Marty Kich has provided a useful supplement to Aaron’s review with respect to standardized testing in Texas by quoting extensively from an account of the role played by British educational conglomerate Pearson. He also quotes from two reports on the process by which Texas selects textbooks, in which ideological factors often play an outsized and…
—or, If Moses Was a Founding Father, Then Was Charlton Heston’s Leadership of the NRA Divinely Preordained? Aaron’s post references the addition of new standardized tests in Texas. In an October 11 article for the British newspaper The Telegraph, Katherine Rushton opens a discussion of the UK-based conglomerate’s “challenges” with pointed references to the business…
The Community College Research Center at the Columbia University Teachers College has released a report on “Unintended Impacts of Performance Funding on Community Colleges and Universities in Three States.” The full text of this CCRC Working Paper No. 78 is available at http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/media/k2/attachments/unintended-impacts-performance-funding.pdf. The report’s authors are Hana Lahr, Lara Pheatt, Kevin J. Dougherty, Sosanya…
The following is a news release from We Are Ohio, the progressive coalition originally established to oppose Senate Bill 5. This coalition has remained in place because the attacks on collective bargaining rights, public employees, and public education have shown no signs of abating. The Know Your Charter site is a remarkable resource because it…
At this past June’s annual meeting, a chapter leader suggested that AAUP ought to start tracking votes of no confidence—even if not as formally as it tracks its own investigations and censures of institutions for violations of the AAUP’s core principles of academic freedom, shared governance, and tenure/economic security. As it is now, a vote…
President Robert Easter of the University of Illinois who participated in and approved of the egregious dismissal and summary suspension of Dr. Steven Salaita at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is retiring. He will receive a $180,000 Golden Parachute bonus in a state that is broke with one of the worst managed finances in the…
This year, 2014, is the centennial of the outbreak of war in Europe which quickly escalated into the senseless slaughter of World War I. Charles Schenck, a secretary of the Socialist Party, opposed the draft during The Great War, a term that many used to describe World War I. He wrote an enduring, magnificent pamphlet that is…
By Marjorie Heins, Free Expression Policy Project The Koch brothers, Charles and David, are best-known for donating millions to the election campaigns of Tea Party candidates and others committed to fighting regulation of business and to protecting the oil and gas industries from efforts to combat climate change. It turns out that Charles Koch, through…
In an earlier post, “The Koch Brothers Gifts to Higher Ed Come with Many Strings Attached” [https://academeblog.org/2014/08/18/the-koch-brothers-gifts-to-higher-ed-come-with-many-strings-attached/], I discussed the decision by Brooklyn College to decline a gift from the Koch Brothers Foundation. To all appearances, it is one of the few colleges to have made such a decision. A former colleague once said that…
In an earlier post, “The Koch Brothers Gifts to Higher Ed Come with Many Strings Attached” [https://academeblog.org/2014/08/18/the-koch-brothers-gifts-to-higher-ed-come-with-many-strings-attached/], I discussed the decision by Brooklyn College to decline a gift from the Koch Brothers Foundation. To all appearances, it is one of the few colleges to have made such a decision. A former colleague once said that…