Martin Kich:

The “real problem” behind the exploitation of adjunct faculty is quite obvious: universities have continued to produce a reasonable number of Ph.D.’s but no longer are willing to hire a reasonable number of them into full-time, never mind tenure-track, positions.

This situation will change when enrollment in graduate programs starts to contract, and even to crater, because students confront the reality that they have significantly less than a fifty percent chance of finding full-time employment after completing their doctorates—when they confront the reality that the majority of them are spending up to a decade or more in graduate school, and in the process accumulating far more debt on average than undergraduates accumulate, all in order to earn a wage comparable to what they could earn as an “associate” at WalMart.

Because the current pool of adjunct faculty has been built up over several decades but is continually eroded by the grim realities of such employment, any sudden decline in graduate enrollments will have a very significant and immediate impact.

Tressie McMillan Cottom

It has been an eventful news cycle for Arizona State University.

Last week they announced a partnership with Starbucks employees that went from press release to critical analysis in about 48 hours. I chimed in with a few thoughts on a public college extracting revenue from Starbucks employees. It turns out that the public university will invest more in the partnership than Starbucks, who can ostensibly afford it.

This week the university billing itself as the “New American University” is back in the news with a more personal story about class (and race and gender). ASU campus police arrested professor Ersula Ore for jaywalking on a campus street. You can watch the video here:

Folks are circulating petitions, expressing outrage and support. This being the Internet, more than a few folks are also making the case in support of the campus police. You’ll find plenty of questions and critique along that gamut. I have a few different questions.

Call me odd but I wonder just want an Arizona State University professor has to deserve the university’s support when the campus police assaults and arrests them?

Ryan Anderson

The 1960s are over. When are we going to wake up and realize that it’s 2014 and our academic paradise is a smoldering ash heap, a sad leftover from thirty something years of complete and utter demolition? We no longer have a booming economy and tons of federal money going into the university system. The days of cheap, accessible higher ed are done and gone. And yet, we keep churning out graduate students as if they, too, are going to end up as university professors. As if each and every one of them will soon have their own hip little office full of books, dedicated students, and bright, starry-eyed careers ahead of them. It’s not happening. Paradise. In. Ashes.

In other words: there are no jobs in academia.

I’m a graduate student in anthropology. Ya, the discipline that Forbes rated as the “least valued” in all of the land. Lucky me. Over the years, people have often asked me: “Anthropology eh? So what are you going to do with that?” My response was invariably a version of something like “Well, there’s a LOT I can do with anthropology.” That usually followed with me thinking—hoping—that there actually was something on the other side.

Pamela Cotant:

Some of the tiniest inhabitants of the 1,260-acre UW Arboretum captivated young participants during a June Family Walk.
The free walk, which is held from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. every second Sunday, focused on insects last month.
Favorites for Jamison Wagner, 8, were the caterpillar and a spider.

“The spittlebugs were kind of cool, too,” said Jamison, who will be a third-grader at Randall Elementary School.

Other sitings on the walk led by naturalist Kristin Lamers included a stink bug, a butterfly, ants, flies, a weevil and other beetles.

Jane Lowy, 8, who will be a third-grader at Crestwood Elementary School, was enjoying the walk because she loves to be outside.

“It’s going great,” she said. “I like discovering all the bugs and plants and making observations.”

Danyon Wagner was on the walk with his wife, Sarah Wagner, their daughter, Claire Wagner, 4, who will be a kindergartner at Franklin Elementary School, and Jamison.

Sarah Mishkin:

Preparing young children for the future by enrolling in Mandarin classes is very last year. The thing to do now is teach them to code. Thanks to a host of new apps, websites, and even a popular board game featuring turtles, the least technical of parents or teachers can introduce kids to programming.

Homework

The goal of most of the apps and games designed to teach children computer science is not to instruct them in actual coding, but to use a visual interface with drag and drop commands to show how to think like a programmer.

That point is that they get kids thinking about basic logic structures – such as the concept that an action, gesture or particular input can trigger a defined response – and introduce them to the idea that a sequence of commands strung together can create something.

Barry Garelick:

Barry Garelick, who wrote various letters under the name Huck Finn and which were published here is at work writing what will become “Conversations on the Rifle Range”. This will be a documentation of his experiences teaching math as a long-term substitute. OILF proudly presents episode number two:

My back-to-school night was held on a Thursday evening during the first full week of school. Like most back-to-school nights, it was designed to give parents a peek at what goes on in their child’s school-day. And like most back-to-school nights that I’ve been to, parents shuffled from class to class, following their child’s schedule with somnambulistic fervor—each class lasting 10 minutes.

Of course, it wasn’t an exact replica of a school day: the school used block schedules, with hour and fifty minute classes and odd and even-period classes alternating every other day. I had three classes held during second, fourth and sixth periods—which meant that I taught every other day.

This was my first ever back-to-school night as a teacher. Parents from my three classes showed up, though attendance was fairly sparse. I assured all that I was certified to teach math, and that I would follow the teacher’s lessons and grading procedures. I had a list of topics that I would be teaching in my algebra classes and pointed to them. People nodded vaguely. I then said “I teach by providing instruction, worked examples, and lots of problems.” People nodded vaguely again. So far so good.

I was teaching the two-year sequence of Algebra 1. It is designed for students who are having difficulty in math. My high school, being very small, only offered the 2-year sequence. Students, who for whatever reason did not take Algebra 1 in 8th grade, unless they went to summer school, were therefore stuck with the two–year sequence of algebra, regardless of their ability to handle the one-year course in 9th grade. Two of my classes were the first year of the two-year sequence, and one was the second year.

I was most curious about the parents who showed up for my sixth period class “first year” algebra 1 class) since the students in that class were the most difficult. Out of 25 students, perhaps four were actually intent on learning anything. In fact the parents of a girl named Laura—one of the good students—showed up. She had two sets of parents. Her biological father was there; he bore tattoos on his neck including one of a poorly drawn heart with a number inside it. The step-dad and mother were there as well, along with Laura’s little sister—everyone but my student. And then there was a man who arrived late and sat in the back, looking somehow familiar, with a bored look on his face, slouched at a desk.

Part I: Not your mother’s algebra 1 & the guy who really knows.

Joey Garrison:

It delivered one of the biggest blows in Nashville’s fight over charter schools — a spreadsheet compiled by Metro Nashville Public Schools that suggested a suspiciously high number of students exit charters midyear and return to traditional schools.

The implication: Charters were weeding out low-performing students before end-of-year testing, improving the schools’ results.

But more than one year after a debate on student attrition widened a gulf between charters and the district, a team of Vanderbilt researchers contends there is no evidence of a larger exodus of students from charters.

Instead, a 75-page Vanderbilt Capstone study conducted at the request of Metro Schools calls poverty the root of a widespread mobility problem in Davidson County — students routinely moving from one school to another.

It recommends that the Metro school system improve its data collection on why students transfer, conduct exit interviews when students leave and enhance communication with transfers within both charter operators and the district.

Wayne Barrett:

I am a progressive, have been one since the 1960s, when I became a New York City public school teacher for a few years and learned that my union, the United Federation of Teachers, was much better at representing my interests than those of the kids I taught. It shouldn’t have come as such a surprise.

What was true then is true now.

Though the union masquerades to this day as an advocate for children, its job is to advance the interest of teachers. On some issues, like class size, decent salaries and school funding, teachers, parents and students are natural allies. On others, like protecting bad teachers behind seniority and tenure walls and resisting any form of effective evaluation, they are on a decades-long collision course.

As someone who’s spent a lifetime on the left, covering politics for nearly 40 years at the Village Voice, I’ve long been angered by the refusal of many on my side to even acknowledge that the UFT is a special-interest group. It’s never been more disturbing than it is now, six months into the first term of a mayor who is simultaneously a progressive paragon and an advance man for the union. We haven’t lived with that kind of contradiction before.

Leslie Brody:

A new advocacy group is helping parents prepare a challenge to New York’s teacher tenure and seniority laws, contending that they violate children’s constitutional right to a sound basic education by keeping ineffective teachers in classrooms.

Campbell Brown, a former CNN anchor who has been a critic of job protections for teachers, launched the group, Partnership for Educational Justice, in December. She said six students have agreed to serve as plaintiffs, arguing they suffered from laws making it too expensive, time-consuming and burdensome to fire bad teachers.

The preparations to challenge the state’s tenure laws this summer follow a landmark ruling in California earlier this month. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu struck down the state’s laws on tenure, dismissal and seniority, saying they disproportionately saddled poor and minority students with incompetent teachers. Evidence that ineffective teachers hurt learning, he wrote, “shocks the conscience.”

California unions that intervened in the case, Vergara v. California, said they would appeal, and legal analysts predicted the ruling would inspire similar suits around the country.

Student Union of Michigan:

This is part of an ongoing series of printable pamphlets designed to explain how money flows through public research universities in general and the University of Michigan in particular. The pamphlets are intended to clarify arguments and push back against pervasive and seemingly “common sense” narratives about the crisis of public higher education that impede, rather than advance, meaningful political action. We hope tactics and strategies will emerge from these counter-narratives—after all, we can’t fight what we don’t understand. Download the printable version of this pamphlet here and see the Resources page for the entire series.

Why has tuition grown so much and so fast at the University of Michigan? According to the administration, it has to do with “the long-term decline in state funding.”[1] We’re going to show you why this story is at best incomplete and at worst manipulative. It’s true that since the 1970s politicians around the country have cut budgets for many social services, including public higher education. Using the chart on the following page, the administration argues that state funding made up 78% of U-M’s general fund budget in the 1960s, but by 2012 this number had fallen to 17%. The chart suggests that tuition has increased to replace it, and the two streams are about equal.

So what’s missing from the administration’s story?

First, it’s important to recognize that the university’s budget is far more complex than the chart suggests. There’s not just two streams of revenue into the university. The general fund only represents a small piece of the university’s operating activities. As the pie chart on the next page indicates, other significant revenue sources include federal research grants (about $1 billion), distributions from the endowment (about $400 million), and gifts (about $150 million).[2] Why is this important? It shows that, even when we take the state’s budget cuts into account, overall revenue at U-M is actually increasing significantly. Over the last decade, for example, total revenue for operating activities (excluding the health system) has jumped from about $2.2 billion to $3.4 billion per year.[3] During that same period, state funding fell by just $41 million, while the revenue generated by student tuition increased by an astronomical $466 million. Even if state funding had remained constant, there would still be a lot more money floating around in the system, and students are more than making up for the difference.

Joy Resmovits:

As education policymakers untangle the implications of last week’s California court ruling that declared teacher tenure laws unconstitutional, an education think tank says its comprehensive survey of college teacher preparation programs shows they rarely provide new teachers with solid skills for the classroom.

The National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington group that advocates tougher teacher evaluations, said its second annual evaluation of teacher preparation programs, released on Tuesday, found that only 7 percent performed well enough to achieve “top status.” Only 1 in 15 programs provide new teachers with “solid preparation,” according to the group’s director, Kate Walsh. Three out of four programs “fail to insist that applicants meet even modest standards,” the group wrote, meaning at least a 3.0 grade point average, or scoring above the 50th percentile on the ACT or SAT.

“The whole set of issues that Vergara concerned itself with were what happened to teachers when they’re already in the classroom,” Walsh said, referring to the Vergara v. California tenure case. “The Vergara case, as supportive as we were of it, is emblematic of the country’s focus on teacher quality. That’s been very encouraging … but we’ve had the debate with almost no regard for teacher selection or preparation. The debate in that respect has been short-sighted.”

UW-Madison School of Education Dean on the NCTQ Results: “Don’t mean much”.

Jay Matthews:

Lucia and Ignacia Barajas are sisters who attend Compton High School in southern Los Angeles County. They want an education, but their school seems unable to give them enough time to get one.

During the 2011-2012 school year, Lucia’s biology teacher went on maternity leave. For two months there were nothing but short-term substitutes in the class, most staying only a few days. In the fall 2013 semester, Ignacia’s American history class had more than 10 substitute teachers, and some days none at all. The restless students waited outside the door until they were sent to the library or another classroom.

Wasting time is common in the nation’s low-income schools. Class schedules can be a mess at the beginning of the year, forcing students to wait days in the library for their assignments. Lockdowns because of neighborhood violence detract from learning time. Teacher absence rates are high, and instructors will often quit mid-year with no good replacements available.

Molly Beck

CUNA Mutual Group has promised more than $1 million to a new program aimed at training and keeping new teachers developed by the Madison School District and the UW-Madison School of Education.

Officials announced the company’s $1.2 million commitment Thursday at Wright Middle School. It is the largest grant the organization has awarded, said CUNA Mutual Foundation executive director Steve Goldberg.

“This is also the largest opportunity we’ll ever have to make a difference in the future trajectory of our community and especially the young people who live here,” Goldberg said.

The money will fund the mentoring of 150 new teachers starting this fall and for the next three years. District spokeswoman Rachel Strauch-Nelson said the district will “be working to develop a sustainable model for years” after that.

The project, dubbed “Forward Madison,” would provide mentors and coaches for new teachers, improve professional development for teachers, and create a program for district students to become teachers to diversify teaching ranks. The CUNA Mutual grant only pays for the mentoring.

CUNA funds have been involved in a number of Madison School District programs over the years. How have they performed?

My sense is that Madison has added many “programs” over the years, yet the District’s long term disastrous reading problem, remains.

Madison Schools’ Administration has “introduced more then 18 programs and initiatives for elementary teachers since 2009”.

I asked a former Madison Superintendent if the program, coaching and “professional development” program growth reflected an inability to address the core issues? The then Superintendent responded that “there is some truth to that”.

Perhaps the monolithic structure has run its course.

William Deresiewicz

While I was watching Ivory Tower, a documentary about the state of college in America that appears in select theaters this month (the movie also airs on CNN this fall), it occurred to me that of the many problems with higher education these days, not the least concerns the way we talk about it. “Efficiency,” “art-history majors,” “kids who graduate with $100,000 in debt,” “the college bubble,” the whole rhetoric of crisis and collapse: The public discourse is dominated by sound bites, one-liners, hearsay, horror stories, and a very great deal of misinformation.

Higher ed is not unique in this respect, of course, but it is particularly bad. College, as the movie points out, was always treated as a black box: 18-year-olds were inserted at one end, 22-year-olds came out the other, and as long as the system appeared to be working, no one bothered to inquire what happened in between. Americans, as a result, have very little understanding of what college is about—how it works, what it’s for, what larger social benefits it offers—and those employed in higher education have had very little practice in explaining it to them. The debate has been left to the politicians, the pundits, and increasingly, the hustlers and ideologues. Few who talk about college in public understand it, and few who understand it talk about it.

Ivory Tower, for the most part, is an honorable exception. The movie, directed by Andrew Rossi (Page One: Inside the New York Times), covers a lot of territory, and it covers it patiently, clearly, and thoughtfully. The headline issues of ballooning tuition and student debt are placed in their historical context: institutional competition, expansion, and borrowing; administrative bloat; the rise of the “party track” and its concomitant amenities as public universities have turned to full payers from out of state to deal with budgetary shortfalls; and the long-term withdrawal of public funding—the shift from taxes to student loans—that has been the fundamental factor in creating the entire mess.

Supt. Cheatam on 1st year of new school improvement effort: Schools moving away from wanting to be complaint, to adapting for their students

— Molly Beck (@MollyBeckWSJ) June 28, 2014

"You don’t get to opt out of doing what works in schools, but there are lots of ways that can look (for each school)."

— Molly Beck (@MollyBeckWSJ) June 28, 2014

Cheatham, board discussing ways to better communicate the district's direction to the community.

— Molly Beck (@MollyBeckWSJ) June 28, 2014

Board member Ed Hughes: We need results to show that the "theory of change" works.

— Molly Beck (@MollyBeckWSJ) June 28, 2014

"Give us stories to tell and we'll tell them."

— Molly Beck (@MollyBeckWSJ) June 28, 2014

T.J. Mertz, on getting more parents involved in school improvement effort: "The way to get people involved is to give them some real power."

— Molly Beck (@MollyBeckWSJ) June 28, 2014

Meeting agenda, here.

Related: Superintendnet Cheatham’s Rotary Club Talk – 2013

Chris Rickert:

Madisonians usually aren’t too keen on doling out public subsidies to people who don’t need them.

There’s that old saw about “tax breaks for millionaires,” of course, but also past outrage over a proposed taxpayer loan for Edgewater hotel renovators and brewing discontent over a potential taxpayer loan for the Judge Doyle Square developer.

Providing government-funded breakfast and lunch to every student in seven Madison public schools, though, probably won’t inspire similar objections about welfare for the schools’ middle- and upper-class children.

Free meals for some 2,800 children at Allis, Falk, Lake View, Leopold, Mendota, Sherman and Wright schools could start next year through a 4-year-old federal program to provide meals to all students at schools in high-poverty areas. On average, about 77 percent of students at the seven Madison schools were “economically disadvantaged” last school year, according to data from the state Department of Public Instruction. That means about 2,100 students were already eligible for subsidized meals though the federal government’s long-standing — and necessary — free-and-reduced-price lunch program.

But if the schools are accepted into the program, parents of the rest will no longer have to buy the Cheerios, juice boxes, and peanut-butter-and-jelly fixings they’ve proved capable of buying until now.

Assuming a 10 percent increase in meals, up to $1.5 million in federal dollars would cover the cost-shifting, according to district spokeswoman Rachel Strauch-Nelson. That would make the program cost-neutral for the district — if not for taxpayers at large.

The Madison School District (1.4MB PDF).

“All elementary boundaries are due for a long term review”. Agreed. A look at the maps below along with the wide demographic variation across Madison public public schools indicates that addressing boundaries is job #2 – after dealing with the long term disastrous reading results.

Going to referendum prior to addressing boundary and demographic issues appears to be a “cart before horse” strategy.

It will be interesting to see how gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke addresses this question.

Presentation slides (tap to view a larger version):

Related: Open questions from the 2005 maintenance referendum lead to calls for an audit.

Pat Schneider:

Wisconsin has had the second deepest slash in per-student spending in the nation since 2008 — second only to Alabama — according to a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Spending per pupil in Wisconsin was down $1,038 from 2008 for the school year just ended. Alabama cut per-pupil spending by $1,242.

Alabama and Wisconsin led the list of at least 35 states providing less funding per student than they did before the recession hit.

Wisconsin spending per pupil is 15.3 percent lower than in 2008, making it among 14 states where per-pupil spending remains at least 10 percent lower than before the economic recession.

The state cuts to education leave local school districts forced to cut services, raise taxes or both, notes the study. The cuts also hamper economic recovery by reducing the number of teaching jobs and school district workers’ buying power, the authors say.

A deeper dive: Wisconsin K-12 Spending Dominates Redistributed Tax Dollars.

More, here.

Lastly, the article lacks any discussion of K-12 spending effectiveness. Compare state NAEP performance, here.

Google Code:

Miral is a hip hop dancer and choreographer who lights up stages across the country. Danielle is a cinematographer at Pixar, helping to bring beloved characters like Nemo and Merida to life. Erica is a humanitarian fighting malaria around the world.

These are all women with cool, amazing jobs. But, more important, they’re all women who use computer science, and an ability to code, to do those cool, amazing jobs. They couldn’t do what they do without having learned not just to use technology, but to build it themselves. Unfortunately, there are far too few women like them and far too few young girls following their paths. In fact, fewer than one percent of high school girls express interest in majoring in computer science.

This is an issue that hits home for me. My school-age daughter instinctively knows how to play games, watch videos and chat with friends online. She understands technology. And she likes using technology. But, she never expressed any interest in creating it herself.