Accreditation watch (and good news for 13 Stoploss!)

ACCREDITATION:

Friday, 12:45 p.m.: No word yet from the ACCJC (accreditors). As you know, we’re expecting a fax of the ACCJC’s letters informing the colleges of its decision re the accreditation of Irvine Valley College and Saddleback College, officially to be released on the 31st (but available, theoretically, today).

Friday, 1:05 p.m.: I have it on good authority (very good) that college officials communicated with the ACCJC this morning, and the ACCJC indicated that it put the letters in the mail this morning at 11:00. For some reason, the ACCJC will not be faxing the letters until Monday morning.

So try to have a nice weekend!

13 STOPLOSS RULES!

Military bloggers: I see that our pal Jason of 13 Stoploss is/was a finalist in MILblogging.blog’s Third Annual Milbloggies awards. (Jason is a student here at Irvine Valley College.)

Jason’s fine blog (great writing, great photos) falls under the category “U.S. Military Veteran.” The finalists are/were:

A Battlefield Tourist
PTSD, A Soldier's Perspective
13 Stoploss
Michael Yon: Online Magazine

This is old news, it seems (three months old). Still, it's something we want to note, now that we're aware of it.

Do yourself a favor and check out Jason's blog.

UPDATE:

7:00 p.m.: the IVC community just received this email from IVC VPI Craig Justice and the two accreditation co-chairs (Gabriella and Rudmann):

Dear Colleagues,

The College has been informed by the Accreditation Commission that the hard copy of the Accreditation Action Letter regarding the 2008 Progress Report was placed in the mail earlier today, January 30, 2009. The College has requested to be placed on the ACCJC fax list and was informed that the Action Letter will be faxed on Monday, February 2, 2009. As soon as the fax is received, the Irvine Valley College community will be informed immediately of the information....

I would imagine that the Saddleback College community received a similar letter.

America tries to think

• From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:
Blinding Them With Science

American college freshmen know fewer facts about science than do their Chinese counterparts, according to a new study, but both groups have a comparably poor ability to reason scientifically.

The original research, published in this week’s issue of Science, suggests that educators in both countries must not simply change what they teach in the classroom but how they teach it if they hope to improve their students’ ability to reason. Lei Bao, the study’s lead author and director of Ohio State University’s Physics Education Research Group, said this runs contrary to the commonly held belief that reasoning skills develop as students are “rigorously taught the facts.”
…
After taking the Force Concept Inventory — which tests basic knowledge of mechanics — the Chinese students had an average score of nearly 86 percent, and the American students had an average score of around 49 percent….
…
After taking the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment — testing more theoretical and complicated concepts — the Chinese students had an average score of almost 66 percent, and the American students averaged nearly 27 percent. Bao noted that the American students performed so poorly that their average score is just better than the “chance level” of 20 percent, as if they had chosen their answers at random.
…
Following these two tests of physics knowledge, the participants were given the Lawson Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning, in which they consider scientific hypotheses and propose a solution using deductive reasoning. The Chinese students had an average score of nearly 75 percent, and the American students averaged about 74 percent….