Links: education & labor news

Not all or just about #highered per se but all relevant... even the accompanying illustration but you'll have to read to the end to learn why.

 

• Cut the pious baloney! about reactions to NLRB recess appointments (finally!)
  
• Jeff Bryant writes about Why accountants should not run schools (or set education policy)
  
• Disrupt Education (stay informed about changes coming whether you like them or not): Opening the Language Learning Classroom to the World 
  
• Bob Samuels takes apart Yudoff's defensive mythbusting about UC
  
• Best of the Ed Blogs: Misunderstanding & Misrepresenting the “Costs” & “Economics” of Online Learning
  
• Jonathon Rees at More or Less Bunk writes about Why there is no history department at the University of Phoenix
  

• Leveling the field: What I learned from for-profit education by Christopher Beha. Online, mostly vocational education certainly doesn't sound fun in this article from Harper's.
  
• Internet Times: Zany times in the for-profit college business
  
• Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice (K-12)writes, "Using test scores to evaluate and pay teachers (if you don't think that's coming to a community college near you, I can offer you a great deal on some swamp property): federal officials pushing states and districts to use test scores to determine teaching effectiveness have not done due diligence. And due diligence is what each of us expect of our top decision-makers. ¶ Consider the British experiment called “Payment for Results” in late-19th century England when Parliament legislated that teachers would be paid on the basis of how many of their students passed tests  (Rapple, Payment for Results ). In 1887, yes, 1887, one school principal saw the consequences and said: a teacher knows that his whole professional status depends on the results he produces and he really is turned into a machine for producing those results; that is, I think, unaccompanied by any substantial gain to the whole cause of education. (Lyle Jones citing G. Sutherland, Policy-making in Elementary Education 1870-1897 (London:Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 68).
• ‘Union Stooges?’ The NLRB Is No Panacea for Workers, by Chris Machanoff: Three New Year appointments to the National Labor Relations Board assure that it will continue to operate. But while unions are celebrating the NLRB’s ability to keep the lights on, along with a handful of union-supportive decisions by the board, the hard fact is that even when the NLRB is operational, it doesn’t work for workers. 
• “1, 2, 3, 4…Can I have a little more?” from More or Less Bunk by Jonathan Rees (and citing us, thank you very much, as well as the following, new add to the overflowing reader even if too late for most of us) 
• 76. There is a culture of fear from 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School. Why? Why are academics—of all people—afraid of writing (and speaking) honestly about their profession? Why do so many of those who do express themselves feel compelled to do so anonymously? The answer lies in the staggering power imbalance between academics and the people who employ them. 
• I've always had a weakness for Rube Goldberg devices. Larry Ferlazzo's Best Resources for Learning about Rube Goldberg Machines. Irrelevant? On the other hand, higher education either increasingly resembles one or would be vastly improved if it did.

Posted via email from Academentia