There’s no doubt Michigan has education crisis

Detroit News published a letter from an AAUP-AFT Union member:

Richard Zeile, co-president of the State Board of Education of Michigan, said “no” in a Sept. 14 column, “Is there an education crisis in Michigan?” Unfortunately, what I have observed in my own research and that of many others is that Michigan’s academic stagnation — and decline in comparison to the rest of the nation — is a real and direct threat to our state and our children’s futures.

Sarah Lenhoff, Assistant Professor, WSU

The column suggested that Michigan’s performance on the NAEP is just below average, citing that Michigan’s scores are “5 points or less from the mean.” But five points on a single NAEP assessment translates to about a half-year of learning. In 4th grade reading and math and 8th grade math, Michigan students performed significantly below the national public average in 2015, the most recent year of data. The three- to five-point difference between our students’ average scores and the nation’s means Michigan students have learned 30 to 50 percent less of a year’s worth of content than students on average nationally. And if you look at the states ranked highest on the NAEP, Michigan students were 10 or more points behind, translating to more than a year’s worth of learning that they will likely never make up. Detroit was the worst-performing large urban district in the country on all four assessments, scoring on average 10 or more points below the next lowest district on three of the four.

Perhaps more disconcerting is Michigan’s falling ranking compared to other states. We’re not keeping up, and our children are suffering the consequences.

The column also claims that “it is an illusion that government spending can replace the parent’s role in a child’s development.” There is no evidence that Michigan’s parents are less involved in their children’s development than parents in other states, and I have not heard a single argument that increased spending on public schools should replace a parent’s role. Yet, there is compelling, independent evidence that Michigan is not adequately funding its public schools.

Rather than blame parents for poor performance, schools should be encouraged and supported to better engage families in the educational process, including by significantly increasing resources for students with the greatest educational needs. Treating families as partners in the educational process — and collaborators in solving this crisis — isn’t just the right thing to do, it also works.

Sarah Winchell Lenhoff, Ph.D. 

Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Wayne State University

(source)

Labor Notes: Creative Actions on Hot Issues Can Fuel a Contract Fight

From Union Member Dennis Albers in CLAS:

"In a county in northeast Michigan, Service Employees (SEIU) members at a state agency were coming up on contract time. The unit was composed of 33 clerical workers, only a few of whom had contact with clients. The rest worked in the back office and had enjoyed a very relaxed dress policy for decades."

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The manufactured free speech crisis

John Pat Leary's op-ed:

Larry Stettner's obituary, a most beloved member of our faculty.

Larry Stettner  (1938-2017)

     Dr. Larry Stettner, retired Wayne State University Psychology Professor and past President of WSU’s AAUP, died after a heart attack in Southwest Harbor, Maine, on May 1, 2017.  Born in Brooklyn and an honors graduate of Brooklyn College, he received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University in 1963.  Hired into the Biopsychology Area of the WSU Psychology Department, he and his family moved to Detroit.  In 1967, he was awarded a year’s leave and an NIH grant for research at the NIH Lab in San Juan, Puerto Rico.  His research interests early in his career involved animal models.  He studied learning in birds after brain lesions and co-authored a widely reprinted 1968 paper in Scientific American, “The Brain of Birds”.  His teaching and research reflected his ethological perspective.  His course on animal behavior was popular and former students report that his primatology course was unforgettable.  He formed an affiliation with the Detroit Zoo that allowed his students to carry out observational studies of primates.  In one course, students studied a troop with female adults, but no male adults, and watched leaders emerge.  Later in his career he focused on several aspects of human behavior: human sexuality, facial expressions of emotion, and alexithymia.  One of his frequent collaborators in the study of alexithymia was Dr. Mark Lumley.

     Larry was active in establishing the faculty union at WSU, was a member of the union’s negotiating team many times, and served as AAUP President.  He greatly enjoyed teaching and was known as one of the most accepting, supportive professors in the Department.  Absolutely exuberant about his subject matter and his students, he received the President’s Excellence in Teaching Award in 1987.  The framed award document was proudly displayed in his office until he retired and then in his home study in Maine. 

  

more at WSU Psychology Department 

The Secretary of Education: The Devil is in the Details

AAUP-AFT Local 6075 member, Linda Joy Johnson, writes this article, driving home the points about Betsy DeVos that are bad for education.    Just this last weekend at the AFT Higher Ed conference here in Detroit, Randi Weingarten, president of AFT, said she has started calling DeVos a  #PublicEducationDenier.

"Critics say Michigan’s laissez-faire attitude about charter-school regulation has led to marginal and, in some cases, terrible schools in the state’s poorest communities as part of a system dominated by for-profit operators. Charter-school growth has also weakened the finances and enrollment of traditional public-school districts like Detroit’s, at a time when many communities are still recovering from the economic downturn that hit Michigan’s auto industry particularly hard."  — Politico

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Three Great Academics on WDET (week one) - January 2017

This week on WDET's Detroit Today:  we get to hear three AAUP-AFT, Local 6075 members talk about current events.  All were really good interviews.  check them out!


Will the Women’s March become a movement?  
(includes Kidada Williams)

Local cultural commentators concerned that Trump’s actions are creating a “culture of fear.”  
(includes Hayg Oshagan)

Objecting to new president’s policies, Detroit archivist aims to help save documents, prevent discrimination.  

(includes Daniel Golodner)

Senator suggests colleges swap teachers for videos

He called higher education a “cartel” and suggested colleges could cut the number of instructors and increase use of online videos like Ken Burns’ 11½-hour documentary on the Civil War.

“Why do you have to keep paying different lecturers to teach the same course? You get one solid lecturer and put it up online,” Johnson said. “If you want to teach the Civil War across the country, are you better off having, I don’t know, tens of thousands of history teachers, who, you know, kind of know the subject? Or would you be better off popping in 14 hours of Ken Burns’ Civil War tape and having those teachers proctor based on that excellent video production already done? You keep duplicating that over all these different subject areas.”

via PBS

How will the Flint crisis end for Snyder?

'Why isn't there a law against this?'

"This is a unique situation. You just don't see this kind of thing," Henning tells MT. "It's one of those cases where you say, 'Why isn't there a law against this?' Well, no one ever thought we would need a law, because why would anyone do anything this stupid?"

Peter Henning, Law School Professor & AAUP-AFT Local 6075 member - speaking of the #FlintWaterCrisis

via MetroTimes.com

States Investing the Most in Higher Education

Not Michigan...

39. Michigan
> Annual higher ed. spending per student: $5,097
> 5-yr. chg.: -4.5% (8th smallest decrease)
> Total public college enrollment: 392,275 (6th highest)
> Tuition cost per student: $11,413 (3rd highest)

With nearly 39,000 undergraduates, Michigan State University is one of the largest public education institutions in the country. In total, there are 392,275 full-time students enrolled at public colleges and universities in Michigan, the sixth most of any state. Despite the importance of educational institutions in the state, Michigan invests only $5,097 in higher education annually per student, far less than in the majority of other states.

via: 247WallSt.com

When universities try to behave like businesses, education suffers

"What’s really at stake in the corporatization of academia is the traditional role the university as a repository of culture and training ground for open inquiry. “The obvious risk,” says Michael Meranze, a professor of history at UCLA who shares a blog on academic issues with Newfield, “is that academic research gets done to advance the interests of outside corporations, rather than 
guided by the logic of  the university’s mission.”"

more via LAtimes.com

UW President Ray Cross: Tenure debate exposed ‘real value’ of removing it from state law

When you want a short term jobs training program, Tenure gets in the way.

"Cross compared faculty to railroad brakemen, kept on the job for years after they were no longer needed, he said. “It was for the same reason — a job for life even when that job was no longer necessary.”"

more at The Cap Times

EMU full-time lecturers' union outlines platform as negotiations begin

"Salary, workload, professional development and more secure medical leaves will be among the major focuses of Eastern Michigan University's full-time lecturers as they entered contract negotiations with the university Wednesday."

more at MLive

Higher ed is key to a state’s success, and should be supported

"Across the nation, public policymakers are starting to let data drive decisions. That’s why the most successful states – states where you can live long and prosper, to borrow a phrase – are those that are doing more to prepare, retain and attract young college graduates."   more via Bridge MI

Wayne State faculty file grievance against School of Medicine

"In a letter to members, Parrish described several examples of professors who have received job performance letters:"

• One professor was given a substantial raise for research by his unit's salary committee in each of the past two years.

• Another has published nearly 20 articles in the last three years. He was granted tenure in 2014 and in 2016 received a letter from the dean.

• A third professor, when asked the last time he met with his chair to discuss his work, said it was in 2012.

more at Crain's Detroit (google search for full article)

The Chronicle of Higher Education: State Higher-Education Spending Is Up, but Not Above Pre-Recession Level

"Another report reveals more evidence of the long shadow the Great Recession has cast over public higher education.

The State Higher Education Executive Officers, known as Sheeo, has released its annual report on higher-education finances in all 50 states, showing a moderate overall increase in state and local appropriations for higher education, as well as on a per-student basis, for the third year in a row."

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247WallSt: The States With the Strongest and Weakest Unions

The States With the Strongest and Weakest Unions - 24/7 Wall St.: " Over half of the states in the country now have right-to-work laws, with West Virginia’s statute passing this February. All of the states with the lowest shares of union membership have right to work laws, while Michigan is the only state with high membership which does."

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The End of Research in Wisconsin

"Professors do not want research limited by the whims of 18 people appointed by a governor with an anti-education agenda."


read more at Slate

NYTimes.com: Rule to Require Employers to Disclose Use of Anti-Union Consultants

"Wednesday released the final version of a rule requiring employers to disclose relationships with the consultants they hire to help persuade workers not to form a union or support a union’s collective bargaining position."

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How Right-Wing Billionaires Infiltrated Higher Education

The Chronicle Review   February 12, 2016   By Jane Mayer

[Mayer is a staff writer at *The New Yorker.* This article is adapted from her new book, *Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaries Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.*]

If there was a single event that galvanized conservative donors to try to wrest control of higher education in America, it might have been the uprising at Cornell University on April 20, 1969. That afternoon, during parents’ weekend at the Ithaca, N.Y., campus, some 80 black students marched in formation out of the student union, which they had seized, with their clenched fists held high in black-power salutes. To the shock of the genteel Ivy League community, several were brandishing guns. At the head of the formation was a student who called himself the "Minister of Defense" for Cornell’s Afro-American Society. Strapped across his chest, Pancho Villa-style, was a sash-like bandolier studded with bullet cartridges. Gripped nonchalantly in his right hand, with its butt resting on his hip, was a glistening rifle. Chin held high and sporting an Afro, goatee, and eyeglasses reminiscent of Malcolm X, he was the face of a drama so infamous it was regarded for years by conservatives such as David Horowitz as "the most disgraceful occurrence in the history of American higher education."

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Report calls for tighter rein on UW System faculty tenure

"The report, which critics called a thinly researched political attack, is timed to an upcoming regents vote March 10 on a new tenure policy. The policy is needed because existing tenure policy was shifted from state statute to the Board of Regents by the state Legislature...

The institute is a think tank financially supported by the conservative Bradley Foundation."

More via Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel and the Trouble With Tenure report.