August 2010

A reading reform initiative succeeded in increasing reading skills, even though its administrative support was let go.

A five-year reform effort in San Diego schools succeeded in raising literacy levels for lagging elementary and middle school students by increasing the amount of time spent on reading, the authors find. Among the other ingredients for success: professional development for teachers, a comprehensive vision and execution by the school district—and considerable patience in waiting for results.

The Educated Guess says

It turns out that it was more successful in improving reading skills of elementary and middle school students than acknowledged at the time, though not in high school, where it was largely a failure.

In elementary and high school, more time helped. Not in high school. I wonder why not. Here’s one guess:

In elementary schools, an extended year for lowest achieving “focus schools” also brought up scores significantly. Less effective was an extended day reading program, in which first through ninth grade students lagging behind their peers were assigned three 90-minute periods each week of supervised reading before or after school.

But what worked in middle and elementary schools backfired in high school, with students assigned to double and triple length classes actually regressing in their scores. Betts and others speculated that high school students felt stigmatized or that some high school English teachers, used to teaching literature, disliked remediation instruction.

So what did they decide about it?

Betts and others concluded that extra classroom time for students who are behind in reading, combined with teacher training “can lead to meaningful gains in literacy.” An extended school year in middle school for students who are behind showed the most promise. The failure of the programs to take root in high school underscored the value of intensive intervention in elementary and middle school. “Early intervention to aid students who lag behind in reading might be far more effective than intervention in high school,” the study concluded.

I wonder what that means for college-level developmental reading.

I doubt it means the same thing, because students learning to read in college WANT to know how to read. It may take longer though, since younger students learn faster than older students.

Found because I read Joanne Jacobs on a regular basis.

CCDean, a couple of weeks ago, had an article on ranks in academia.

A ft instructor wrote in about what he/she is called and how that title is viewed by the academic community at large.

CCDean wrote:

DIfferent systems use different criteria and definitions for names, but the names themselves don’t change much. This leads to no end of confusion.

It starts with something as simple as “professor.” Much of the unhappiness in the profession, I think, stems from people having very different ideas of what a “professor” is. Is a “professor” a researcher with graduate assistants who occasionally gives an auditorium lecture, or a teacher who relies on group discussion, or a learning coach who helps students navigate self-paced learning modules? I’ve seen it carry each of those meanings and many more, but if you think it means the first and you get hired somewhere that believes it means the third, I foresee heartache.

I’m noted as a professor on my book blurb. I was really worried when I saw it. Then I decided that, for the public who will most likely be reading the book, professor = college teacher.

Then it turns out my college has no tenure and no ranks. So everyone is a professor. Even me, the newly minted employee.

I was also a professor at one of my adjunct colleges. Everyone was one.

There are some interesting tales of names/ranks both in the article itself and in the comments.

Assistant Village Idiot looks at education from a biological perspective.

She begins:

In evolutionary biology, there is a concept of conspicuous display of resources, even wasting resources (especially among males), to advertise that one has good and to spare.

In the next paragraph she applies that to post-secondary education:

I wonder if something similar hasn’t been increasingly at work in liberal arts college education.

Then she makes a point that, I think, shows the naivete of youth:

On an individual level, a degree one finds enjoyable, rather than one that is geared toward income, announces that the bearer has such talent that they can find remunerative work anyway.

In this economy, we are finding that this assumption is simply untrue. Yes, in the 70s people could find jobs outside of their educational niche. That is no longer commonly true. Yes, there are a few people who have done that. By and large, though, people are working in what they were educated in. That’s a problem when you have lots of English majors and too few nurses.

Perhaps the issue isn’t one of naivete of youth, but of lack of awareness on the parts of those who are steering the young. What do we who came of age in the 70s say to the entering freshman of the oughts or teens to give them an accurate sense of the struggle the workplace can become?

Community College Spotlight discusses Florida’s CCs giving BAs out.

The article on Inside Higher Ed begins:

When the first community colleges sought permission to offer four-year degrees, they generally said that it would only be one or two programs — nothing dramatic. But in Florida, where the community college baccalaureate movement is strongest, community colleges now offer more than 100 four-year degrees, and the figure could be about to jump significantly.

Though a handful of Florida community colleges had won approval to offer select four-year degrees around 2001, the rest of the state took hold of the idea in 2008…

One sentence in the commentary at CC Spotlight was eye-catching in a not-great way.

Community colleges’ four-year degree programs are attracting older students and minority students, making them less of a threat to four-year institutions.

“[T]hem” here is clearly intended to mean the degree programs. However, since the referent comes after older and minority students, it seems to be those that the four-year school won’t have to deal with.

And, honestly, do you want only 18 year olds who are white or Asian (who are minorities but do not count as minorities for schools because they go to college in such high numbers–which is probably another argument for culture rather than race) to be in a freshman class?

By putting forth the idea that minorities and older students go to CCs we are saying non-minorities and younger students go to 4-yr colleges. Is this what we want? An academic divide?

Teachers at CCs already get less respect in academia than teachers at 4-yr schools. Students taking classes at CCs are already seen as less prepared.

Do we really want to add that stigma to most of our minorities and older students?

It’s something that is worth thinking about. And doing something about.

Working-Class Perspectives has an interesting post on community colleges.

Julie Garza-Withers is wondering whether the community college is the right place for working-class students.

The research around student success suggests that community colleges do not challenge students and have low expectations. In the status hierarchy of higher ed, this means community college classes are perceived as “easier,” or less academically rigorous. Moreover, research shows that students who transfer from community colleges have frighteningly low graduation rates from four-year schools — an average of just 36% complete a four-year degree within 6 years. The analysis implies that the low graduation rate might be because community colleges do not foster cultures of achievement and that students do not feel motivated to succeed.

Having said that, however, she goes on to make some interesting and credible arguments for CCs being the right place for working-class students.

Her points include different levels of rigor, which allows for “catching up,” teaching over scholarship, which explains the lack of respect CC teachers have in the eyes of academe, and the cost of CCs.

It’s an interesting and thoughtful article and well worth reading.

First, before I begin, I will say that had I not received a full-time offer this year, I would not have paid much attention to Community College Dean’s discussion of what it means to be a professor with an overload. Does it impact adjuncts? Should we care? Does it impact the full-timer’s work? These are some of the questions CCDean asks.

The reason I now find it relevant is that I will be teaching an overload this fall. It is not by choice. My four-hour classes only count as 3.75 and my options are to take an underload, which will not be possible because the alternative assignments are all already taken, or an overload.

Truthfully, I don’t want an overload. I’m new at the school and I’ll be learning at least as much as most freshmen students, though hopefully not the same things! I really am expecting to be too busy to teach an overload. But since I have to teach it, I guess some of that learning will be put off.

I also don’t want an overload because they are going to pay me for it as an adjunct. So my extra work will earn me an additional $1000. Not cool. I’d almost rather they took the $1000 from my annual pay and let me teach an underload. But that’s not an option.

This is the framework from which I came to CCDean’s discussion. His discussion isn’t really on that topic, per se. But it is an interesting tangential point.

Folks who teach overloads also tend to be less available for committee meetings, since they’re more likely to be in class at any given time. Others have to do more unpaid labor so they have time to do more paid labor. It doesn’t smell right, and it somewhat discredits the idea that full-timers should be paid more because of their college service. If they aren’t available to do that college service, what, exactly, are we paying for?

I think THAT is CCDean’s most significant point.

What are we paying ft’ers for?
1. Years of service. That explains one set of “steps” in the promotion and pay ranks.
2. Degrees. That explains the other set of “steps.”
3. Tenure. I don’t mean that in the academic sense, but in the real world sense. We are paying our ft’ers to be around for the long haul.
4. Committee service. I think that’s a low ranking point. See the academic tenure rules for clear proof of that.
5. Name recognition. As an ft’er I am supposed to get my college’s name “out there.” I am supposed to publish and present and let people see that the ft faculty at MyCC is active, professional, and amazing.

That’s what I think they are paying for.

Name Recognition
Having been an adjunct who gave three different colleges Name Recognition on 19 publications and 29 presentations, I think that while Name Recognition is important, it is not limited to ft faculty. In fact, I think it is sometimes, at least in CCs, limited to adjunct faculty.

At CC1, the home of my longest tenure (length) as an adjunct, I sent the CFP for the state English conference to all the tt professors. No tt profs applied, only adjuncts did.

So I am not sure that, in the CCs at least, name recognition is usually that important.

HOWEVER, I also know that I lost my bid for a ft position at MyCC last year because I didn’t have as many publications as another candidate.

So, at least in this financial climate, it is important to the adjuncts who want to get tt jobs.

Years served
At least in my systems (four), no one was paid extra for having been a long-time adjunct. I know that some systems do, but I think these are rare. So we pay twenty-year veterans and newbies out of their grad classes the same amount.

We OUGHT to pay them based on seniority, but then we’d have to pay them more. Most of the point of adjuncts is to help the administration balance a precarious budget.

Degrees
Also in my systems, there was no additional pay for advanced degrees. (See discussion above.)

Tenure
This is what I think is the most important reason to pay ft’ers.

We pay ft’ers so that the courses we need taught and want taught will be taught. I dropped three schools and five courses last week, when I got the offer from my college. Five classes, including four hard-to-staff classes, will go begging. They’ll find someone, I am sure. But it won’t be someone who is qualified to do the work. Or at least it won’t be as qualified as I am.

That’s not bragging. That’s truth. I taught those courses BECAUSE they are hard to staff. I have the skills and it’s why I had the classes.

Ft’ers rarely leave a position two weeks before classes start. They don’t do that because they have ft pay.

Yes, we pay adjuncts squat so that we can keep the bills of the college down. I know that. But we pay the ft’ers a living wage so that we can keep the dropped courses down.

Committee Service
CCDean seemed to think this was the most important thing that differentiated ft’ers from adjuncts. I have never seen a CC where this mattered though. No one got ranks, promotions, tenure, or raises based on committee service.

You reward what you value.

Colleges do not reward committee service.

Is it any wonder that ft’ers are willing to do something to get out of a null advantage?

A book review at The New Republic has an interesting take on a significant question.

This book is depressing because it is so persuasive. There is a school of thought in America which argues that the government must be the main force that provides help to the black community. This shibboleth is predicated upon another one: that such government efforts will make a serious difference in disparities between blacks and whites. Amy Wax not only argues that such efforts have failed, she also suggests that such efforts cannot bring equality, and therefore must be abandoned. Wax identifies the illusion that mars American thinking on this subject as the myth of reverse causation—that if racism was the cause of a problem, then eliminating racism will solve it. If only this were true. But it isn’t true: racism can set in motion cultural patterns that take on a life of their own.

Wax appeals to a parable in which a pedestrian is run over by a truck and must learn to walk again. The truck driver pays the pedestrian’s medical bills, but the only way the pedestrian will walk again is through his own efforts. The pedestrian may insist that the driver do more, that justice has not occurred until the driver has himself made the pedestrian learn to walk again. But the sad fact is that justice, under this analysis, is impossible. The legal theory about remedies, Wax points out, grapples with this inconvenience—and the history of the descendants of African slaves, no matter how horrific, cannot upend its implacable logic. As she puts it, “That blacks did not, in an important sense, cause their current predicament does not preclude charging them with alleviating it if nothing else will work.”

Wax is well aware that past discrimination created black-white disparities in education, wealth, and employment.

The book being reviewed is not a diatribe against blacks. It is a discussion of the implications of culture as more significant than the implications of race.

This is something I have seen touched on before, particularly in Ruby Payne’s work, discussed here, for example.

I found the book review because I read Right on the Left Coast regularly.

How do you choose what readings to assign? Rarely does anyone assign all the readings in the English book. Imagine the Norton Anthology (all 4500 pgs of it) assigned in a sophomore lit class. Not likely.

So, how do you choose readings to assign?

I was going through the new book for my Developmental Writing class. There are 75 possible readings. I couldn’t read them all, obviously. But how did I choose?

Some are too sad. No. If you’ve read the blog for long, you know how I feel about sad endings. I just don’t like them. But I understand that sometimes you must read sad things. See Teaching Literature: Sad vs Funny for how I introduce this topic to my students.

Some are too vulgar. No. I do not feel able to present this reading without offending someone. I am going to stay away from it. It might make for good discussion, but I am not going to have the students read it.

Others, there is vulgarity, but for a point. One speaks of a woman showing off her pubic hair to an older woman as a way of embarrassing the old woman. I’m going to read that one. I think the students will be interested in the older etiquette and it will allow us to talk about social mores and how they differ among cultural groups.

Some I choose because they talk about information the students might not know.

Some because I know other information that might make them even more interesting.

It’s an interesting experience, reading through a text to choose the assigned readings.

In an article on teaching without technology, there was an interesting metaphor for teaching.

“I see teaching as more of an art, and a relationship thing,” said Mr. James. After we talked it out for a while, he settled on the metaphor of a carpenter’s workshop to replace that of a doctor’s clinic: “Let’s say I want to get a really well-made table. I might go to someone who knows the old-style way of making a table, and I’m willing to pay a lot for that,” is how he put it. By extension, tech-based learning feels more like IKEA—a lower-price, build-it-yourself option.

I like that idea. I’m an old-fashioned artisan rather than a purveyor of boxed creations.