Retired money manager named to lead national commission on higher education

Posted on September 21, 2005 by | Comments Off on Retired money manager named to lead national commission on higher education

Austin American Statesman: Ex-U Texas regent to chair national panel on higher education

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Charles Miller led a number of education commissions in Texas, ultimately leaving his fingerprints on an accountability system that uses standardized test scores to judge public schools.

Later, as chairman of the University of Texas System’s governing board, he oversaw the creation of a charter school in East Austin, the hiring of a chancellor and the imposition of stricter controls on the system’s multibillion-dollar investment arm.

Now the retired money manager from Houston has been named by U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to lead a national commission on higher education. Its recommendations are due Aug. 1.

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Posted in Corporate University

Critic’s blast USDOE “propaganda” probe

Posted on September 21, 2005 by | Comments Off on Critic’s blast USDOE “propaganda” probe

Critics blast USDOE “propaganda” probe
Investigators looking into a massive, multimillion-dollar public relations campaign to support President Bush’s top education priorities acknowledge that taxpayer dollars were used in ways that often were not disclosed to the public, in clear violation of federal rules–but they stopped short of concluding that the government has engaged in any illegal propaganda.

Their report has raised the ire of many Democrats in Congress, who say it doesn’t go far enough in its rebuke. The Bush administration has devoted too much time–and money–to polishing its own public image, and not nearly enough on providing adequate funding to improve the nation’s schools, the president’s critics contend.

The report, from the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED’s) Office of the Inspector General (OIG)–the internal investigation unit responsible for policing ED programs–found that media relations firms, advocacy groups, and other private companies received nearly $5 million in grants to help galvanize public support for the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) without disclosing that they received taxpayer funds to do so, as required by law.

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Posted in Uncategorized

NY Times: Writers sue Google, accusing copyright violation

Posted on September 21, 2005 by | Comments Off on NY Times: Writers sue Google, accusing copyright violation

Writers sue Google

Three authors filed suit against Google yesterday contending that the company’s program to create searchable digital copies of the contents of several university libraries constituted “massive copyright infringement.”

The lawsuit, filed in United States District Court in Manhattan, is the first to arise from the Google Print Library program, the fledgling effort aimed at a searchable library of all the world’s printed books.

Google intends to make money from the project by selling advertising on its search pages, much as it does on its popular online search-engine site.

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Posted in Intellectual property

NYT: Fewer “A”s at Princeton

Posted on September 20, 2005 by | Comments Off on NYT: Fewer “A”s at Princeton

The New York Times: <a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/nyregion/20grades.html”

Princeton University significantly reduced the number of A’s it gave out last year, according to a report released yesterday by the university, but it still wants to do more.

Roughly 41 percent of the grades given in undergraduate courses last year were A-pluses, A’s or A-minuses, down from 46 percent the previous year and 48 percent the year before that. In April 2004, the Princeton faculty set a goal of 35 percent. The school year that ended in May was the first year under the policy.

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Posted in Students

UK: Student union to defy ban on Islamist debate

Posted on September 20, 2005 by | Comments Off on UK: Student union to defy ban on Islamist debate

Guardian Unlimited: “Student union to defy ban on Islamist debate”

Student leaders at Middlesex University last night vowed to go ahead and host a debate with the controversial Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir despite their university’s ban on the meeting.
The Middlesex vice-chancellor, Michael Driscoll, yesterday ordered the union to cancel the question and answer session – scheduled to take place later this month – following a call from the education secretary last week for a crackdown on extremism on campus.

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Posted in Academic freedom, Students

Potential (and limits) of outsourcing

Posted on September 20, 2005 by | Comments Off on Potential (and limits) of outsourcing

Inside Higher Ed: “The Potential (and Limits) of Outsourcing”

Outsourcing is a growing trend in higher education, but concerns about control over quality and a “loss of identity, community, culture and collegiality” may limit its use as a tool to cut colleges’ costs (and in turn their prices), says a new report.

The report by the Institute for Higher Education Policy, “Is Outsourcing Part of the Solution to the Higher Education Cost Dilemma: A Preliminary Examination,” is just that: a review of the relatively small amount of existing information about the extent to which colleges and universities turn to outside vendors to do tasks traditionally done by employees.

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Posted in Corporate University

Globe & Mail: Fact-finder to study BC teachers’ dispute

Posted on September 20, 2005 by | Comments Off on Globe & Mail: Fact-finder to study BC teachers’ dispute

Fact-finder to study teachers’ dispute

By ROD MICKLEBURGH
Tuesday, September 20, 2005 Page S3
With a report from Canadian Press.

VANCOUVER — With job action looming by the province’s 42,000 public school teachers, Labour Minister Mike de Jong stepped into the escalating dispute yesterday to try to avert a showdown on the picket line.

On the eve of a teachers’ strike vote, Mr. de Jong appointed associate minister Rick Connolly to investigate the impasse and report back to him on possible solutions by the end of the month.

However, the minister said he is not optimistic that a voluntary settlement is possible between the B.C. Teachers’ Federation and the province’s school boards, represented by the B.C. Public School Employers’ Association.

“The last contract expired more than a year ago, and it is clear that there are very different viewpoints on what is preventing a settlement,” Mr. de Jong said.

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BCTF president Jinny Sims said she welcomed the appointment of Mr. Connolly and pledged to “work hard” to negotiate a new contract without job action.

The union plans to meet the government’s so-called fact-finder as early as this morning, but that won’t have an impact on the BCTF’s strike vote, which is scheduled to begin today, Ms. Sims said.

Trustee CEO Hugh Finlayson said Mr. Connolly’s involvement improves the chances of a negotiated settlement.

The two sides have been locked in a war of words since contract talks broke down last week.

Trustees accused the teachers of demanding an annual increase of 35 per cent, outraging BCTF leaders, who said they have not yet tabled a specific wage package.

The situation is complicated by the fact that teachers are facing an employer with almost nothing to offer.

The government has already announced that teachers are covered by a two-year wage freeze imposed on other government employees. And there is a legislated ban on negotiating working conditions, such as class size.

Teachers are expected to overwhelmingly endorse the BCTF’s request for a strike mandate.

But the extent of their as-yet-unknown plan for job action is limited by the province’s essential-services legislation, which includes education.

Teacher and trustee representatives are at the B.C. Labour Relations Board this week to determine what services must be maintained in the event of a strike.

Trustees have argued that teachers should not be permitted to disrupt classes more than one day a week.

The current stalemate is nothing new in the parties’ troubled history of bargaining, which began when the then-NDP government brought in provincewide negotiations in 1993.

In each subsequent round of bargaining, the government has had to legislate a new collective agreement.

“History would suggest that negotiations . . . have never led to a solution. But maybe we can break that mould,” Mr. de Jong told reporters in Victoria.

A government-commissioned report by former deputy education minister Don Wright found that the two sides have a dysfunctional bargaining relationship, in part because there is little incentive on either side to settle.

Although teachers technically have the right to strike, public, political and editorial board hysteria over the possibility of any classroom disruption, however limited, has effectively removed that weapon from the union’s arsenal.

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Posted in Strikes

FBI-Academic rapprochement

Posted on September 19, 2005 by | Comments Off on FBI-Academic rapprochement

Inside Higher-Ed: FBI-Academic rapprochement

J. Edgar Hoover never trusted academics — and many felt likewise.

On Friday, however, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced the creation of a panel of university presidents that will advise the bureau on how to improve relations with higher education. The panel will provide the FBI with ideas about how to better understand academic culture and values — and work to explore research areas that professors might explore that could promote national security.

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Posted in Corporate University

Racists incidents unnerve UVa.

Posted on September 19, 2005 by | Comments Off on Racists incidents unnerve UVa.

Washington Post: After slurs, students rally for change

After class at the University of Virginia one night this week, sophomore Kyle Miller found a note attached to the windshield of his jeep. It wasn’t a ticket; it was something hateful, racist, written in red ink, in all caps.

Just a few weeks into the school year, U-Va. has had at least nine racist incidents — slurs shouted from cars, ugly words written on message boards, a racist threat scrawled on a bathroom wall. And students, parents and alumni are demanding change.

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Posted in Students

Campuses see sharp drop-off in black men

Posted on September 19, 2005 by | Comments Off on Campuses see sharp drop-off in black men

Tallahassee Democrat: What’s become of Florida’s black college students?

While overall enrollment is up, there is a 9.5-percent decline in black freshmen on Florida’s campuses this fall, when compared to 2004. At six of 11 state universities, including Florida A&M University, Florida State University and the University of Florida, there are fewer black freshmen. And black men have had the most impact on this trend.

It is almost twice as likely for a young black woman to be sitting in a Florida university classroom as a young black man.

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Posted in Uncategorized

BC teachers strike vote update, 9/19/05

Posted on September 19, 2005 by | Comments Off on BC teachers strike vote update, 9/19/05

Globe and Mail:Classes at risk as vote looms in teachers’ battle with province

VANCOUVER — A breakdown in contract talks and a looming strike vote by British Columbia’s teachers could spell trouble for students at risk of having their education disrupted.

Labour Minister Mike de Jong has promised to step into the simmering dispute today by meeting with the 42,000-member B.C. Teachers’ Federation and the B.C. Public School Employers’ Association.

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Posted in Strikes

No Child Left Behind goes to college?

Posted on September 19, 2005 by | Comments Off on No Child Left Behind goes to college?

Boston Globe: USDOE plans higher-ed commission<blockquote
America’s system of colleges and universities is famously decentralized, producing experimentation and variety but making it hard to tackle big-picture issues such as access and affordability on a national scale.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings plans to announce a major initiative today to address that problem: a commission charged with developing ”a comprehensive national strategy for postsecondary education,” according to remarks in an advance copy of a speech she is expected to deliver at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Note: The US Depart of Education already requires universities with teacher education programs to report scores of their graduates on teacher licensure exams as a condition for receiving Title II funds. Could this commission be the parallel of the National Education Summits of the 1990s that lead to NCLB and the unprecedented intrusion of the federal government into post-secondary education? E.W.R.

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Posted in Corporate University

CFP: How Class Works, 2006

Posted on September 18, 2005 by | Comments Off on CFP: How Class Works, 2006

HOW CLASS WORKS – 2006
CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS

A Conference at SUNY Stony Brook
June 8-10, 2006

The Center for Study of Working Class Life is pleased to announce the How Class Works – 2006 Conference, to be held at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, June 8 – 10, 2006. Proposals for papers, presentations, and sessions are welcome until December 15, 2005 according to the guidelines below. For more information, visit our Web site at www.workingclass.sunysb.edu.

Purpose and orientation: The conference seeks to explore ways in which an explicit recognition of class helps to understand the social world in which we live, and ways in which analysis of society can deepen our understanding of class as a social relationship. Presentations should take as their point of reference the lived experience of class; proposed theoretical contributions should be rooted in and illuminate social realities. All presentations should be accessible to an interdisciplinary audience.

While the focus of the conference is in the social sciences, presentations from other disciplines are welcome as they bear upon conference themes. Presentations are also welcome from people outside academic life when they sum up social experience in a way that contributes to the themes of the conference. Formal papers will be welcome but are not required.

Conference themes: The conference welcomes proposals for presentations that advance our understanding of any of the following themes.

The mosaic of class, race, and gender. To explore how class shapes racial, gender, and ethnic experience and how different racial, gender, and ethnic experiences within various classes shape the meaning of class.

Class, power, and social structure. To explore the social content of working, middle, and capitalist classes in terms of various aspects of power; to explore ways in which class and structures of power interact, at the workplace and in the broader society.

Class and community. To explore ways in which class operates outside the workplace in the communities where people of various classes live.

Class in a global economy. To explore how class identity and class dynamics are influenced by globalization, including experience of cross-border organizing, capitalist class dynamics, international labor standards.

Middle class? Working class? What’s the difference and why does it matter? To explore the claim that the U.S. is a middle class society and contrast it with the notion that the working class is the majority; to explore the relationships between the middle class and the working class, and between the middle class and the capitalist class.

Class, public policy, and electoral politics. To explore how class affects public policy, with special attention to health care, the criminal justice system, labor law, poverty, tax and other economic policy, housing, and education; to explore the place of electoral politics in the arrangement of class forces on policy matters.

Pedagogy of class. To explore techniques and materials useful for teaching about class, at K-12 levels, in college and university courses, and in labor studies and adult education courses.

How to submit proposals for How Class Works – 2006 Conference

Proposals for presentations must include the following information: a) title; b) which of the seven conference themes will be addressed; c) a maximum 250 word summary of the main points, methodology, and slice of experience that will be summed up; d) relevant personal information indicating institutional affiliation (if any) and what training or experience the presenter brings to the proposal; e) presenter’s name, address, telephone, fax, and e-mail address. A person may present in at most two conference sessions. To allow time for discussion, sessions will be limited to three twenty-minute or four fifteen-minute principal presentations. Sessions will not include official discussants.

Proposals for sessions are welcome. A single session proposal must include proposal information for all presentations expected to be part of it, as detailed above, with some indication of willingness to participate from each proposed session member.

Submit proposals as hard copy by mail to the How Class Works – 2006 Conference, Center for Study of Working Class Life, Department of Economics, SUNY, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4384 or as an e-mail attachment to .

Timetable: Proposals must be postmarked by December 15, 2005. Notifications will be mailed on January 16, 2006. The conference will be at SUNY Stony Brook June 8- 10, 2006. Conference registration and housing reservations will be possible after February 15, 2006. Details and updates will be posted at http://www.workingclass.sunysb.edu.

Conference coordinator:
Michael Zweig
Director, Center for Study of Working Class Life
Department of Economics
SUNY
Stony Brook, NY 11794-4384
631.632.7536
michael.zweig@stonybrook.edu
##

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Posted in CFPs

Teachers’ salaries and affect on students

Posted on September 17, 2005 by | Comments Off on Teachers’ salaries and affect on students

Q & A: Teachers’ salaries and their affect on students”

“Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America’s Teachers” is the provocative title of a new book that attempts to address such issues as teacher salaries and what effect their pay has on students.

The book includes firsthand accounts of teachers’ efforts to make ends meet, arguments why a substantial raise for teachers is necessary and case studies of schools around the nation that have undertaken salary reform.

Published by the New Press, the book is co-written by Dave Eggers, author of “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” journalist and teacher Daniel Moulthrop, and Nínive Clements Calegari, founding executive director of 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing center in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Calegari discussed teachers and their work in two telephone interviews last week.

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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts

NYC: School labor pains

Posted on September 17, 2005 by | Comments Off on NYC: School labor pains

New York Post: School labor pain$

The city would have to come up with close to $838 million between now and the next fiscal year if it were to adopt a state labor panel’s recommendations for a contract with public-school teachers, according to budget watchdogs. A preliminary analysis of the panel’s call for an 11.4 percent raise for teachers by the city’s Independent Budget Office projected budget shortfalls of about $88 million this fiscal year — and a whopping $750 million in fiscal year 2007.

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Posted in Campaigns & Contracts

A less leftist Brown

Posted on September 17, 2005 by | Comments Off on A less leftist Brown

Inside Higher Ed: “A less leftist Brown”

Until this fall, Glenn Loury taught at Boston University, an institution that is home to many neoconservative scholars.

Loury, an economist who doesn’t like the way he is tagged by some as a conservative, freely acknowledges that he stands out as a black scholar who rejects some views that are widely held among black scholars. For example, Loury has questioned the value of affirmative action.

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Posted in Advocacy

AAUP endorsed statement on academic responsibilities, but comes out against including it in key bill

Posted on September 16, 2005 by | Comments Off on AAUP endorsed statement on academic responsibilities, but comes out against including it in key bill

Inside Higher Ed: “Tactical Shift or Tactical Error”

When a coalition of higher education groups issued a statement on “academic rights and responsibilities” in June, organizers made a point of noting that the American Association of University Professors was part of the effort.

Most of the groups involved were associations of administrators or institutions, but the AAUP’s participation allowed the group to have representation from the faculty as well, and in particular from a group devoted to defending academic freedom. The statement — which affirmed the values of intellectual diversity and of colleges’ control of their own academic programs — was an effort to beat back efforts to legislate the “Academic Bill of Rights,” which many professors believe would hurt their academic freedom.

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Posted in Academic freedom

CFP: Information for Social Change

Posted on September 15, 2005 by | Comments Off on CFP: Information for Social Change

CALL FOR PAPERS

Information for Social Change is an activist organisation that examines issues of censorship, freedom and ethics amongst library and information workers. It is committed to promoting alternatives to the dominant paradigms of library and information work and publishes its own journal, Information for Social Change. The Chief Editors of ISC are John Pateman and Ruth Rikowski. See: Information for Social Change

ISC number 23 will be a Special Issue on Education for Social Change and guest edited by Glenn Rikowski. It will be published in the summer of 2006. For this issue, we are seeking articles on the general theme of the role of education for progressive social change. Articles addressing this theme that are fired by critical pedagogy, or socialist, communist, Marxist, or other anti-capitalist perspectives are particularly welcome.

As well as articles of between 5000–10000 words, we are also interested in shorter pieces of between 2000-4000 words (including review articles) and poems.

The deadline for receipt of papers is 1st May 2006.

Enquiries, ideas and suggestions to Glenn Rikowski, at: Rikowskigr@aol.com

Please circulate

Glenn Rikowski, School of Education, University of Northampton, UK.

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Posted in Publications

UK: Unions threaten “biggest strike since 1926)

Posted on September 14, 2005 by | Comments Off on UK: Unions threaten “biggest strike since 1926)

Guardian: “Unions threaten ‘biggest strike since 1926’

Union leaders today warned the government that pushing through a rise in the public sector retirement age to 65 could provoke the biggest industrial action since the General Strike of 1926.

Industrial action by eight unions protesting to the plan was only narrowly averted before the general election by the promise of talks. Alan Johnson today apologised to unions at the TUC conference in Brighton for the failure to consult them on that occasion.

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Posted in Strikes

Chapel Hill, NC: “Laborlore Conversations III”

Posted on September 14, 2005 by | Comments Off on Chapel Hill, NC: “Laborlore Conversations III”

The Curriculum in Folklore at the University of North Carolina in partnership with the San Francisco-based Fund for Labor Culture and History will host a third gathering in a series exploring laborlore and workers culture on September 24, 2005. Billed as “Laborlore Conversations III,” the event will take place on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and will feature a pre-conference concert on Friday evening with traditional music legend Alice Gerrard.

The Saturday gathering is free and open to the public and will be of special interest to folklorists, historians, ethnomusicologists, educators, trade unionists, worker-scholars, and community scholars. Conversation themes and presentations include labor art, ballad scholarship, country music, Piedmont blues, coal miner argot, sustainable agriculture and southern textile mill towns in transition, farm labor “guest workers,” and strategies and issues around labor and community organizing in the region.

Future gatherings are in planning for Madison, WI and Washington, DC.

For more information, please contact Tim Prizer at

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Posted in Events