustrated about this.
I've been scanning news stories from around the state on the Husted proposal to create a single Chancellor of the university system who reports to the governor.
I can't believe there is such uniformity of thought on this issue. Doesn't anyone see the potential politicizing effect this will have on our universities? In our current hyper partisan political climate, how can this be a good thing for higher education?
A couple of news sources I've found seem supportive.
The Lorain Morning Journal, for example, supported the plan in an editorial, with the following reasons: In editorials last year, we noted some dismal statistics:
- Tuition, always rising, is 45 percent above the national average at four-year colleges in Ohio.
- Ohio falls below the national average in the percentage of adults with a bachelor's degree or higher. The national average is 27 percent; Ohio comes in at 23 percent, which translates to the need for an additional 271,000 citizens with degrees just to become ''average.''
- Ohio ranks 40th among the 50 states in the amount of state money spent per college student, and funding has been going down, putting the financial squeeze on students and their parents.
- Young adults from high-income families are three times more likely to attend college in Ohio as low-income students. While 37 percent of white youths age 18 to 24 attend college, that figures is only 26 percent, and falling, among nonwhite youths.
Maybe I'm missing something, but how are ANY of those problems--which I recognize are important problems--solved by replacing the Board of Regents?
The Zanesville Times Recorder, relying on an AP story, published the following quote from Husted:Husted said he had not discussed the idea with either Strickland or Harris but that he was "glad to see the governor is receptive to our thoughts on how to change higher education."
Giving more direct control of higher education to the governor is the first step in making the system more accountable, Husted said.
"Right now, you've got a Board of Regents that doesn't exercise any policy-making authority. We believe if you're going to get a more responsive system, the chancellor needs to be directly accountable to the governor," Husted said.
I really don't understand Husted's logic. If he is suggesting that the BOR doesn't exercise policy-making authority, then what is currently preventing the governor from doing it now? Why do they need to be replaced?
I don't understand what "direct control" he thinks the governor should have, and I really think that control needs to be clarified. Will the governor have veto power over research conducted at universities? Over the programs that are offered? At one time there was a push by the legislature to consolidate doctoral programs around the state as a cost saving measure. Is that the kind of authority the governor wants? Is he planning to micromanage the colleges?
The AP story goes on to say: Judith Block McLaughlin, an expert on university leadership searches at Harvard University, said no public university system she knows of is run that way.
"I cannot think of a single chancellor that reports to a governor," she said. "It's treating education as if it were a state agency and subjecting it to political influence. One of the strengths of America's higher education system is its balance of accountability to the government and its intellectual independence."
The last point is really the key. To what extent is Strickland planning to exercise control over teaching and research activities at the universities?
From the PD's article: "An independent, nonpartisan Ohio Board of Regents has served, and will continue to serve, the state in an effective manner," Donna Alvarado, board chairwoman, said in a statement issued Thursday.
I have a great deal of faith in Strickland's intent to support higher ed. But we need to think about the power that could be granted to future, less enlightened governors. Do we really want a right wing governor reallocating funding away from programs he disagrees with on moral or political issues?
Do we want a governor lashing out at radical professors whose political views are unpopular? Do we want a governor trying to weed out supposed liberal bias in the teaching of college courses?
I know I'm ranting, but this plan is trouble. There needs to be some noise made about this.
From a political standpoint, why in the world is Strickland giving Husted a victory so early in the term?
Also, if anyone has the text of the statement released by the BOR and referred to in the PD article, I'd love to see it. Leave me a note in the comments.
Don't do it Ted
Cross posted at As Ohio Goes:
Here I am writing my first diary for As Ohio Goes and I find myself doing something I didn’t think I would be doing so early in the Strickland administration: criticizing the governor I wanted so desperately to win, thinking he would be great for education.
But restructuring the Board of Regents is a horrible idea.
I won’t reprint the entireDispatch article here, but follow the link: all of the important points are there.
Higher education in this state is subject to the will of the voters through the funding of universities by the state legislature. So in that sense the people have control over the state’s community colleges and universities.
But putting the governor in closer proximity to the day to day operations and budget decisions of universities is a horrible idea. It politicizes higher education, as the Dispatch article makes clear.
I would ask everyone to imagine what it would be like if Ken Blackwell were running the state’s universities.
Don’t like the political bent of the OSU polisci department? Cut the funding. Think liberal arts professors are too liberal? Cut their funding.
Don’t like microbiologists studying evolutionary changes in microbes?
As you can see the dangers are endless. We need a firewall between the politics of the state and the daily operations of our universities.
Did we work so hard to elect Ted Strickland so he could hold hands with John Husted and pass legislation that will harm higher education? I don’t think so. We have to fight this. Wake up, governor.
The beginning of the Dispatch article:
Higher-education leadership in states where chancellors are under the governor’s thumb is generally highly politicized, a governance expert said yesterday.
So politicians seeking that change in Ohio should carefully study the five states with that kind of system before making the switch, said Charles Lenth, senior associate with the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association in Boulder, Colo.
"The basic experience of all these places is not one of glowing success," Lenth said.
"The position becomes more partisan and that makes the job more problematic because you become more like an executive agency and then you’ve got the problem of transferring power each time a new governor comes in."
Thursday, December 28, 2006
MLA Convention: Is the Rectum a Text?
This is why everyone loves the MLA Convention. Even people who don't attend it. There are always some great titles to papers that make you say, "huh"? This year's head scratcher is "Is the Rectum a Text?" and, frankly I'm not sure I want to know. I just hope mine isn't. The "after-colon", no pun intended, the obligatory part II of any title worthy of being considered at the MLA, of this title ought to be, "and if so, will anyone read it?" Sounds like a shitty paper to... oh, that's too easy a joke. Never mind.
Apparently one of the topics at the convention this year IS titles, what's in and what's out. At one time all good titles were colonnated, and true to my excellent training in the field of English literature, you'll notice that the title of this post has been appropriately colonnated. Or colonned. Whatever. (See, Mom, those two years at Michigan State were good for something.) But apparently now the gerund clause (or phrase? Hell, after five years in management I can't remember anymore. I think I mean "phrase".) is all the rage now.
But he noted several trends emerging — some of which even make do without a colon. One is the “gerund-driven name,” such as Queering the Color Line or Reauthorizing Joyce. These suggest a “more activist” literary scholarship, he said.
Another new approach is to use three hot words whose combination will somehow make a book hot. He gave as an example a book that might be called Race, Sex, Shame. Such approaches, he said, amount to “pandering” to the audience.
What this trend shows, Valente said, is the way scholarship isn’t being condensed in books, but is being “commoditized.”
Wow. And I'm still using colonnated titles. How embarrassing. I might as well be wearing bell-bottomed pants.
But I don't feel bad because after poking around the MLA website I realized they don't have a blog. Man, you guys, get with it. If you're looking for volunteers... oh never mind. Probably need a Ph. D. in esotericity. (I'll never get over being a Ph. D. dropout.)
Inside Higher Ed has a good overview of this year's convention. And if you want to find out what the aforementioned title is all about go ahead and click through. It's not as repulsive as it sounds.
It's easy to have fun with the sorts of trivial things that seem to get taken seriously by some scholars, but people who make fun of the MLA convention usually are people like me who wish they could be there. Journalists, bloggers, and other wanna-be scholars.
I thought this discussion, for example, sounded pretty interesting. The practice of "close reading" was already in decline 15 years ago when I was in grad school, but I was fortunate to be in contact with quite a few professors who you might say were part of a backlash against this decline, and held on tenaciously to the practice of close reading simply because they were afraid it was in decline. I received good training because of it, but at the same time I felt as though I was cheated of some study in theory.
This pull between "close reading" and "New Historicism" has been going on for a while, as though they are mutually exclusive, but I wonder if it's a false choice. Can you have any discussion of literature that isn't founded on close reading as its basis? Maybe that's my bell bottoms showing again.
Leading off the discussion was Jane Gallop, professor of English at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and author of such books as Reading Lacan, Thinking Through the Body and Pedagogy: The Question of Impersonation. Gallop recounted a discussion with a job candidate for a position teaching 18th century British literature in which Gallop’s would-be colleagues shared the opinion that one couldn’t be published in her field these days without doing archival work.
For Gallop, the comment crystalized a sense that “new historicism,” which replaced “close reading” as a dominant approach to literature, had gone too far, and was destroying the credibility of literature scholars. Gallop stressed that post-World War II emphasis on close reading was too “ahistorical” and that the “correction” of “new historicism” in the 1980s was an appropriate one. But while historical context is needed, at least sometimes, professors have lost their way, she said.
English professors have become “wannabe cultural historians,” yet they lack the training of their colleagues in history departments, she said. She repeatedly called her colleagues “amateurs” for the tendency to focus on history, rather than actual text. She said she worried that while her generation of scholars knew how to do close reading, many others today do not.
Joanna Stalnaker, an assistant professor of French at Columbia, followed — and she backed up Gallop’s point, talking about a recent meeting with a doctoral student in which one dissertation committee member admonished the student to take out all the close reading before sending the dissertation off to publishers. They would never go for close reading, this professor advised.
Well my close reading skills may be as rusty as a lug nut on a '73 Pinto but I am going to start trying out some new styles for my blog post titles. Gotta get with the times. Need titles that indicate more "activist" blogging.
I noticed on the MLA site that there is a call for papers for next year. I think I'll start working on mine: "Is the Rectum a Blog?" Whaddya think?
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Ohio State and Low Income Students: Ed Trust Report
The Dayton Daily has a pair of articles reporting on the findings of the Education Trust's rankings of "flagship" colleges.
The Education Trust is a good organization and they work on college affordability issues, so I think this study is meaningful. The study looks at one university in each state, it's "flagship" university.
The Dayton Daily articles show that OSU has done a good job of keeping minority students in school, but that in general OSU is becoming "richer and whiter."
There are two issue here that I think are worth noticing.
The first issue is this:Between 1995 and 2003, flagship schools increased their aid to families with incomes of $100,000 or more by 406 percent, the trust found. During that same time, aid for families earning $20,000 to $39,000 grew rose 54 percent.
"More colleges are using their financial aid to buy students who will help them climb the college rankings ladder ... instead of cushioning low-income families against spiraling costs," Haycock said.
This is one problem. Colleges like Ohio State have made greater efforts in recent years to improve access for middle- and upper middle-class students as federal aid diminishes and state funding is slashed. As tuition has been forced upwards, the universities have made efforts to attract top students. Meanwhile, lower income students without strong academic credentials have had to pursue other options, such as community colleges. In general, the doors to higher education are closing for a large number of low income students.
The second issue, then, is college affordability in general. This is a public policy issue at the state and federal level. Washington and state capitals have to get serious about funding students through grants and interest free loans AND about funding universities to keep costs down while maintaining the research programs that keep the economy moving. The universities in the Ed Trust report are generally large, important universities like Ohio State that have a mission to educate the citizens of the state but also to engage in high level and meaningful research in all academic fields. That is an expensive job, and when states and the federal government cut funding, or fail to maintain increases that are needed to improve facilities and programs, universities have to pass the costs on to students in the form of tuition increases. To keep tuition down, the state has to come through. Hopefully in Ohio, with a Democratic governor, that will happen.
But these articles make it clear that the universities also have to make some tough choices in order to continue to keep minority and low income students on campus.
I have one quibble with the Ed Trust study: by focusing on one unversity from each state, they are really insulting some universities, such as my other alma mater, Michigan State. The University of Michigan is the flagship university of Michigan? Sez who? Look, in Ohio, while there are several very large and important universities here, it's no contest to say that OSU is the flagship school. But in state's like Michigan, you can't pick just one. MSU has much more of a claim to being the state's major public university than Michigan, which although it receives state funding, is very much like a private university. Both are research giants, both have terrific programs, both are large and educate a large number of students. Trying to pick one is, well, not fair, and while it might not seem like a big deal to outsiders, I promise you that calling UM the "flagship" is bound to pick a fight. I'm just sayin'.
Friday, November 24, 2006
Minority PhD's: Graduation rates declining
My college daily, The Lantern, has an excellent website that allows geeks like me to keep up with what's going on at good ole OSU.
They had a pretty important story up recently about minority graduation rates in the graduate program, and how the graduation rates are falling sharply.
I think this story is indicative of how the GOP has neglected higher education in Ohio. College affordability in Ohio has taken a huge hit in the last 10 years and it will manifest itself in all kinds of ways, including graduation rates. People can't come do degree programs here if they can't afford it, and if the state isn't helping to pick up the cost.
Obviously there are lots of questions about these kinds of statistics, like how do foreign students get counted, are their graduation rates increasing or decreasing, and so on. But on the surface these numbers don't look good.
An excerpt after the jump.
UPDATE: see this post at Nookular Option about college affordability as well.This issue was brought to the attention of OSU President Karen A. Holbrook by Frank W. Hale Jr., vice provost and professor emeritus, in a July 31 letter indicating concern that OSU, "once the number one producer of black Ph.D.s in America, is now ranked number 31."
"I was frustrated beyond measure to see how minority students' presence has plummeted at The Ohio State University in recent years," Hale said.
Hale said he came to OSU in 1971 and designed the Graduate and Professional Schools Visitation Days Program, which invited top minority students to visit OSU. Because of his initiative, nearly $15 million in graduate fellowship awards were awarded to minority students.
"During the '70s and '80s, we became the number one producer of Ph.D.s (because of the recruitment program)," Hale said. "Even though the program continues, I was concerned we are not ranked as high."
