NAS Blog

Education reformers have generally been giving President Obama’s K-12 agenda, with its touted openness to charter schools and teacher assessment based on student performance, the benefit of the doubt.

But now the Wall Street Journal informs us that the final regulations of the Administration’s $4.38 billion “Race to the Top” initiative

allow states to use “multiple measures,” including peer reviews, to evaluate instructors. This means states that prohibit student test data from being used to measure a teacher’s performance may be eligible for the federal funds, even though the President clearly said that they wouldn’t be.

Nor are states any longer required to embrace charter schools to win a grant … states that prohibit charters can still receive Race to the Top dollars so long as they have other kinds of “innovative public schools.” That’s an invitation for states to game the criteria by relabeling a few traditional public schools as innovative.

Surprise! It looks like the Administration has caved to the teachers unions, which has fought precisely these eligibility requirements. Reformers should jump on this case at once. We can ill afford billions of dollars more in waste of taxpayers’ money and children’s minds.

Is the fraud likely perpetrated by climate scientists rooted in totalitarianism – the drive to gain power over our countries, economies, and liberties? James Lewis makes this case at PJM which, as you’ll see here, has been covering Climategate extensively.

In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call, Professor Tim Mosteller writes about his efforts at establishing a new college that will focus on great books and liberal learning.

I’m wholeheartedly in favor of ventures like this that offer students a better option than they find at most colleges and universities. Trying to change higher education is only a bit less difficult than turning lead into gold. Let’s give students who really want education — rather than just a bunch of course credits — the kind of experience Tim Mosteller has in mind.

Check out the stories we’re tracking in higher ed news:

Climate Conspiracy
Hacked emails show evidence of longstanding scientific misconduct by advocates of global warming theory. This scandal should alter the burden of proof in the global warming debate.

Teeth-Bared Teachers’ Ed
The University of Minnesota looks to make race, class, and gender politics the “overarching framework” for teacher education.

California Tuition Turmoil
Protesters at the University of California have some demands that reflect ignorance of basic economics.

A Punchy Professor
A male Columbia University professor slugs a female colleague in an argument about “white privilege.”

Center for Social Justice
“Social justice” means different things to different people.

Academic Cheerleaders for Terrorists
Faculty members in UMass’s Colloquium on Social Change unsuccessfully invited convicted terrorist Raymond Luc Levasseur to speak.

Congratulations King’s College!
The King’s College in the Empire State Building is now fully accredited.

I’ve noted that financial gain surely figured in the motivation of the scientists who appear to have conspired to suppress climate data.

But of course there is also this possible motive, suggested in an historically grounded article by Rand Simberg that explores the ideal of and deviations from the objective pursuit of science:

It is easy to postulate that they have political aims, and there are certainly many “watermelon” environmentalists (green on the outside, “red” on the inside) who see the green movement as a new means to continue to push socialist and big-government agendas, after a momentary setback with the collapse of the Soviet Union two decades ago.

But … science doesn’t always follow the idealized model of the objective scientist seeking only truth; it is often driven by fashions and fads, peer pressure, and a lust for glory and respect by the other courtiers of the court that fund [these scientists] … [perhaps] this defense of a flawed theory arose from the sense of power that it might give them over the rest of our lives. Or perhaps it was due to simply an emotional attachment to a theory in which they had invested their careers. Either way, what they did was not science, and they should be drummed out of that profession. They can no longer be trusted.

This is a guest article from Alex Berezow, a Ph.D. candidate in microbiology at the University of Washington. The opinions expressed therein do not necessarily reflect the official position of the National Association of Scholars.

Remember when President Obama said that he was going to “restore science to its rightful place”?  Apparently, that statement needed to be translated from the vagaries of “hope and change” to modern English:  Right-wing anti-science policies are out; left-wing anti-science policies are in.

To Mr. Obama’s credit, he has extended federal dollars to fund embryonic stem cell research far beyond what President Bush allowed.  However, that executive order marks both the beginning and the end of his love affair with sound science.

For starters, President Obama appointed Cass Sunstein as the head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.  Mr. Sunstein believes that all recreational hunting should be banned.  He also believes that meat consumption should be phased out in the United States, and he holds the unique belief that animals should have the right to sue humans in court.  Naturally, the animal would be represented by a human lawyer—a policy other than that would just be silly.  But who exactly would represent the animals in court is unclear at this point.  Dr. Doolittle might be available, though.

All satire aside, with someone this disconnected from reality working in the White House, one wonders what impact he could have on the ability of scientists to conduct biomedical animal research.

Also, remember Mr. Obama’s obsession with creating green technology jobs as a way of leading us out of the recession?  According to a report described by George Will in his Washington Post column, Spain’s massive subsidization of renewable energy has cost that country 110,000 jobs.  Far from helping Spain’s economic crisis, this foolish subsidization appears to have contributed to its mind-blowing 19.3% unemployment rate.

As if this weren’t bad enough, a fantastic op/ed by Joel Frezza brought up several more examples of “junk science” coming from the White House, a few of which I’ll summarize and expand upon.

Firstly, the administration has given in to unsubstantiated claims by the Left that certain vaccine components are unsafe, despite the fact that studies have proven the claims to be false.  (For instance, medical experts like Jim Carrey insist vaccines cause autism.)  Unbelievably, the Obama Administration has ignored the research findings of modern medicine and issued a decree that our nation’s swine flu vaccines should have lower amounts of thimerosal.  (Thimerosal is the preservative erroneously believed to cause autism.)  This last-minute decision has caused backups at the pharmaceutical companies making the vaccine, and it has contributed to the swine flu vaccine shortage.  Additionally, the Obama Administration has neglected to remove a federal ban on the use of certain adjuvants (immune-stimulating chemicals) which can help stretch limited vaccine supplies.  This, too, has contributed to the national flu vaccine shortage.

Mr. Frezza goes on to describe how the Obama Administration is asking for areas of Alaska to be deemed “critical habitat” for polar bears.  This move could severely limit the ability to drill for oil and gas in the region, in a time when our nation is in desperate need of energy sources.  It appears that, once again, Mr. Obama has caved to propaganda-spewing environmentalists who have ignored recent evidence indicating that polar bear populations are increasing.  In fact, polar bear researcher Mitch Taylor claims that of the 19 populations of polar bears, only two have exhibited declining numbers.  As a side issue, it’s also interesting to note that people like Captain Planet (Al Gore) who refer to polar bears as “endangered” don’t even have their facts straight:  Polar bears are officially listed as “vulnerable”—an entirely different conservation status.  This status is given to animals which may become endangered if conditions don’t change.  Arguably, however, conditions are changing because their population has been increasing.

Finally, Mr. Frezza points out the economically ludicrous and scientifically unsound subsidization of biofuels.  Liberals see the subsidization of biofuels as killing two birds with one stone:  Fixing the planet and helping out America’s farmers.  However, science has something entirely different to say about biofuels.  The production of biofuels emits nitrous oxide, otherwise known as laughing gas.  The planet, unfortunately, doesn’t find it very funny, since nitrous oxide is a much more potent contributor to the greenhouse effect than is carbon dioxide.  As The Economist points out in this article, a policy meant to make things better is merely an expensive way of making things worse.

Honestly, this list could go on and on.  What is so infuriating is the fact that Mr. Obama self-righteously proclaimed to be the protector of science, when the truth is that he simply replaced Mr. Bush’s special interests with his own.  In what has to be the most stunning broken promise in Mr. Obama’s presidency, instead of “restoring science,” he has simply resorted to “politics as usual.”

Here’s a nice discussion of a proposal from the University of Minnesota’s College of Education that aspiring teachers there must repudiate the notion of “the American Dream” in order to obtain the recommendation for licensure required by the Minnesota Board of Teaching.   “The report advocates making race, class and gender politics the “overarching framework” for all teaching courses at the U. It calls for evaluating future teachers in both coursework and practice teaching based on their willingness to fall into ideological lockstep. The first step toward “cultural competence,” says the task group, is for future teachers to recognize — and confess — their own bigotry.”

No, this is NOT from The Onion.

Jeff Wiesenfeld, trustee of the City University of New York, has written a letter to the New York Post concerning an alleged terrorist’s appearing as a speaker at Queens College (h/t Sharad Karkhanis).  The Post reports that the Muslim Students’ Association (MSA) invited “an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing”  to speak.   James Girdusky, vice president of Queens’s College Republicans, has called for an end to funding of the MSA.  Queens College argues that this is a free speech issue.  Trustee Wiesenfeld writes that while free speech must be protected, the CUNY community ought to speak out.

I wrote an email to President James Muyskens:

I am writing a blog for the National Association of Scholars concerning Trustee Wiesenfeld’s recent letter to the New York Post concerning the spat between the QC Republican Club and the MSA. The article writes that Queens has taken the position that this is a free speech issue.

First, if this is a free speech issue, do you apply free speech standards to “words that wound” other groups as well as Jews? Second, if a student applies for funding of a campus Ku Klux Klan or Neo-Nazi club, would you fund that as you fund the MSA, which has stimulated anti-Semitic feeling similar to what might be feared from a KKK-type group? Third, do you see a distinction between allowing the members of the MSA to speak and providing them with funding and campus support such as student center meeting rooms?

Katherine Kersten brings back an old topic on this blog: dispositions theory in education. There’s a new design of teacher education at the University of Minnesota, she says:

The initiative is premised, in part, on the conviction that Minnesota teachers’ lack of “cultural competence” contributes to the poor academic performance of the state’s minority students. Last spring, it charged the task group with coming up with recommendations to change this. In January, planners will review the recommendations and decide how to proceed.

The report advocates making race, class and gender politics the “overarching framework” for all teaching courses at the U. It calls for evaluating future teachers in both coursework and practice teaching based on their willingness to fall into ideological lockstep.

We were last down this road in 2005 during the KC Johnson controversy at Brooklyn College. Yet it continues unabated. At SCSU students in educational administration or in child and family studies have a form to fill out if they see a disposition that doesn’t meet the professional standards. In the former field, if you “express an inability or unwillingness to work with some
people” and “avoid collaboration”, you have an area of need to work on. Teachers in graduate studies get courses in which their competencies are assessed to determine if they consider “multiple perspectives and willingness to challenge and analyze one’s own perspectives given alternatives” and “respond to items regarding lens of social justice and dispositions.”

Johnson reported on this blog last month that these Minnesota criteria are being highlighted at exactly the moment NCATE, the teachers’ accrediting body, is turning away from them. So maybe this won’t last for much longer around here.

The November-December issue of CCA Advocate contains a front page story on how Lassen Community College is challenging Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) with the California Public Employment Relations Board:

In what may be the first test case, the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) will decide whether a college can require instructors to submit Student Learning Outcomes without having bargained them into the contract.

The case stems from a charge brought by the Lassen College Faculty Association against the Lassen Community College District in December when the college administration unilaterally changed its policy and started requiring certificated employees to submit a student assessment plan whenever they submit a course syllabus. When the administration topped off the demand by proposing that faculty be evaluated based on its Student Learning Outcomes, (SLOs) the chapter took the matter to PERB.

For the full story, click here.