Leadership in Scholarship: A Faculty Role
The blog Retraction Watch, on its FAQ page, states: We wholeheartedly agree it’s important to check out tips — anonymous or not — about potentially dodgy papers. But doing that right would require a much larger team, so we’ve decided that publicizing retractions that do happen — and finding out why papers were retracted, not…
Queensborough Community College: At an Impasse?
More on Queensborough Community College
Last week, the Queensborough Community College English Department voted to refuse a reduction in workload hours for its First Year Composition courses, supposedly a necessity for the City University of New York’s new Pathways to a Common Core initiative. Vice President Karen Steele then sent an email to the department that seemed to threaten draconian…
CUNY Pathways: The Danger of Ignoring Shared Governance
If you don’t start building a new organizational program from the ground up but impose it from the top down, you are going to lose control when the program has to be implemented by people with no real commitment to it, no feeling of ownership of it. We’re seeing that right now with implementation of…
If This Doesn’t Stop in Chicago…
Education ‘reformers,’ whether the business model of higher education is failing or not, have their eyes turned toward American colleges and universities. There’s money to be made there, too, an attraction that the ‘reformers’ and their corporate backers cannot resist. That the profits come at the expense of education itself hasn’t bothered them in their…
AFT Statement in Support of Striking Chicago Teachers Union Members
Washington—Statement of AFT President Randi Weingarten in support of striking Chicago Teachers Union members. “For the first time in 25 years, the members of the Chicago Teachers Union are on strike. No one wants to strike, and no one strikes without cause. In this instance, it comes on the heels of numerous steps that left…
Who Should Run the Asylum?
From The New York Times yesterday: Business is booming at ConServe, a debt collection agency in suburban Rochester. The company recently expanded into a neighboring building. The payroll of 420 is expected to double in three years. “There is great opportunity,” said Mark E. Davitt, the company’s president and founder. What’s the opportunity? Collection on Federally…
Testing: The Parent of Cheating
Henry Levin of Columbia Teachers College writes: Among all of the vehicles for socializing the young, schools are a very powerful one, because students spend considerable time there and schools have specific functions in preparing young people for adulthood. Clearly, knowledge and cognitive functioning are an important goal of schools and provide crucial skills for creating productive workers and…
Just Say No
In a commentary in response to the Democratic National Convention, Mark Naison, a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program, points out the gap between what Obama said and the realities of his education initiatives. After the election, no matter who wins, there is going to be a…