BY AARON BARLOW One of my favorite songs by the novelist/songwriter Richard Fariña (whose life was cut tragically short by a motorcycle accident) is called “Mainline Prosperity Blues.” It ends with this: “They say I could be productive/But I think I’ll just recline right here instead.” The irony, of course, is that Fariña, in his…
This piece by Seton Hall professor Daniel Katz provides a thorough and devastating take on the bogus teacher evaluation program dismissed as “arbitrary and capricious” by a New York court, about which I blogged yesterday (https://academeblog.org/2016/05/12/an-important-decision-on-teacher-evaluation/)
Add the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay to the growing list of UW faculties that have approved resolutions of no-confidence in UW System President Ray Cross and the Board of Regents. Previously, just before the Milwaukee faculty voted unanimously to approve the no-confidence resolution, Governor Scott Walker issued a press release chock full of cherry-picked and…
BY HANK REICHMAN I grew up in the New York suburb of Great Neck, where last week a fourth-grade teacher won a landmark case against New York State’s “value-added modeling” (VAM) formula for teacher evaluation, an assessment system that was developed when John King, the current U.S. Secretary of Education, was the New York State…
BY HANK REICHMAN Let’s face it, the pharmaceutical industry has one heck of an image problem. Even if it is recognized that the notorious and now-indicted Martin Shkreli, who raised the cost of a life-saving pill from $13.50 to $750, was really an exception, price-gouging and the accumulation of excessive profit are charges regularly and…
Update at end! After Six Years Without a Raise, 92% Vote ‘Yes’ New York—After more than six years without a raise and five years without a contract for its members, the union of faculty and professional staff at The City University of New York announced that 92% of the union’s voting members have voted to…
Among other things, I am (or have been) an historian of railroad labor, so I was especially thrilled to learn that University of Wisconsin-Madison labor historian William P. Jones had joined the conversation around the assault on tenure in the Wisconsin system. Professor Jones, by the way, will be the plenary banquet speaker at AAUP’s…
BY AARON BARLOW Jim Hightower, discussing the Uber “defeat” in Austin, TX, writes about the “gig economy”: This “alternative work arrangement” is not a futuristic concept — it’s already here and spreading fast. And it’s not just ride-hiring gigs either. Some 16 percent of U.S. workers are now in this on-call, temporary, part-time, low-pay, you’re-on-your-own…
BY KELLY WILZ The narrative surrounding higher education in Wisconsin is yet again being defined by those who do not work in higher education and unfortunately, as we’ve seen before, this line of attack is incredibly persuasive. “The No Confidence vote isn’t really about President Cross or the Board of Regents. The radical faculty at UW-Madison are rejecting…
Yesterday in my post reporting on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee faculty’s unanimous vote of no-confidence in UW system President Ray Cross and the UW Board of Regents I noted that the vote came less than two hours after Gov. Scott Walker issued a statement — titled “University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee faculty fuss leaves out important facts”…