Dear Commons Community,

Emulating Tennessee’s policy of free tuition for community college students, President Obama is to announce a similar program today by the federal government.  As reported in the New York Times:

“President Obama said yesterday that he would propose a government program to make community college tuition-free for millions of students, an ambitious plan that would expand educational opportunities across the United States.

The initiative, which the president plans to officially announce today at a Tennessee community college, aims to transform publicly financed higher education in an effort to address growing income inequality.

The plan would be funded by the federal government and participating states, but White House officials declined to discuss how much it would cost or how it would be financed. It is bound to be expensive and likely a tough sell to a Republican Congress not eager to spend money, especially on a proposal from the White House.

“With no details or information on the cost, this seems more like a talking point than a plan,” said Cory Fritz, a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio.

Mr. Obama’s advisers acknowledged Thursday that the program’s goals would not be achieved quickly. The president, however, was more upbeat. “It’s something that we can accomplish, and it’s something that will train our work force so that we can compete with anybody in the world,” Mr. Obama said in a video posted Thursday night by the White House.

The proposal would cover half-time and full-time students who maintain a 2.5 grade point average — about a C-plus — and who “make steady progress toward completing a program,” White House officials said. It would apply to colleges that offered credit toward a four-year degree or occupational-training programs that award degrees in high-demand fields. The federal government would cover three-quarters of the average cost of community college for those students, and states that choose to participate would cover the remainder. If all states participate, the administration estimates, the program could cover as many as nine million students, saving them each an average of $3,800 a year.”

This is a fine idea but it is coming too late in the President’s term in office.  Symbolically it is important but  as the article indicates, the Republican-controlled Congress will not likely support it.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I went to see The Imitation Game last night. The movie is about Alan Turing who builds a computer (Christopher) during World War II to crack the German coding system named Enigma. Some might see this as good period film about codes and cryptography but it is much more as it tries to reveal the genius of Turing along with his social awkwardness and his homosexuality. It is based on a biography by Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma (Princeton University Press, 1983).  I won’t say too much more about film other than that it is extremely well-done and for those of us interested in the history of technology, it is a special treat. Turing’s universal machine was one of the first true computers and built using relays and other crude electronics by today’s standards. Seeing the actor, Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Turing, “program” the machine using a plug board, will bring back memories for those of us who were using similar techniques in the late 1960s on vacuum tube computers.

After the movie, there was a panel discussion at the theater which featured the computer scientist and Turing Award recipient Leslie Valiant, MacArthur Fellow Craig Gentry, a research scientist in the Cryptography Research Group at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, and Glen Whitney, the founder and president of the National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath). They filled in a number of gaps. Gentry gave the film a “B” for authenticity.

Readers who know Turing’s life story will enjoy it and those who don’t will be introduced to a true but tragic genius. A New York Times book review was very positive.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that the University System of Georgia’s Board of Regents approved a plan to merge Georgia State University and Georgia Perimeter College, laying the groundwork for what would be the system’s largest institution. Consolidation has been a favorite strategy of system leaders, who have now approved six campus mergers in three years, as a response to declining levels of state funding.   The mergers have also involved:  Gainesville State College and North Georgia College & State University; Middle Georgia College and Macon State College; Waycross College and South Georgia College; Kennesaw State University and Southern Polytechnic University; and Augusta State University and the Georgia Health Sciences University

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Richard F. Elmore, Gregory Anrig Research Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has a scathing article in Inside Education, lamenting what is becoming of public education in this country. His piece derives from a MOOC he is teaching, called Leaders of Learning, that is addressed primarily to the potential future leaders in the learning sector.  His course represents “my deep fascination with the future of learning as a social activity, and my equal skepticism about the future of institutionalized schooling as a setting for learning….I am, in short, moving away from my earlier conviction that schooling is learning enacted for public purposes through public institutions, and moving toward a broader vision for learning as a social activity upon which society depends for its future development.”

He goes on to rock the education reform movement in this country that emanated from A Nation at Risk in the early 1980s.

“…educational reformers have for the past thirty years or so deliberately and systematically engaged in public policy choices that make schools less and less capable of responding to the movement of learning into society at large.

Standards and expectations have become more and more literal and highly prescriptive in an age where human beings will be exercising more and more choice over what and how they will learn.

Testing and assessment practices have become more and more conventional and narrow as the range of competencies  required to negotiate digital culture has become more complex and highly variegated.

Teacher preparation, hiring, induction, and evaluation practices have become more and more rigid and hierarchical in an age where the teaching function is migrating out into a more individualized and tailored set of learning environments.

We are continuing to invest massively in hard-boundary physical structures in an age where learning is moving into mobile, flexible, and networked relationships…”

His conclusion:

“Students are schooled for adult approval and conformity to highly standardized, institutionalized expectations, created by people in positions of public authority who have no knowledge whatsoever of how learning works as an individual and social activity.

The definition of learning for society at large has been given over to political professionals, who are educational amateurs of the worst kind. The broader society, thankfully, is smarter than the institutionalized schooling sector.”

I do not agree with everything Elmore is saying but he is absolutely right in his conclusion that education has been given over to “political professionals” in our national and state departments of education who are fed by interest groups and corporate-affiliated foundations who clamor for accountability, privatization, and a de-professionalization of teaching.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education today reports on a study claiming that men and women behave differently in online courses especially in regard to online discussions. As reported:

“Women and men behave differently in online class discussions, at least in science, engineering, and computer-science courses, according to a new study conducted by Piazza Technologies, a company that makes a digital class-participation tool.

The company found that women use its program, called Piazza, to ask more questions than do their male peers, but that they answer fewer questions. When women do answer, they are more likely to answer anonymously.

The findings come in the midst of an online debate about male privilege in the sciences. Part of Piazza’s mission is to level the playing field for men and women in academic environments.

Piazza is an online discussion platform that professors at more than 1,000 colleges use to encourage students to ask questions of and answer questions for their classmates. Participation is usually optional, although some professors track students’ use for grading purposes. According to Jessica Gilmartin, Piazza’s chief business officer, most students enrolled in classes that use the tool do participate. Students can post anonymously to their peers, but professors are able to see all students’ names if they choose. Students know when that setting is selected.

The study tracked 420,389 undergraduates and graduate students enrolled in STEM classes in the United States and Canada during four nonconsecutive semesters from the spring of 2012 to the fall of 2014. (If a student took multiple classes during that period, he or she counted as multiple enrollments.)

The study found that, on average, women in computer-science classes asked 2.20 questions and men asked 1.75. In contrast, women answered 0.70 questions and men answered 1.20 questions. For other STEM classes, a similar pattern emerged: Women asked 1.10 questions and men asked 0.90, whereas women answered 0.49 questions and men answered 0.61.”

These are interesting findings. Similar studies in other disciplines have been counter to the findings here.

Tony

Click to enlarge.

Dear Commons Community,

Financing of public higher education has reached an important milestone according to a US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. Students now pay more of the cost of attending public universities than state governments and the GAO says it’s making college unaffordable. Tuition officially surpassed state funding in fiscal year 2012, the GAO found, accounting for 25 percent of public college revenue. Meanwhile all state sources dipped from 32 percent in 2003 to 23 percent in 2012.  As reported in The Huffington Post:

“Tuition officially surpassed state funding in fiscal year 2012, the GAO found, accounting for 25 percent of public college revenue. Meanwhile all state sources dipped from 32 percent in 2003 to 23 percent in 2012.

“These increases have contributed to the decline in college affordability as students and their families are bearing the cost of college as a larger portion of their total family budgets,” the GAO wrote.

The report was submitted on Dec. 16, 2014 to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the outgoing chair of the Senate Education committee, just as most college campuses were emptying out for winter break. The study looked at the revenue sources for state universities from 2003 through 2012.

According to the Delta Cost Project, many public, four-year universities were already getting more than half their revenue for educating students from tuition by 2008. It’s a dramatic shift from the 1970s, when around three-quarters of the revenue for public colleges came from state governments.

The GAO report reinforces a study by the New York Federal Reserve that found state budget cuts drive up tuition at public colleges. However, a Harvard University Institute of Politics poll found many young Americans typically blame colleges — public and private — for rising student debt.

Considering the tuition increases, the federal government’s Pell grant now covers smallest portion of the cost of college in the program’s history.

During that period, state funding decreased by 12 percent, while the median published tuition prices have increased by 55 percent and average out-of-pocket costs have increased 19 percent since FY 2003, according to the GAO report.

“The reductions in state funding to public colleges are even more significant when enrollment levels are taken into account,” the report states. “The number of students enrolled in public colleges rose by 20 percent from school year 2002-2003 to school year 2011-2012. Correspondingly, median state funding per student declined 24 percent — from $6,211 in fiscal year 2003 to $4,695 in fiscal year 2012.”

This is a sad commentary on our society’s commitment to education opportunity. It has always been part of our culture that getting a good education was part of the American dream and important for economic and social mobility. Just as we are seeing all-time high enrollments in our colleges and universities, our elected government officials have turned their backs on public higher education.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times editorial today is an impassioned plea to Governor Andrew Cuomo that if he indeed is going to make the improvement of public education a signature initiative in his second term, he will have to tackle the more significant problems of poverty, segregation, and resources that plague New York public schools. In essence, it is an overdue recognition that the neoliberal agenda of emphasis on test scores, teacher evaluation, and teacher preparation has failed and that the real problems relate to the more significant, social problems faced by many families in the state’s large urban school districts.    The full editorial is below.  Here is an excerpt:

“If he [Cuomo] is serious about the issue, he will have to move beyond peripheral concerns and political score-settling with the state teachers’ union, which did not support his re-election, and go to the heart of the matter. And that means confronting and proposing remedies for the racial and economic segregation that has gripped the state’s schools, as well as the inequality in school funding that prevents many poor districts from lifting their children up to state standards…

The Cuomo administration seemed not to acknowledge these issues in a letter last month to the chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents and the commissioner of education in which it promised “an aggressive legislative package” to improve education in the state. Among the dozen issues it said it wanted to address were strengthening the teacher evaluation system, improving the process for removing low-performing teachers and improving teacher training.

The regents agreed that these were legitimate issues needing attention. But they also noted that these reforms were unlikely to improve the schools unless they were paired with new investments along the lines of the $2 billion in extra spending that the regents had recommended earlier. No less pointedly, they urged Mr. Cuomo to address the “deeply disturbing inequalities in resources” that exist between poor and wealthy districts, as well as the destructive pattern of segregation. Mr. Cuomo must take on both of these central issues.”

Urban educators know the issue well but their voices have been largely negated by elected officials and interest groups that support an agenda of school accountability, privatization, and anti-unionism.

Tony

==============================================

New York Times Editorial

The Central Crisis in New York Education

January 4, 2015

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s forthcoming State of the State address is expected to focus on what can be done to improve public education across the state.

If he is serious about the issue, he will have to move beyond peripheral concerns and political score-settling with the state teachers’ union, which did not support his re-election, and go to the heart of the matter. And that means confronting and proposing remedies for the racial and economic segregation that has gripped the state’s schools, as well as the inequality in school funding that prevents many poor districts from lifting their children up to state standards.

These shameful inequities were fully brought to light in 2006, when the state’s highest court ruled in Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York that the state had not met its constitutional responsibility to ensure adequate school funding and in particular had shortchanged New York City.

A year later, the Legislature and Gov. Eliot Spitzer adopted a new formula that promised more help for poor districts and eventually $7 billion per year in added funding. That promise evaporated in the recession, spawning two lawsuits aimed at forcing the state to honor it.

A lawsuit by a group called New Yorkers for Students’ Educational Rights estimates that, despite increases in recent years, the state is still about $5.6 billion a year short of its commitment under that formula.

A second lawsuit was filed on behalf of students in several small cities in the state, including Jamestown, Port Jervis, Mount Vernon and Newburgh. It says that per pupil funding in the cities, which have an average 72 percent student poverty rate, is $2,500 to $6,300 less than called for in the 2007 formula, making it impossible to provide the instruction other services needed to meet the State Constitution’s definition of a “sound basic education.”

These communities and others like them are further disadvantaged by having low property values and by a statewide cap enacted in 2011 that limits what money they are able to raise through property taxes. And last year the New York State United Teachers union said that the cap had been particularly harmful to poorer districts.

These inequalities are compounded by the fact that New York State, which regards itself as a bastion of liberalism, has the most racially and economically segregated schools in the nation. A scathing 2014 study of this problem by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, charged that New York had essentially given up on this problem. It said, “The children who most depend on the public schools for any chance in life are concentrated in schools struggling with all the dimensions of family and neighborhood poverty and isolation.”

The Cuomo administration seemed not to acknowledge these issues in a letter last month to the chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents and the commissioner of education in which it promised “an aggressive legislative package” to improve education in the state. Among the dozen issues it said it wanted to address were strengthening the teacher evaluation system, improving the process for removing low-performing teachers and improving teacher training.

The regents agreed that these were legitimate issues needing attention. But they also noted that these reforms were unlikely to improve the schools unless they were paired with new investments along the lines of the $2 billion in extra spending that the regents had recommended earlier. No less pointedly, they urged Mr. Cuomo to address the “deeply disturbing inequalities in resources” that exist between poor and wealthy districts, as well as the destructive pattern of segregation. Mr. Cuomo must take on both of these central issues.

Dear Commons Community,

Although it is still too early to get overly predictive of the 2016 presidential election, Frank Bruni raises a good question in his column this morning as to whether the country is heading for a showdown of two dynasties: Bush and Clinton. Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton would be a replay of the 1992 race, but with the wife of the victor against a son of the loser. It would also call to mind the 2000 race, when that victor’s heir apparent, Al Gore, squared off against another of that loser’s sons, George W. Bush. Bruni is skeptical and comments:

“They’re not naturals on the stump. Clinton came into the 2008 campaign with extensive experience in the spotlight; still she struggled to warm up to audiences (and vice versa) and find the looseness and air of intimacy that many voters crave. Her “Hard Choices” book tour last year was rocky, with awkward moments that she created or should have been able to avoid…

…Bush’s most ardent admirers don’t sell him as a rousing orator. Last April I happened to hear him give an education reform speech, at an event where Chris Christie had been the headliner the previous year, and the contrast was stark. Christie had come across as impassioned, unscripted. He filled and held the room. Bush was a phlegmatic blur. Afterward his supporters talked about and fretted over it.

Both he and Hillary Clinton may also be too awash in money. More so than other Democrats and Republicans who’ve signaled interest in the presidency, they’ve existed for many years now at a financial altitude far, far above that of ordinary Americans.

And reporters digging into their affairs would provide voters with constant reminders of that, revisiting the Clintons’ speaking fees and examining Jeb Bush’s adventures in private equity, which a Bloomberg Politics story from December described under this headline: “Jeb Bush Has a Mitt Romney Problem.”

It’s hard to fathom that at this of all junctures, when there’s growing concern about income inequality and the attainability of the American dream, voters in both parties would choose nominees of such economically regal bearing.”

Bruni touches on several other good points and concludes that:

“And Clinton and Bush together have more baggage than the cargo hold of a 747. That’s the flip side of all of those family tentacles, all that political history, all those privileged inside glimpses of the process. They make you putty in the hands of the right opposition researcher.”

However, there have to be viable candidates to oppose them and win their party nominations. I am not seeing those candidates yet on the horizon particularly on the Democrat side.  Is there a relatively unknown Barack Obama type lurking someplace to come and push aside the big name candidates?

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Economist Thomas Piketty whose 2014 best-selling book Capital in the 21st Century, is perhaps the most extensive examination of capitalism and income inequality ever written, has refused to accept France’s highest honor, the Legion d’honneur. Piketty said government shouldn’t decide who is honorable.

“I have just learned that I was nominated for the Legion of honneur. I refuse this nomination because I do not think it is the government’s role to decide who is honorable,” Piketty told AFP.

“They would do better to concentrate on reviving [economic] growth in France and Europe,” Piketty added.

According to Reuters, Piketty was nominated for the honor on Thursday along with Nobel Economics laureate Jean Tirole and Nobel Literature prize winner Patrick Modiano. The Legion d’honnneur is awarded by President Francois Hollande.

While it is rare to turn down the award created by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, Piketty is not alone.

The list of those who refused the honour includes such French literary notables as Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir as well as master artist Claude Monet and celebrated anti-poverty campaigner Abbe Pierre.  Even France’s pioneering radiologists Pierre and Marie Curie did not want the award.

Piketty is in good company.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Mario Cuomo, former New York Governor, and father of NY Governor Andrew Cuomo, died yesterday, hours after his son was sworn in for his second term. The New York Times has an obituary on his life and legacy. My own views on Governor Cuomo are mixed.

First, he surely was an inspiring orator who had a way with appealing to people’s feelings when speaking about progressive issues – family, housing, education, employment opportunities.  He was a counter-conscience to President Ronald Reagan who tended always to see and portray America in its most favorable light.

Second, Cuomo provided important leadership for the Democratic Party in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, his oratory outstripped his actual accomplishments as governor. There were few new programs or major governmental accomplishments during his long tenure as governor.

Third, what I like most about Cuomo was his background. As a second-generation Italian American growing up in Queens, he had to struggle to accomplish what he did. Surely there was no silver spoon or family connections that enabled him to achieve the highest elected position in the state. Most people who knew him said it was hard work, family values, and a good education that enabled him to be successful in the competitive world of politics.

For further insights into Mario Cuomo, Elizabeth Kolbert has a fine piece in The New Yorker.

Our condolences to his family and may he rest in peace!

Tony