Who Ruined the Humanities?

From Lee Siegel, at WSJ:

When people wax plaintive about the fate of the humanities, they talk, in particular, about the slow extinction of English majors. Never mind that the preponderance of English majors go into other fields, such as law or advertising, and that students who don't major in English can still take literature courses. In the current alarming view, large numbers of people devoting four years mostly to studying novels, poems and plays are all that stand between us and sociocultural nightfall.

The remarkably insignificant fact that, a half-century ago, 14% of the undergraduate population majored in the humanities (mostly in literature, but also in art, philosophy, history, classics and religion) as opposed to 7% today has given rise to grave reflections on the nature and purpose of an education in the liberal arts.

Such ruminations always come to the same conclusion: We are told that the lack of a formal education, mostly in literature, leads to numerous pernicious personal conditions, such as the inability to think critically, to write clearly, to empathize with other people, to be curious about other people and places, to engage with great literature after graduation, to recognize truth, beauty and goodness.

These solemn anxieties are grand, lofty, civic-minded, admirably virtuous and virtuously admirable. They are also a sentimental fantasy...

Continue reading.

A lovable essay!

Benji Backer, 15-Year-Old at Appleton North High School in Wisconsin, Harassed by Teachers for Conservative Views

Being around a public community college with a far-left teachers union and loads of socialists professors, I can tell you what young conservatives face if they dissent from the progressive party line.

An interview with Megyn Kelly. His worst teacher was in English, where he was being hassled week after week, apparently. English? These union hacks are pathetic. Here's his essay: "15 Year Old Wisconsin Conservative Meets Bullying From Teachers."

Also at the Green Bay Press Gazette, "Appleton teen claims teachers harassed him over politics."

Arming Liberal Socialist Indoctrinators

A rare progressive radical who's not hiding his murderous ideology:

To be clear: Schoolteachers are liberal socialist indoctrinators who are also probably feminists who hate America.Let's arm them.

— Joe Faina (@faination) December 18, 2012

The Left-Wing Stranglehold on Academia

From Mark Bauerlein, at the Weekly Standard, "Forbidden City."

Read it at the link.

Back From the Conference

I attended a political science conference today at the Newport Beach Hyatt Regency. Here's my tweet from the event this morning.

At the Hyatt Newport Beach, for a political science teaching conference. #StandWithRand twitter.com/AmPowerBlog/st…

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) March 8, 2013

The book I'm using is published by Cengage Learning, the same folks who flew me out to North Carolina.

Here's Some Alessandra Ambrosio Bikini Pics to Hold You Over

I'm conferencing in Newport Beach today with my book publisher, again. Posting will be light until later tonight.

Meanwhile, at London's Daily Mail, "A true professional! Alessandra Ambrosio braves the wintry beach for bikini photo shoot."

'Dr. Douglas is a bit of a drag as a professor. He does not provide study guides for the test which means you must study the book VERY well...'

I cribbed the title from the first entry at my Rate My Professors profile:

Loved the class material and enjoyed reading the book. However, Dr. Douglas is a bit of a drag as a professor. He does not provide study guides for the test which means you must study the book VERY well. Not a lot of class work, and no homework. I would recommend you take someone else if you are a polsc major or wish to gain from the course.

I haven't checked the evaluations over there in a couple of years. They're largely useless from the instructor's perspective. (Or at least from my perspective.) And they have no impact on me professionally, so I ignore them. I've always thought students are poorly equipped to evaluate the quality of teaching, and not just because they have a vested interest in a good grade. Students don't have training in pedagogy and most of them haven't the foggiest idea of what constitutes excellent instruction. As for the student's evaluation above, I'm sorta tickled by that review. Sure, the student didn't like my class, but only because I didn't make it easy for her. I made her read the book "VERY" well, which is exactly as planned. That the student thoroughly enjoyed the material is only added positive feedback. Moreover, I do provide study guides --- just not the photocopied handouts that many faculty members provide to students. My class textbook (which the student enjoyed) comes with a tremendously helpful companion website that features online practice tests, glossaries of all the key terms and concepts, electronic flashcards and fill-in-the-blank exercises, problem simulations based on the readings, and more. Students have access to the material. It's up to them to make use of it. I don't spoon feed, and for a lot of students, that makes me a "poor quality" instructor.

C'est la vie.

What got me going on this is Janice Fiamengo's piece at PJ Media, "How Well Does ‘Rate My Professors’ Rate?"

It doesn't rate very well, obviously, but let's hear it from Professor Fiamengo:

No one, likely, will be surprised to discover that students are critical of instructors who have a high standard and mark them down when they fail to reach it: “A sweet person who seems to really care about her students,” runs a typical comment attached to an “Average Quality” ranking, “but don’t expect an A, even if your [sic] sure you aced the test.” Statistical researcher Valen Johnson has demonstrated in Grade Inflation: A Crisis in College Education (2003) that student responses to their university experience have been corrupted by an entitlement mentality about grades. Because students tend to excuse poor performance by pointing to external factors, they often blame their teachers when marks are lower than expected — when, as one student wrote on the site, they are “completely blindsided by a bad grade.” The problem is acute in the grade-inflating Humanities disciplines, where an element of subjectivity is always present and where one instructor’s decision to give higher marks than the material deserves — whether from pedagogical principle or to grease the wheels of a happy classroom — creates pressure on other instructors to do the same, and leads to negative evaluations of those who will not. As even a cursory perusal of Rate My Professors uncovers, “Very hard marker” almost always equates to a “Poor Quality” evaluation. This fact alone, as Johnson concludes and as many thoughtful observers can attest, makes teacher evaluations, which are widely used as a ranking method in the modern university, next to meaningless.

In such a context, it might seem that the most valuable commendations are those — and they are certainly the most heartening — that warn against the professor’s difficulty or dryness while still recommending him or her. “Sure, he’s tough, even mean. But he is also brilliant.” “You’ll find no great excitement in her lecture room, but you will have the chance to hear tremendously intelligent and thoughtful ideas on life and literature that will stay with you outside the classroom.” For a student to find a professor’s teaching valuable despite the instructor’s refusal to provide esteem-boosting marks or a jazzy presentation speaks to some other quality that has touched the student. But what is the quality, exactly? Can it be distinguished from personal charm, winsomeness, superficial articulateness, or an engrossing manner? Can the vast majority of students tell if an instructor actually knows his subject or has wisdom to impart?

Not very likely. Given that a significant percentage of students, according to a recent National Post article based on a study by a Memorial University (Newfoundland) professor, cannot locate the continent of Africa on a world map or even identify the Atlantic Ocean, how can they possibly locate their professors on the scale of intelligence and knowledge? Too frequently, the most enthusiastic declarations about an instructor’s “amazing lectures” and “brilliance” also dwell on the sexy looks and other forms of personal appeal that make him or her so easy to listen to. “Never worked so hard for an A. Loved the material, and his lectures were stimulating and hilarious. He’s hot too, great outfits.”

This, really, is what Rate My Professors most consistently highlights, that physical attractiveness, a magnetic style, and the ability to relate good stories, deliver witty one-liners, or toss off nuggets of seeming profundity (with today’s short attention spans, they can only be nuggets, usually liberally interspersed with jokes, chitchat, and sentimental fluff) have come to define “good teaching” — and make it nearly indistinguishable from a diverting performance — for the majority of students. In the main, such teaching does not meet the standard that David Solway defined in Education Lost (1989), where he analyzed education as a performative co-encounter in which the teacher “performs” the “initiating presence” and the student “impersonates his ideal or projected self” in a complex drama taking full account of the “prolonged” and often “agonistic” process of learning.

That sounds about right, but it's nothing new to me. Websites like RateMyProfessors.com can be actually painful for instructors who're worried about their evaluations. Rumor has it that administrators read the evaluations --- a horrifying thought in light of the criticisms mentioned above. But again, I personally don't care. But part-timers or probationary faculty members probably check their ratings --- I did --- because some of the same kind of comments are submitted by students on the college-sponsored teaching evaluations that are required periodically. So this stuff matters. (Note that RateMyProfessors can be gameed easily and legitimately, simply by asking the students who do well in classes, the ones who've developed relationships with their instructors, to post their own evaluations. Indeed, the RateMyProfessors feedback page suggests just that to instructors who're unhappy with their rankings.)

In any case, here's the remainder of my ratings from the front page:

Talks a lot about current events during class, sometimes leaves little time for lecture. Only writes titles of sections on board. Writing notes is useless. Have to read book. Grade consist of 5 tests and one report.

*****

I wish Dr. D would give more time to discuss the lesson than talk about current events. And I wish that he will give study guides, so that the students will know what he expects from them. Dr. D is a nice professor, though.

*****

GOOD TEACHER. SHOW UP TO CLASS, TAKE NOTES, PAY ATTENTION, AND YOU SHOULD BE FINE.

*****

He is a very good teacher. You must attend class because he notices and will call you out on it. There's two books required for this class. He only goes over one and the other you have to read on your own. He is available during office hours and tells you where your [sic] at and what you need to do to pass the class.

And by the way, the student rankings are 2 "poor quality," 1 "average quality," and 2 "good quality" --- which is pretty interesting, quite balanced, actually, and useful! The students here are expressing straight evaluations rather than trying to attack the professor and harm his ratings in revenge for a poor grade (something that's pretty common with this kind of thing).

In any case, there's still more at PJ Media, at the link.

LAUSD's John Deasy Wants Test Scores to Count for 30 Percent of Teacher Evaluations

He'll be firing a lot of teachers. Basing teacher evaluations on student performance blames teachers for student learning problems over which they have little control.

At LAT, "Deasy wants 30% of teacher evaluations based on test scores":

L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy announced Friday that as much as 30% of a teacher's evaluation will be based on student test scores, setting off more contention in the nation's second-largest school system in the weeks before a critical Board of Education election.

Leaders of the teachers union have insisted that there should be no fixed percentage or expectation for how much standardized tests should count — and that test results should serve almost entirely as just one measure to improve instruction. Deasy, in contrast, has insisted that test scores should play a significant role in a teacher's evaluation and that poor scores could contribute directly to dismissal.

In a Friday memo explaining the evaluation process, Deasy set 30% as the goal and the maximum for how much test scores and other data should count.

In an interview, he emphasized that the underlying thrust is to develop an evaluation that improves the teaching corps and that data is part of the effort.

"The public has been demanding a better evaluation system for at least a decade. And teachers have repeatedly said to me what they need is a balanced way forward to help them get better and help them be accountable," Deasy said. "We do this for students every day. Now it's time to do this for teachers."

Deasy also reiterated that test scores would not be a "primary or controlling" factor in an evaluation, in keeping with the language of an agreement reached in December between L.A. Unified and its teachers union. Classroom observations and other factors also are part of the evaluation process.

But United Teachers Los Angeles President Warren Fletcher expressed immediate concern about Deasy's move. During negotiations, he said, the superintendent had proposed allotting 30% to test scores but the union rejected the plan. Deasy then pulled the idea off the table, which allowed the two sides to come to an agreement, Fletcher said. Teachers approved the pact last month.

"To see this percentage now being floated again is unacceptable," the union said in a statement.

Fletcher described the pact as allowing flexibility for principals, in collaboration with teachers, first to set individual goals and then to look at various measures to determine student achievement and overall teacher performance.

"The superintendent doesn't get to sign binding agreements and then pretend they're not binding," Fletcher said.

I couldn't care less about these union hacks, but the district will only punish teachers for students who refuse to learn, who live in disfunctional families, and who are influenced by the norms of hip-hop gang-bang culture 100 times more than the long lost culture of scholarly commitment.

More at that top link.

Arrest of Robert Pimentel, Former Elementary School Teacher, Revives Debate on Firing Criminal Educators

Update on this utterly obscene travesty of decency.

At the Wall Street Journal, "L.A. Arrest Revives Effort to Ease Firing of Teachers":

LOS ANGELES—The arrest of a Los Angeles teacher suspected of molesting 20 children is jump-starting demand for legislation that would make it easier to fire California teachers accused of abusing students and deny them lifetime medical and dental benefits.

Robert Pimentel, who was arrested Wednesday, is entitled to collect a pension and lifetime medical benefits because he resigned last March before officials could fire him, amid allegations that he had improperly touched a student, said Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy.

Prosecutors charged Mr. Pimentel with abusing 12 girls between 2002 and 2012, according to a criminal complaint. Mr. Pimentel began teaching at George De La Torre Jr. Elementary School in 2007, but he worked for the district on and off since 1974.

At his arraignment in a Long Beach, Calif., courthouse Thursday, Mr. Pimentel pleaded not guilty to the charges. He is being held on $12 million bail.

Mr. Pimentel's lawyer, Richard Knickerbocker, said his client denies all the allegations and didn't molest any students. He said the police "were basically soliciting people to make complaints," and that Mr. Pimentel's actions were misinterpreted. Mr. Knickerbocker said, in one instance, after a student "did a very fine job, he hugged her and kissed her on the forehead and they take that as something that's nefarious."

The case is likely to reignite the debate over a proposed state law that would streamline the process for firing teachers and school administrators who have engaged in sex, violence or drug offenses with students. The bill doesn't specifically address pensions or benefits, but a local district has the power to suspend medical and dental benefits if a teacher is fired, Mr. Deasy said.

The bill was introduced last year by Democratic state Sen. Alex Padilla as SB 1530, but was killed in a committee.

Mr. Padilla reintroduced the bill in December as SB 10. It would allow school districts to suspend without pay teachers accused of egregious conduct, and would allow local school boards to make the final decision about dismissal—as opposed to a three-person committee that includes two teachers and a judge.

A former principal who the district says failed to report the alleged abuse when she was first made aware of allegations against Mr. Pimentel four years ago is also entitled to her pension and benefits because she resigned before she could be fired.

"They get their pensions and benefits for life, and that absolutely needs to be addressed in the law," Mr. Deasy said.

Yeah, it's great that the arrest "revives" the debate, but I doubt much will change as long as CTA has Sacramento's in its pocket. Remember from last year, "California bill on teachers accused of sex crimes fails."

More at London's Daily Mail, "California teacher 'sexually abused TWENTY elementary students and one adult'."

Modern Workplace Distractions

These are office and work-station distractions. Things are a little different in my profession. In the classroom much of my job is working to minimize distractions, keeping students on task. The technology is everywhere. Students must put it away or you'll have multitasking nightmares.

But see the Wall Street Journal, "Workplace Distractions: Here's Why You Won't Finish This Article":

In the few minutes it takes to read this article, chances are you'll pause to check your phone, answer a text, switch to your desktop to read an email from the boss's assistant, or glance at the Facebook FB -1.43% or Twitter messages popping up in the corner of your screen. Off-screen, in your open-plan office, crosstalk about a colleague's preschooler might lure you away, or a co-worker may stop by your desk for a quick question.

And bosses wonder why it is tough to get any work done.

Distraction at the office is hardly new, but as screens multiply and managers push frazzled workers to do more with less, companies say the problem is worsening and is affecting business.

While some firms make noises about workers wasting time on the Web, companies are realizing the problem is partly their own fault.

Even though digital technology has led to significant productivity increases, the modern workday seems custom-built to destroy individual focus. Open-plan offices and an emphasis on collaborative work leave workers with little insulation from colleagues' chatter. A ceaseless tide of meetings and internal emails means that workers increasingly scramble to get their "real work" done on the margins, early in the morning or late in the evening. And the tempting lure of social-networking streams and status updates make it easy for workers to interrupt themselves.

"It is an epidemic," says Lacy Roberson, a director of learning and organizational development at eBay Inc. EBAY -0.25% At most companies, it's a struggle "to get work done on a daily basis, with all these things coming at you," she says.

Office workers are interrupted—or self-interrupt—roughly every three minutes, academic studies have found, with numerous distractions coming in both digital and human forms. Once thrown off track, it can take some 23 minutes for a worker to return to the original task, says Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, who studies digital distraction.

Companies are experimenting with strategies to keep workers focused. Some are limiting internal emails—with one company moving to ban them entirely—while others are reducing the number of projects workers can tackle at a time.

Last year, Jamey Jacobs, a divisional vice president at Abbott Vascular, a unit of health-care company Abbott Laboratories, ABT -0.24% learned that his 200 employees had grown stressed trying to squeeze in more heads-down, focused work amid the daily thrum of email and meetings.

"It became personally frustrating that they were not getting the things they wanted to get done," he says. At meetings, attendees were often checking email, trying to multitask and in the process obliterating their focus.

Part of the solution for Mr. Jacobs's team was that oft-forgotten piece of office technology: the telephone.

Mr. Jacobs and productivity consultant Daniel Markovitz found that employees communicated almost entirely over email, whether the matter was mundane, such as cake in the break room, or urgent, like an equipment issue.

The pair instructed workers to let the importance and complexity of their message dictate whether to use cellphones, office phones or email. Truly urgent messages and complex issues merited phone calls or in-person conversations, while email was reserved for messages that could wait.

Continue reading.

Michelle Malkin Slams Ed Asner and California Federation of Teachers

Michelle's positively indignant:

And previously, "Teachers' Union Propaganda Video Shows 'Rich People' Urinating on the 'Poor'."

'Socialism' is Merriam-Webster's Top Word for 2012

A news clip from CBS News This Morning, "Merriam-Webster's top ten words of 2012."

We have a socialist president leading a morally bankrupt collectivist party that took 52 percent of the electorate last month, so it's no surprise folks are saying WTF's now blindsiding the country. Suck it up, idiot Americans. You voted for these Marxist monsters. The bills are just now starting to come due. It ain't gonna be pretty.

PREVIOUSLY:

* "Teachers' Union Propaganda Video Shows 'Rich People' Urinating on the 'Poor'."

* "Marxists Seek Destruction of the Individual, the Moral Foundation of Society."

* "Socialists Outline Democrats' Agenda for Next Two Years."

* "Rachel Maddow and the Left's Depraved Agenda of Unchecked Power Over the Individual."

* "Communist Party USA Pulls Out the Stops for Democrat Class Warfare."

* "Campaign for America's Future, Top Democrat Activist Group, Launches Class-Warfare Website."

Teachers' Union Propaganda Video Shows 'Rich People' Urinating on the 'Poor'

This is beyond stupid. It's pure evil, and indeed criminal if this clip's shown during public classroom hours at taxpayer expense.

At Exposing Liberal Lies, "Class Warfare Video from Teachers' Union."

Just when you think Big Labor could not sink any lower, they come out with something even more classless than you could imagine in your worst nightmares. Check out this latest teacher’s union video which features the ‘rich’ urinating on the ‘poor’.

The new video, produced by the California Federation of Teachers – which will actually be playing in some of California children’s classrooms, drums up the typical class warfare images we’ve come to expect from Big Labor.

“Tax the Rich: An Animated Fairy Tale,” written by CFT staffer Fred Glass and narrated by proud leftist actor (and 1 percenter) Ed Asner, advocates for higher taxes on the “rich” as the cure for government’s insatiable thirst for spending.

The video claims the rich got rich through tax cuts and tax loopholes and even tax evasion.

But when the 99 percent fought back, the “rich” apparently urinated on the “poor,” at least according to the video. What a classy way to frame an argument.

This indeed sinks to new levels. Outrageous isn't a strong enough word, but what's even more frustrating is how fundamentally stupid this is. Mindless. F-king. Drivel. But if there's been any doubt that American politics is now class warfare all the time, those have been blown to smithereens.

The world is a complicated place. A wide variety of factors is at play in any decent explanation of contemporary political economy, including changes in the industrial sector and the education system, as well as increasing instability in the housing and financial markets. To boil down the causal factors to a single variable ---- the rich seeking ever increasing profits ---- is to espouse a stupid fantasy world of extreme zero sum politics. This kind of propaganda that would be entirely at home among Soviet propagandists during the height of the cold war. It's even a bit frightening to consider how many young impressionable minds might be indoctrinated to these lies. And it's an historically sad commentary that this was produced by a California teachers' union, although not surprising, not surprising at all, considering the radicalization of the left during the Obama interregnum.

More at The Lonely Conservative, "Ed Asner Narrates Tax the Rich Propaganda Cartoon For California Teachers Union."

PREVIOUSLY:

* "Marxists Seek Destruction of the Individual, the Moral Foundation of Society."

* "Socialists Outline Democrats' Agenda for Next Two Years."

* "Rachel Maddow and the Left's Depraved Agenda of Unchecked Power Over the Individual."

* "Communist Party USA Pulls Out the Stops for Democrat Class Warfare."

* "Campaign for America's Future, Top Democrat Activist Group, Launches Class-Warfare Website."

Stop Paycheck Theft: Vote Yes on Proposition 32

From the letters to the editors, at the Los Angeles Times, "Letters: Prop. 32, unions and political giving":

Re "Prop. 32's real purpose," Column, Oct. 18

George Skelton calls Proposition 32, which would prohibit unions from making payroll deductions to raise money for political spending, a "self-serving sham." So should we continue to allow teachers unions to force their members to donate to their leaders' favorite political causes?

Why must my wife, a first-grade teacher, contribute to political causes she doesn't like? How would Skelton feel if The Times effectively forced him to support Mitt Romney via a paycheck deduction?

If unions want their members to give to certain causes, let them persuade the workers to do it. Forcing people to give to political causes they don't believe in runs contrary to the basic rules of a democracy.

I believe Proposition 32 would reduce the power of special interests and let candidates work for all Californians and not just for their donors. And I'm a dedicated Democrat.

Vince Scully
Long Beach

Get that? A "dedicated Democrat" and his union-member wife don't like big labor stealing their hard-earned dollars. Because that's what it is. If you have no choice about the matter, the unions are taking your money against your will. See also the recent editorial at the Orange County Register, "Editorial: Yes on Prop. 32 (unions)":

Anyone familiar with California politics knows that the most powerful forces, by far, in the state Capitol are the public-employee unions. Their clout was demonstrated this year when the California Teachers Association, the most powerful of them all, killed Senate Bill 1530, which would have made it easier to fire bad teachers for actions "that involve certain sex offenses, controlled-substance offenses or child abuse offenses."

SB1530 was not concocted by a conservative Republican, but by state Sen. Alex Padilla of Los Angeles, a liberal Democrat. The bill advanced after several cases of teacher abuse against children came to light, especially a disgusting scenario allegedly involving Los Angeles Unified School District teacher Mark Berndt. The bill passed overwhelmingly in the state Senate, 33-4. Then the CTA killed it in the Assembly Education Committee.

The episode illustrates what has happened since California public-employee unions were given collective bargaining rights in the 1970s by Gov. Jerry Brown. This occurred even though such stalwart liberal private-sector union partisans as President Franklin Roosevelt had warned that public-sector unionization would lead to too much union power and the loss of public trust in the government.

That is so nausea-induceing it's literally perverse. But that's what you get when you have the hard-left, socialist-backed teachers' unions as the most powerful political force in California. These thugs are literally bringing the state down low, morally, politically, and economically. This is how nations self-destruct. You get the image of the end of the republic right here in the once-great "Golden State."

PREVIOUSLY: "Long Beach Press-Telegram: Yes on 32."

Long Beach Press-Telegram: Yes on 32

I'm glad to see it.

"Endorsement: Yes on Proposition 32 -- Unions have inordinate amount of power in state politics":

To understand the need for Proposition 32, all a voter has to do is look at the the vast sums of cash pouring into the campaign against it. A total of more than $50 million has been donated to the "yes" and "no" campaigns. Of that, the vast majority has gone to fund advertising for the "no" side. And of that, most has come from unions representing California teachers and other public employees.

This is an example of the financial power that gives unions outsized political influence everywhere from election campaigns to the halls of the state Legislature and local city halls, too often resulting in laws that benefit union members over the interests of all Californians.

Now California voters have a chance to rein in that power. They should not miss the opportunity on Nov. 6. The editorial board urges passage of Proposition 32.

The measure would do three things: It would ban donations to state and local candidates by unions and corporations. It would ban the political use of money deducted from paychecks by unions or corporations. And it would ban government contractors from contributing to the campaigns of public officials who control the awarding of those contracts.

The measure's well-funded opponents complain that it would affect labor interests more than business interests -- because businesses don't use payroll deductions in the same way as unions, and because companies that aren't corporations are exempt from the proposition.

But the proponents don't pretend they're aiming for balance in the proposal. They want to curb the influence of unions over the decisions of state lawmakers, which has been out of balance for years.

That is a cause that this page has supported for a long time. We endorsed 2005's Proposition 75 and 1998's Proposition 226, which would have required unions to get individual members' permission before spending dues money on politics. (Those propositions lost by 8 percent and 6 percent, respectively.)

The arguments then are no less valid now.

Recent examples of Big Labor's influence in Sacramento include the power it has exerted over pension reform and prison issues. Another egregious example that arose this summer was a bill considered by the Assembly Education Committee to make it easier for school districts to fire teachers accused of terrible crimes involving sex, violence or drugs.

Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of Pacoima had introduced the bill in the wake of several child sex-abuse cases in Los Angeles schools. The bill passed the Senate with bipartisan support. It had popular support.

But the California Teachers Association bused in members to confront the key Assembly committee, underscoring its arguments for protecting the job security of teachers with a not-so-subtle reminder of the union's 800-pound-gorilla influence. Enough committee members voted against the bill to kill it.

They bused in thugs. That's what they always do.

More at the link.

Labor Union Conflict-of-Interest Allegations Against Blue Shield of California

More union corruption, the freakin' commie thugs.

At LAT, "Blue Shield's union ties raise concerns about conflicts":

At a time when public-sector unions across the country are fighting to hold on to generous retirement and health benefits, one of the loudest voices standing up for their rights is Dave Low.

A longtime labor activist, Low carries considerable clout as executive director of the California School Employees Assn., a 215,000-member union that represents bus drivers, custodians and other school workers. He also leads a broader group of 1.5 million government employees, including firefighters, police and teachers, called Californians for Health Care and Retirement Security.

But Low had another job as well until recently. He was a consultant for Blue Shield of California, which has secured lucrative health insurance contracts that cover many of the same public workers that Low represents. His contract shows he was to be paid up to $125,000 a year for his work, which went from 2004 until Aug. 31.

Low isn't the only person with union ties pulling double duty for Blue Shield. One of the insurance company's senior executives also works as a lobbyist for the Service Employees International Union, which represents nearly 300,000 government workers statewide.

Experts say those close ties between Blue Shield and key labor unions may give the nonprofit company undue influence over multimillion-dollar insurance contracts for public employees. It's common in California for a joint panel of labor and management officials to pick the winning insurance bidders and set many of the terms.

"This raises red flags about conflicts of interest and self-dealing," said Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor who studies public corruption. "It really starts to feel offensive when the public money at stake is so huge."

A spokesman for the school union said it had approved of Low's contract with Blue Shield, and Low said he always put the interests of the union ahead of the insurer.

Blue Shield and Low said there was nothing inappropriate about their relationship and that they've done nothing illegal or unethical. After The Times began asking questions about their relationship, the company ended Low's contract Aug. 31.

Public employee benefits are coming under increasing scrutiny as municipalities, school districts and state governments face severe fiscal pressures and debates over what they can afford to offer rank-and-file workers. Health insurers compete vigorously for public-sector contracts because governments still provide some of the richest benefits among employers.

One of the biggest prizes for any company is a contract with the California Public Employees' Retirement System, the country's third-largest healthcare buyer after the federal government and General Motors Co. It spends $7 billion annually on medical care for active and retired state and local government workers.

CalPERS is a crucial customer for Blue Shield, which serves about 400,000 of CalPERS' 1.3 million members. Overall, the San Francisco company has about 3.3 million customers and nearly $10 billion in annual revenue.

In August, CalPERS began the process for choosing new healthcare companies, and it plans to award three-year contracts next year that take effect in 2014. Many of the industry's biggest players — UnitedHealth Group Inc., WellPoint Inc. and Aetna Inc. — are competing with Blue Shield.

Blue Shield's contracts with Low, obtained by The Times, show that it was paying him for information and advice about dealing with CalPERS' board members and agency staff. Low was hired to "advise and assist Blue Shield in gaining CalPERS board and constituent support for key initiatives and proposals" and to "assist Blue Shield in its efforts to expand interactions with key decision makers and influencers of other non-CalPERS contracting public agencies."

In an interview, Low described his duties differently. Low, 55, said his primary role with Blue Shield was to monitor its service to union members and to alert the company about any problems CalPERS board members shared with him. He said he wasn't privy to any inside information about healthcare contracts and that it wasn't his job "to sell their product."

"I will challenge anybody to come up with a single instance in which I acted in an unethical manner," he said. "I've never had inappropriate conversations or contacts with Blue Shield or CalPERS."

Tom Epstein, vice president of public affairs for Blue Shield, said the company employed Low to provide "strategic political consulting." Epstein declined to comment further on Low's work or his recent departure.

Yeah, the dude declined to comment alright. He'll be taking the fifth in no time.

More at the link.

Community College Crisis Slows Student Progress

From the letters to the editor, at the Los Angeles Times, "A college degree, one class at a time":

Budget cuts are forcing community colleges to eliminate courses. Yet they are still offering boxing and personal growth and development classes. Does anyone see a problem with this picture?

Jack Berens
Alta Loma

More letters at that top link, and see the Times' earlier report, "Faded Dreams: Community colleges' crisis slows students' progress to a crawl."

PREVIOUSLY: "Harsh Reality Hits California's Community Colleges."

Battle Over Unions Moves to California

At the New York Times, "California Is Latest Stage for Election Battle Over Unions":

LOS ANGELES — The battle to curb labor’s political clout has moved from Wisconsin to California, where wealthy conservatives are championing a ballot measure that would bar unions from donating to candidates. Labor leaders describe it as the starkest threat they have faced in a year of nationwide challenges to diminish their once-formidable power.

The measure, Proposition 32 on the November ballot, would prohibit both unions and corporations from making contributions, but the corporate provision is far less stringent than the one aimed at unions, analysts said. If passed, it would also bar unions from using automatic payroll deductions to raise money for political campaigns, a major source of labor’s political funding.

“This would be a big deal for unions if it passes since it would largely cut off their participation in state and local California politics,” said Daniel J. B. Mitchell, a professor emeritus at the U.C.L.A. Anderson School of Management.

The prospect that Proposition 32 could become law in an overwhelmingly Democratic state that has a rich history of union activism has alarmed labor leaders. A victory here, they argued, would pave the way for similar efforts across the nation.

“This is intended not to hobble us, this is intended to eviscerate us,” said Art Pulaski, the head of the California Labor Federation. “If they can do it in California, they can do it everywhere and anywhere.”

Well, it's good to see the thug union idiots quaking in their boots, although it's a poorly designed initiative, as I noted previously.

And see the Sacramento Bee as well, "More voters oppose Proposition 32 than support it, poll says."

Taking Community Out of Community Colleges

Well, looks like I've got a little series on the community colleges going now.

And here's a nice addition, from Bob Whiting at the Orange County Register, "Whiting: Community college budget cuts hit special classes":

There's a storm coming that we can't avoid, and with the death of wheelchair basketball at Cypress College the raindrops already are falling.

For years, community colleges have been just that – nearly as much about community as college. But as one expert tells me, tough decisions have to be made in a tough economic climate – and academics come first.

Yes, we'll see many programs at many two-year colleges canceled in the coming months. Still, it's a sad state when budgets are so tight that we can't afford to keep alive a 40-year wheelchair basketball team.

A team that includes people like John Watkins, a 29-year-old former Army sergeant paralyzed by a sniper's bullet.

We should be hearing story after story like this, as the bills come due in California's public education system. I mentioned previously that the state can't afford to serve everyone, and it's going to be painful to see how that plays out, and sad too.

More at the link, with photos.

Harsh Reality Hits California's Community Colleges

I shared my thoughts earlier on the declining support for Governor Jerry Brown's multi-billion dollar tax initiative on the November ballot. If the measure fails, the state's public education establishment's going to face another round of cuts, and they're starting to get down to the bone now. Long-cherished programs will be slashed --- and the long-employed faculty members who run them will be laid off. There's a lot of reasons for this, but one big one is poor leadership, especially among the state's Democrats who're beholden to the teachers' unions, and who haven't worked to rationalize state budgets and adapt to changing fiscal times. It's an old story that I've written about frequently.

In any case, here's this report from the Los Angeles Times from last week, "FADING DREAMS: California's community colleges staggering during hard times":

Marianet Tirado returned to Los Angeles Trade Tech community college this fall, optimistic that she would get into the classes she needs to transfer to a four-year university.

Of the courses she wanted, only two had space left when she registered in May. She enrolled in those and "crashed" others. In one of those cases, she lucked out when the professor teaching a political science class admitted additional students. But she couldn't get into a biology class because she was too far down on the waiting list.

If the math and English courses she needs aren't offered next spring, she may have to push back her plans to apply to San Francisco State, UCLA or USC.

Photos:  Community college conundrum

Her mother is puzzled that Tirado may spend three or four years at what is supposed to be a two-year college.

"Because that's what we think community college is," said Tirado, 24, a journalism major who lives in Watts. "It's hard to explain to my mom that I'm trying to go to school but the courses are not there."

This is the new reality for Tirado and about 2.4 million other students in the nation's largest community college system. The system is the workhorse of California's 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, which promised affordability, quality and access to all.

Graphic:  Tough times

In reality, the state's two-year colleges are buckling under the stress of funding cuts, increased demand and a weak record of student success.

The situation can be seen on all 112 campuses — students on long waiting lists, those who take years to graduate or transfer and others so frustrated that they drop out. Most of them enter ill-prepared for college-level work. Eighty-five percent need remedial English, 73% remedial math. Only about a third of remedial students transfer to a four-year school or graduate with a community college associate's degree.

"We're at the breaking point," said Jack Scott, who served as chancellor of the California Community College system for three years until retiring this month.

"It's like a nice-looking car you've been driving for several years: It looks shiny, but the engine is falling apart," said Eloy Ortiz Oakley, president of Long Beach City College. "The wheels fell off the Master Plan 20 or 30 years ago. We're finally feeling the results because we have enormous needs for our educational system to produce qualified workers, and we're playing catch-up now."

The consequences of not meeting those demands are huge: About 80% of firefighters and law enforcement officers and 70% of nurses embarked on their careers in community college. By some estimates, California will need 2.3 million more community college degree and certificate holders by 2025 to meet the demands of employers.

More at that top link.

And note that my college president, Eloy Oakley, is quoted at the article. He's a hatchet man, and his administration brought in another hatchet man, Dr. Gaither Loewenstein, to help cut loose faculty and staff to save enough money to keep up with paying the college's bloated administration costs and wasteful perks, like the rarely-attended athletic programs. That's not the image you'll hear from top college officials, but then again, they're the ones with decisive power over the narrative and policy outcomes. The Long Beach Post has an article on what's coming down the pipeline. See, "LBCC Says Program Cuts Necessary As State Resources Shift."

And back over at the Times, readers respond in the letters to the editor, "Letters: Community colleges -- in a fix, but fixable":

The community college situation gets tricky as the traditional enrollment increase during an economic downturn has gotten crushed by the state's budget woes. California's 2.4 million community college students are a state unto themselves.

The state's economic mismanagement, complete with upcoming pass-me-or-else propositions, is an albatross around the neck. Additionally, funding is intertwined with K-12 education, and community colleges get pushed to the bottom (see 2008's failed Proposition 92).

The biggest deficiency in the system is its inability to use the brainpower and helpfulness of the people at the individual schools in crafting solutions. Figure out a way to harness them and the system will thrive.

Mason Malugeon
Huntington Beach

*****

According to the article, 85% of community college students need remedial work in English, and 73% need remedial math. This is a reflection of the failure of California's K-12 schools.

Standardized tests should indicate a student's progress in math and English over time and should be used to evaluate teachers and students. Any system that uses test scores to evaluate teachers should also include a way to asses student motivation (which is partly determined by a teacher) and improvement over prior years' results.

Overlooking the K-12 system is terribly shortsighted.

Frank E. Drsata
Huntington Beach

There's another letter-writer at the link, but her solution is privatization, which is Utopian, for one thing, and is simply not going to fly in blue-state California.

But I've highlighted the key passages from the second and third letter-writers. Faculty don't have input in ultimate decisions on fiscal policies and program termination. And even in other matters of the curriculum, outside forces push trends on the colleges that might not be beneficial to students in the end (student learning outcomes and assessment is a fad, for example, drawn from the standardized test movement, that's being implemented at the class level at my college this term, and they'll have absolutely no impact on how well my students do in classes or how well or quickly they'll be able to complete their coursework).

And while I agree with the last writer, Mr. Drsata, in addition to the issues at the K-12 level, the overriding concern is --- and should be --- the culture of learning at the family level. School districts like Irvine Unified --- where my kids attend --- send large numbers of students to the top universities, and the schools routinely rank among the best in the state, largely because the demographics include not just more affluent families, but many from groups that place high emphasis on academic achievement. It's not politically correct to say it, but those large numbers of students needing remedial classes at the community colleges are predominantly blacks and Hispanics. Other groups, whites and Asians, also have remedial issues, but their numbers are much smaller. The student population's frankly almost half Hispanic at my college at this point. And the greater Long Beach area has a large number of students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. These trends will continue as long as socio-economic inequality remains a major dividing line in the larger American society. For folks to do well in this environment, it's going to be up to the individual families to pull themselves up, to pass on a culture of learning and achievement to their children, because public resources will be strained for years while the U.S. and state economies continue to pull out of the long Obama Depression. Families can't just blame the schools for poor outcomes.

I'll have more on these issues as we move forward. And I especially hope for good news to report, but again, if the tax initiative fails at the polls, it'll be more cuts up front. It could easily be a decade until the state gets back to a fiscal environment where massive public funding can be devoted to restoring the education system to the status and stature that it enjoyed in earlier decades. I think that's possible, but it will take rationalizing services, along with changing some of the entitlement elements that have driven public expectations in the past. The community colleges are the weakest institution in all of California's educational sectors, so some of the final changes will be greatest at this level. I don't know, but the state ultimately may not be able to guarantee everyone a place in community college classrooms. It's too bad, but it's not as if it's not happening already.