The Educator and the Oligarch: A Teacher Challenges the Gates Foundation by Anthony Cody (New York: Garn Press, 2014). Though this book may have been sparked by an exchange between an experienced science teacher (Anthony Cody) and the Gates Foundation on Cody’s blog for Education Week, “Living in Dialogue,” and on the Foundation’s blog, “Impatient Optimists,” it…
A version of Hank Reichman’s August post “Usual Suspects Saying the Usual Things: Critiquing the Schmidt Report” has appeared in the December, 2014 issue of the Clarion, the monthly newspaper of the Professional Staff Congress, the faculty union at the City University of New York. Titled “Schmidt: reduce faculty authority” in the print version and “Benno…
“Non-negotiable.” From Texas legislators adding new standardized tests to David Coleman defending his Common Core State Standards, that’s how education “reformers” present their changes. After all, they know better than we do. The problem with American education, they argue, is that too many constituencies have been involved in decision-making, from parents to teachers to school…
There are big changes coming in American higher education. College and university governance must accommodate these changes and shape rather than be shaped by them. The changes reflect both the simple reality that the financing structure doesn’t work and that external forces will impose new challenges and opportunities upon senior leadership. What steps can college…
The data analytics staff at Facebook has produced the following map indicating what people are most thankful for by state: One cannot help but notice the range in focus, from religious beliefs to emotional sentiments, from Internet sites to genres of music, and from geographical features to seasonal weather. The survey responses have also…
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…
Huffaker, Clair. Nobody Loves a Drunken Indian. New York: McKay, 1967. When Nobody Loves a Drunken Indian was published in 1967, Huffaker had already established himself as a novelist and screenwriter who could remain fundamentally true to the Western formula while cleverly manipulating some of its elements to give each story a winning combination…