Don Wagner, healer? peacemaker?

.....These days, DON WAGNER is the president of the SOCCCD's benighted board of trustees.
.....Don has been on the board since December of 1998. But how'd he get there? It sure as hell wasn't his pleasant personality!
.....Check out these juicy excerpts from the October 1998 trustee candidates "board forum" on Cox Cable—pitting newcomer Don Wagner against "Pete" Maddox, and (also newcomer) Nancy Padberg against Leo Galcher.
.....Back then, Don explained that people should vote for 'im cuz he knows how to bring people together and make nice! (Huh?) He's a healing kinda guy!
.....He mostly defended the nasty old Board Majority that made the district a laughing stock. He generally would have voted as they did, he says.
.....Don seemed to go out of his way to distance himself from the people who actually got him elected—the old corrupt union leadership, who paid for his notorious "anti-airport" mailer (see at left).
.....THE BEST PART: Maddox accused Wagner of some dirty politics (re Pam Zanelli). Then Don got peeved! Check it out!



.....More than nine years ago, one of the gravest issues facing the district was "board micromanagement."
.....Now, in part because of continued board micromanagement and the endless "plague of despair" brought largely by Raghu Mathur, our colleges are closer than they've ever been to losing their accredited status.

PM America

.....This morning, I read an interview of a former Jeopardy champ—he won $2.5 million—who visited “the OC” yesterday: 'Jeopardy' champ Ken Jennings tests O.C.'s knowledge.
.....It turns out that Jennings is a funny guy:

Q: How did you prepare to be on "Jeopardy," other than making flashcards?

A: The flashcards really helped. But "Jeopardy" tends to quiz on the same things over again such as capitals and mixing cocktails. I guess if I run out of Jeopardy money I could be the world's best Mormon bartender….

Q: What was the hardest part of being on "Jeopardy"?

A: Coming up with 75 anecdotes to share with Alex every day. I started making things up at the end….

Q: It seemed Alex Tribek was rooting for you throughout the show, was he?

A: You know, I wondered about that. Sometimes, yeah, he'd act like he was rooting for me. But some days he'd be all Tribek: cool and detached. …

Q: Will you return to "Jeopardy"?

A: I hope so. Once you've been on "Jeopardy," they have past champions back on show. Maybe I'll get invited to the 50th anniversary show when Alex is just a head in a jar.

.....I was talking to a friend last night. I was telling her that you’ll never go wrong thinking of the “public mind” (PM) as an idiot. I was thinking of the PM as that great fictional American that we all “participate” in to some extent. PM is the guy who represents what America thinks and does. He voted for Bush. Twice.
.....That guy is plainly a dolt.
.....Take Jeopardy. Lots of people understand that it’s just a fun trivia game. But many more people—i.e., America—seems to think that it is a contest of intelligence. America also thinks that spelling bees are IQ tests.
.....I was telling my students the other day about how I was watching the news the day before Katrina blew into New Orleans. There was some official guy in that town saying, “This could be the big one we’ve been warning about for years. This could be an unbelievable disaster!”
.....But the PM (and its cheerleader, the President) said, “Yeah, whatever.” Later, New Orleans essentially drowned, and the PM was astonished: “How come nobody told us this might happen?”
.....What's next for America?
.....Next time: America doesn't understand why everyone doesn't love it.

President Dwight Eisenhower express[ed] astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence! —Carl Sagan

Whence SLOs?

....As you know, California community college faculty have been spending lots of time and energy on “Student Learning Outcomes”—SLOs. SLOs have been a big deal since 2002, when the accrediting agency (ACCJC) adopted new standards that focus on SLOs or “measurable student learning outcomes”.
.....As we’ll see below, the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (the ASCCC—or “the State Senate,” as it is often called) fought the adoption of those standards. But they lost that fight.
.....SLOs appear to be the product of the “outcome-based education” (OBE) movement, which has been a significant political force more or less since the 80s. According to Wikipedia,

Outcome-based education is a model of education that rejects the traditional focus on what the school provides to students, in favor of making students demonstrate that they "know and are able to do" whatever the required outcomes are…OBE reforms emphasize setting clear standards for observable, measurable outcomes.

.....You might think that conservatives are behind OBE—OBE loves standardized tests—but that’s not exactly right. In fact, as near as I can tell, right-wingers have been the most vociferous opponents of OBE, sometimes for daffy reasons. (See Phyllis Schlafly's What's Wrong with OBE?)
.....It appears that OBE (and SLOs) are in some sense the product of the prolific—but notoriously unimpressive—field of educational theory. Education theorists have power in the educational establishment, especially at the K-12 level. By the late 80s, their "measurable outcomes" notions bubbled up to higher ed. By the new millennium, they afflicted California community colleges.

* * * * *

.....I wanted to present some information here on the blog (starting with this post) to help put this whole SLO thing into perspective. Toward that end, I present excerpts from an article that appeared in the State Academic Senate’s journal, called Rostrum, back in October of 2002.
.....Among other things, the article's author argues that there is no evidence that, as a way of improving learning, existing methods of measuring student learning fail or that monitoring SLOs succeeds.
.....Further, the accrediting agency embraced SLOs against the overwhelming opposition of faculty and faculty organizations. Essentially, the move to SLOs (he argues) is an expensive unfunded mandate to busy faculty on questionable activities based on an unverified educational theory.

The Accountability Game…

by Leon F. Marzillier…

.....…In June 2002, the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) passed radical new standards by which to accredit community colleges, incorporating the idea of “continuous improvement” of “measurable student learning outcomes” (MSLOs) throughout. The ACCJC passed these new standards over the vociferous objections of respected faculty organizations. Nationally, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has come out against modifying accreditation standards this way, and in California, the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges along with the Community College Council of the California Federation of Teachers (CCC/CFT) have condemned this radical change by ACCJC. Why?
.....The whole concept of MSLOs as the latest fad in education is somewhat akin to the now discredited fad of the ‘90’s, Total Quality Management, or TQM.
.....Essentially, the ACCJC adopted MSLOs as the overarching basis for accrediting community colleges based on their faith in the theoretical treatises of a movement, just as advocates for the use of TQM in education … were part of an ideological movement.
.....After repeated requests for research showing that such use of MSLOs is effective, none has been forthcoming from the ACCJC. Prior to large scale imposition of such a requirement at all institutions, research should be provided to establish that continuous monitoring of MSLOs has resulted in measurable improvements in student success at a given institution. No such research is forthcoming because there is none….
.....The new standards would require documentation and continuous improvement of learning outcome measures at the course, program, and certificate levels. This would require faculty and administration to measure outcomes that can be immediately documented, not long-term outcomes such as successful application of coursework in students’ careers.
…..
.....Often, objections to MSLOs are met with, “But, you faculty will define what the outcomes to be measured are.” This assumes that what faculty currently measure via exams and grades are not adequate, and that faculty should spend their time generating new and much more specific skill based measures. However, no evidence has been presented establishing that the outcomes of our pedagogical efforts are not adequately measured by our current approaches, or that new measures would lead to greater student success.
.....In addition, much that is most beneficial in higher education is often difficult or impossible to measure—but certainly is not measurable at the course level. A business department might feel the most important outcome is that their students use what they learn in the classroom successfully in a career in the business world. But this is not a learning outcome that can be documented at the course or program level.
…..
.....…[T]he MSLO movement utilizes a scorecard approach, in which you assess in percentage terms where your students are now in terms of a defined learning outcome, and how you would like to increase the percentage in 5 years, say. Then, you set as your goal the percentage improvement you want to make each semester! This requirement, that there be continuous improvement of learning outcomes, assumes that student achievement can be increasingly rationalized like a production process.
.....This push to document and improve student learning outcomes essentially creates pressure to focus one’s course objectives on discrete, skill-based and hence most easily measured variables. Quantitative variables are more easily tracked than qualitative ones. This over time will yield to a “dumbing down” of the curriculum, as broad capacities and more long-term, qualitative changes in student behavior and perception will be relatively de-emphasized in the push to measure.
.....How about faculty members in art deciding that an outcome is that students have at least a rudimentary appreciation of great art and how to recognize it? How does one measure that? How does one measure a sociology department’s desired outcome that their students have a more tolerant attitude towards other cultures and ethnic groups? You can probably think of more examples of the impossibility of measuring outcomes of what we do. Even if it were possible, is it realistic to expect a 2% (say) improvement per semester in any given outcome?
.....
.....Perhaps what irritates us most about the ACCJC’s action, besides the fact that they chose to ignore the best advice of the practitioners in the field (the faculty), is that tying accreditation to MSLOs means that the faculty as a whole would have to spend precious time and effort to engage in measuring everything that moves on the campus, diverting our energy and efforts from interacting with students. Will our colleges receive additional funding for these efforts? We seriously doubt it! So, we are being asked to engage in what virtually amounts to a huge unfunded mandate.
…..
.....… The Academic Senate plenary sessions passed resolution after resolution condemning the use of MSLOs as the basis of accrediting decisions, many being passed unanimously. These were votes of faculty members representing faculty at all 108 California community colleges, and represent the collective wisdom of California community college faculty. The faculty members sitting on the ACCJC are or have been active in local or state senates. It is unfortunate that they did not heed that collective wisdom and vote against the implementation of these new standards. Every fad that comes along will find a few adherents among the faculty, but when the opposition among our faculty is as strong as it is, it’s clear that the faculty is not split on this issue.
…..
.....Based on the resolutions passed overwhelmingly at its plenary sessions, the Academic Senate is studying ways to combat the institutionalization of MSLOs. The Academic Senate is working with both the AAUP and the CCC/CFT to consider our next steps, whether it is possible to delay implementation of these radical changes in the accreditation standards, as well as to explore alternatives to the ACCJC…..

These articles appeared in the Rostrum of February, 2002, a few months prior to the ACCJC’s adoption of new standards:

* “Ignore Us At Your Peril!”: The San Francisco Accreditation Hearing

.....“Ignore us at your peril!” Those were the closing words … during testimony at the Accrediting commission’s hearing on Draft A of the proposed new accreditation standards. The hearing, held on Sunday, January 6th in San Francisco, was the only one to be scheduled in the continental United States.
…..
.....…All of the participants were in communication with one another prior to the hearing, with the result that the overlap in testimony was minimal. It will surprise no one who attended the Fall Plenary Session, or who has read the resolutions generated there, that those assembled to provide testimony came to persuade the Commission to abandon their misguided emphasis on quantifiable outcomes, and to focus instead on educational quality….

* The Proposed Accreditation Standards: A Summary Critique

.....At its recent session, the Academic Senate passed a record number of resolutions concerning the proposed accreditation standards. Other faculty organizations have also gone on record opposing the proposed draft standards…. The Commission currently intends to adopt a revised draft at their June 2002 meeting.
.....…Acccording to the commission’s “Project Renewal” plan, the revision aims to import quality assurance approaches from business and to address inclusion of the wide variation in institutions now on the higher education “market.” But to widen the umbrella in this way essentially reduces the standards to the lowest common denominator….

"You cannot, in fact, dream up anything so preposterous that you will not find it being taught in some school." —Richard Mitchell

Now it’s USC—will they knuckle under?

Just posted in the OC Register: Little Saigon activists tell USC to take down Vietnam flag

.....Activists from Little Saigon say they are putting the University of Southern California on notice over a Socialist Republic of Vietnam flag that flies on campus.
.....Three activists – Hung Nguyen, An Son Tran and Tung X. Nguyen – approached an employee of the University Relations department on campus last week to make an official request that the school remove what is perceived as the communist flag by Vietnamese Americans or replace it with the red and yellow former South Vietnamese flag.
....."The red and yellow flag is the official flag of the Vietnamese American community," Hung Nguyen said. "The university has hundreds if not thousands of students from our community and they should honor our sentiments about the flag."
.....But USC officials don't plan to remove or replace the flag, said university spokesman James Grant.
.....USC is among the nation's most diverse campuses and has thousands of international students attending, Grant said. So far, no student has complained about this particular flag, he said.
....."The flags have been in our main building for a long time," he said. "They were made to conform to state and United Nations standards. We see no need to take them down."
.....The activists approached Irvine Valley College last month with a similar request. The college took down its entire exhibit of miniature flags from 144 countries after Westminster Councilman Andy Quach and Garden Grove Councilwoman Dina Nguyen and the activists objected to the presence of the communist flag in the exhibit.
.....Hung Nguyen said he and others intend to visit all California's campuses and urge them to remove the communist flag.
.....The Union of Vietnamese Student Associations, based in Garden Grove, also sent out a letter to USC two weeks ago after a Vietnamese American student there told them about the flag, said Bao Mai, a senior member of the student union.
.....“We have a good community of Vietnamese students, a few hundred, in USC,” he said. “We don’t want to see a large-scale protest happen there. We want to resolve the issue before that.”
.....But the students union would certainly join in a protest if it happens because USC has a Vietnamese Student Association on campus and is a member of the union, Mai said.
.....Hung Nguyen said community members from Little Saigon will attempt to have a discussion with top USC officials to make them see why the local Vietnamese American community is extremely sensitive to the issue.
.....The rapidly growing Little Saigon community is primarily composed of refugees who fled Vietnam in the '70s and '80s after the communist takeover in that country in 1975.
....."Our first step is to give them the information," he said. "The second step is to have a discussion between our Vietnamese elected officials and university officials to see if they will take down the communist flag. Our last resort will be to protest the university's approach to this issue."
.....Quach said he has not been approached by Nguyen to talk to university officials.
....."It is of course at the discretion of the university, but I don't think the university understands the political and emotional implications of their decision," he said.
.....Quach said he might send them a video tape of the 1999 protest of a Little Saigon video store owner who displayed a large banner of Ho Chi Minh outside his store. Thousands thronged outside the store in protest.
....."The video will show them how strongly anti-communist this community is and how strongly we feel about it," Quach said.
.....Grant said the university respects the community's sentiments about their flag.
....."They do have their right to express their feeling and opinions," he said. "But I don't think we did anything wrong by flying that flag. It is Vietnam's official flag."

The Adventures of Sunny Girl: Existential Cat

For Kris.

Recent videos of a similarly personal nature:

• The Adventures of Adam & Sarah: they drop by

Fear in Holland

From the LEDE: After Danish Cartoons, Dutch Film Sparks More Worries:

.....The aftermath has flowed predictably enough since Feb. 13, when Danish newspapers reprinted cartoons that sparked fury among Muslims around the world in 2006: There was more fury.
.....Street protests started in the streets of Copenhagen and spread to Sudan, Pakistan, Turkey and other parts of the Islamic world. Now, after more than a month, comes what might be the direst reaction in Osama bin Laden’s latest message.
.....“Publishing these insulting drawings,” he said, “is the greatest misfortune and the most dangerous.”
.....An analyst interviewed by The Associated Press interpreted the message as a “clear threat against E.U. member countries and an indicator of a possible upcoming significant attack.”
.....In The New York Times today, Michael Kimmelman writes that “many Europeans seem fed up,” including some of the cartoonists. One has been moving from safe house to safe house to elude any assassins, while another is struggling to find meaning in the second printing….
.....Meanwhile, a politician two countries away is planning to release a movie that has “triggered a panic in the Netherlands that could only be likened to the dread leading up to a massive storm,” according to Der Spiegel, a German magazine.
.....Geert Wilders’s 15-minute film reportedly juxtaposes excerpts from the Koran with beheadings and stonings on a split screen, a warning of “the threat of the growing Islamization of Western society,” he said in an interview with a Danish TV station, Reuters reported.
.....Even before the film’s release, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands insisted that his country did not share the views of Mr. Wilders, who is the subject of death threats — threats made all the more unsettling by the 2004 murder of another Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, who was killed for being “an enemy of Islam,” the killer said.
.....“I strongly condemn Geert Wilders’s condescending statements about Muslims,” Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark said on Wednesday, according to Reuters. “I find these expressions extremely offensive.”….

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "Orion walks waist deep"

.....Spring!
.....Once again.
.....Today's poem, courtesy of Kenneth Rexroth, from his cycle titled, "Toward an Organic Philosophy."

SPRING, COAST RANGE

The glow of my campfire is dark red and flameless,
The circle of white ash widens around it.
I get up and walk off in the moonlight and each time
I look back the red is deeper and the light smaller.
Scorpio rises late with Mars caught in his claw;
The moon has come before them, the light
Like a choir of children in the young laurel trees.
It is April; the shad, the hot headed fish,
Climbs the rivers; there is trillium in the damp canyons;
The foetid adder’s tongue lolls by the waterfall.
There was a farm at this campsite once, it is almost gone now.
There were sheep here after the farm, and fire
Long ago burned the redwoods out of the gulch,
The Douglas fir off the ridge; today the soil
Is stony and incoherent, the small stones lie flat
And plate the surface like scales.
Twenty years ago the spreading gully
Toppled the big oak over onto the house.
Now there is nothing left but the foundations
Hidden in poison oak, and above on the ridge,
Six lonely, ominous fenceposts;
The redwood beams of the barn make a footbridge
Over the deep waterless creek bed;
The hills are covered with wild oats
Dry and white by midsummer.
I walk in the random survivals of the orchard.
In a patch of moonlight a mole
Shakes his tunnel like an angry vein;
Orion walks waist deep in the fog coming in from the ocean;
Leo crouches under the zenith.
There are tiny hard fruits already on the plum trees.
The purity of the apple blossoms is incredible.
As the wind dies down their fragrance
Clusters around them like thick smoke.
All the day they roared with bees, in the moonlight
They are silent and immaculate.