David Bloomfield on the Possible Departure of Los Angeles Schools’ Superintendent John Deasy!

Dear Commons Community,

The Graduate Center’s own David Bloomfield has an article in The Hechinger Report on the possible departure of Los Angeles Schools’ Superintendent John Deasy.   According to news sources,   terms of a possible exit from that post have been discussed ahead of his Oct. 21 performance review. As reported by Bloomfield:

“Deasy was appointed in 2011 and his current contract runs to June, 2016. Despite this, LAUSD’s Deasy bio says he’s “a man on a mission” who’s “championed rigorous and ambitious learning opportunities for youth, fair teacher and administrator evaluations, pay‐for-performance, staff development and training, and data‐based decision‐making.” In short, he is another high-profile accountability-side casualty of the nation’s school wars.

Didn’t Tolstoy say that all failed superintendents fail in their own way? Here, Deasy’s immediate problem is a $1.3 billion debacle over a controversial iPads-for-all program in which he reportedly engaged in contact with software and test vendor Pearson PLC. deemed to be inappropriate before the contract was opened for competitive bidding.

But Deasy’s departure, should it come, will also be the result of the policies that brought him to LAUSD in the first place: the corporate-type school reform agenda, backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Broad Foundations. Deasy is the former deputy director of Education at Gates and was a Broad fellow. (The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation is a funder of The Hechinger Report).”

Bloomfield also comments:

“In addition to Deasy’s likely membership [departure], others in the ousted leaders club include Michelle Rhee from D.C., Paul Vallas from Bridgeport, Alan Bersin from San Diego, and Jean Claude Brizard from Chicago. Rejection of harsh accountability policies was an important factor in New York’s recent election of Mayor Bill de Blasio after the mayoralty of Michael Bloomberg and, next door in Connecticut, State Superintendent Stefan Pryor just called it quits over similar issues to free Democrat Daniel Malloy from that yoke.”

The entire piece is very well done and worth  a read.

Tony

 

 

The Times (London) World Rankings of Colleges and Universities!

University Rankings 2014-3Click to Enlarge

Dear Commons Community,

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2014-2015 were released on Wednesday and there is good news and not-so-good news for American higher education. The good news is that the US has 7 in the top 10 universities and 74 universities in the top 200. However, these 74 universities are down from 77 last year and some 60 per cent of those institutions rank lower than they did 12 months ago.  The reason for the slippage stems mainly form a decline in funding.

“Western universities, in many cases starved of vital public funding, are losing ground,” said Phil Baty, THE rankings editor, who added that there was “something approaching a crisis” for US state institutions.  Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, said that the “serious hit” in funding to the “great American public universities” had major implications for US science and competitiveness.

The United States Education Department and state education department officials should seriously think about the issue of funding raised in these rankings.  Over the past dozen years, a number of states have pretty much abandoned their financial commitment to public higher education.

Tony