Pedagogy of “Doubt” and the Attack on Colleges of Education (Part II)

Guest Blogger Morna McDermott teaches in the College of Education, Towson University. This post originally appeared  here. Supporting evidence for Part I Corporate Control of Higher Ed A Deeper Examination of the Messaging In Part One I mentioned two articles: http://edexcellence.net/articles/reforming-ed-schools-from-within and https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/teacher-prep-programs-need-to-be-accountable-too/2015/02/20/ed140f44-b8fc-11e4-aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html . The first one is published by Fordham Institiute (known for a its corporate-model reforms) promoting ““Deans…

Pedagogy of “Doubt” and the Attack on Colleges of Education (Part I)

Guest Blogger Morna McDermott teaches in the College of Education, Towson University. This post originally appeared  here. Let’s Start with a Few Recent Headlines: Teacher Prep Colleges Are Failing the Teachers Study Delivers Failing Grades For Many Programs Training Teachers  States Slow to Close Faltering Teacher Ed. Programs (also see more recently: http://edexcellence.net/articles/reforming-ed-schools-from-within and https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/teacher-prep-programs-need-to-be-accountable-too/2015/02/20/ed140f44-b8fc-11e4-aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html ) Traditional colleges of…

Reporting Back from the PA AAUP Annual Meeting

Guest blogger Jacob A. Bennett lives and works in Philadelphia, where he teaches rhetoric, poetry, and literature. I was surprised to receive, and happy to accept, an invitation to attend this year’s annual meeting of the Pennsylvania State Conference of the AAUP on October 3. The keynote speaker, Dr. Gerald Beyer of Villanova University (the host…

Experts and Adjuncts: The New Model for Higher Education

The American professoriate once ranged from professionals who taught a course as an adjunct—a contribution to their professions, the compensation being almost nothing—to the regular (but generally poorly paid, often relying on family fortune to sustain them) faculty who generally assumed lifetime security at institutions whose operation their colleagues dominated. That changed over the decades starting…

Academic Freedom Is Ultimately Tied to the Right to Vote

Cecil Canton, my colleague on the CBC Executive Committee, has passed along this “Weekly Commentary” from Jesse Jackson, Sr., about the erosion of voting rights in Alabama. Very ironically but very predictably, once the Supreme Court ruled that the states subject to federal monitoring under the Voting Rights Act had moved beyond the need for…

Let’s at Least Talk Realistically about Guns

In a comment on my recent post “Four Things to Know about the Debate over Guns,” a reader quoted John F. Kennedy and George Washington on the value of an armed citizenry as a hedge against government tyranny. Yet, in the post itself, I never suggest eliminating gun ownership. I simply present statistics. Though I…

Private Equity and Charter Schools

truthout has recently published an investigative article by Yves Smith that explains why private equity firms have been investing heavily in corporate charter schools. Drawing on articles published by the Philadelphia Inquirer, the article provides an extended explanation of how these multi-layered scams have been implemented by some of that city’s charter school operators. But,…

The Ugly Charter School Scandal Arne Duncan Is Leaving Behind

This post was written by Jeff Bryant for the blog of the Campaign for America’s Future [http://ourfuture.org/] which has become a driving force behind the New Populist Movement. The group’s report, Organizing to Take Back America: The New Populist Movement, is available at: http://y.ourfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/New-Populist-Movement-Organizing.pdf. Prepared by Roger Hickey, the co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, the…

The Truth About Charter Schools

Alan Singer is a professor of Teaching, Literacy and Leadership and the program director of graduate programs in Social Studies Education at Hofstra University. Dr. Singer is a former New York City high school social studies teacher and is editor of Social Science Docket, a joint publication of the New York and New Jersey Councils…