Our Cal FUBAR: making sense of the accreditation mess

.....(This is part of a series of posts concerning SOCCCD's present accreditation difficulties.)

.....Yesterday’s Chronicle of Higher Education included a helpful report on the acute accreditation difficulties here in California (“Community Colleges in California Feel the Heat,” by Paul Basken).
.....Essentially, as I read it, the article explains that a convergence of facts has produced our special Cal FUBAR:

• FACT 1: The Accreds (ACCJC/WASC) toughened their accreditation standards back in 2002.
• FACT 2: The California cc accreditation scene settled into a pattern of college ball-droppery, fueled on one side by poor local (college and district) leadership and, on the other, by a failure of ACCJC vigilance (aka Accred ball-droppery).
• FACT 3: Education Secretary Margaret Spellings’ new Commission on the Future of Higher Education (CFHE) (2006) increased scrutiny on accreditation/colleges.
• FACT 4: the budget situation in California worsened; some colleges failed to hire the staff necessary to complete accreditation reports adequately.

.....According to the article, in one sense, our difficulties trace back to Margaret Spellings’ creation of the CFHE two years ago. That especially affected California community colleges:

In the past year, at least 14 California community and junior colleges have been placed on a probationary or warning status by their accreditor [WASC/ACCJC]. In many cases, the colleges are being cited for their failure to prove the quality of their performance. ¶ Ms. Spellings's panel [CFHE] issued an unambiguous call for such accountability, and her department has sought to enforce it by imposing more-rigorous reporting requirements on colleges as a condition for the accreditation that makes them eligible for federal student aid. The burden of that requirement has begun to show most prominently in California, where the cash-strapped system of community colleges is struggling to keep up.

.....Evidently, budgetary pressures caused such institutions as College of the Redwoods not to complete self-assessments. At any rate, that’s what lots of CA community colleges are saying. The problem is liable to spread across the country as cutbacks prevent colleges’ affording the “staff and attention necessary to produce mandatory self-assessment reports.”
.....Economic difficulties forced California to cut the community college budget for 2002-3, and things are expected to get worse:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, seeking to balance the state's budget, has proposed a 10-percent, across-the-board reduction in all state spending, which would cut about $1-billion from higher-education budgets.

.....Meanwhile (says the CHE article), enrollments are expected to grow at a rate of 3-percent per year at CA community colleges.
.....Less money, more students. Great.
.....The CHE article focuses on the highly regarded College of the Redwoods. After overcoming some bad (enrollment-suppressing) decisions, the college found that it had made another error: “it went 10 years without hiring the staff researcher necessary to produce its accreditation reports,” or so says the college’s interim president. That decision, he says, was part of a general failure of leadership “in getting the accreditation report completed accurately.” The college was placed on warning status in 2006 and then on probation in 2007.
.....The mounting accrediting pressures derive not only from Spellings’ new commission but also from WASC's toughening of accrediting standards back in 2002:

After introducing its tougher standards in 2002, the Western Association's commission for community colleges began finding some of its members caught in a pattern of promising they would produce the more-extensive reviews of academic programs without actually following through. ¶ "The commission believed their claims in the past that they were doing it, or they were going to do it, or they had started to do it and had done some programs and would do the rest," said Barbara A. Beno, president of the community-college commission. "And then the colleges really dropped the ball."

.....I guess Beno didn't notice all of that college ball-droppage. But the Feds sure did:

The federal government soon noticed what was happening. The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity [NACIQI]… last year began citing [WASC] for failing to ensure that its member colleges produced their required reports within two years. ¶ Faced with the prospect of losing its federal recognition, the commission responded. After placing 32 colleges on warning or probationary status during the previous three years, it added another 11 to the list this past January.

.....—Ah, the notorious “two-year rule.” Though it was adopted back in 2002, ACCJC/WASC had not been enforcing it. Now, it is enforcing it. And that’s why our two colleges in the SOCCCD are in trouble. We’d been giving the Accreds the ol’ “we’re on it” shuffle for longer than that, in part thanks to the manifest contempt with which the Accred process (and the Accred agency) is held by key members of our board of trustees (Tom Fuentes is the chief contemner, with Don Wagner following close behind).
.....Says Babs Beno, "The colleges often have a perception that when they don't meet the standards, that the commission has changed itself…It's a way of avoiding the idea that they're not meeting the standards."
.....Of course, it doesn’t help when Beno shows up, as she did two years ago (April, 2006), and declares that we’re making marvelous progress (overcoming trustee micromanagement, the "plague" of despair, etc.) when, in truth, we’re not.

• • • • •

.....With regard to the budget issue: denizens of SOCCCD know that we’re on basic aid in a county with unusually high property values. That means, in essence, that we’ve been affected by the state budget only by our internal rule, imposed by the board, to fund the colleges as though they were funded in the more typical fashion by the state. I.e., our colleges have experienced a kind of artificially-imposed penury. In fact, our district is sitting on a huge shitpile of money that's starting to draw flies.
.....Re lack of staff: as you know, our board has been particularly miserly with regard to reassigned time (i.e., non-instructional work, such as governance or administrative activities, assigned to faculty). Indeed, in the late 90s, it adopted a “rule” (it is not a binding policy) according to which RT costs are to be capped at 2% (in reality, the cap has shifted to a half percent higher). Meanwhile, the state has imposed more work on colleges—e.g., the notorious “SLO” initiative, more program review, etc.—that is non-instructional but must be done by faculty.

See also
The "two-year rule": the accreditation agency dropped the ball bigtime (DtB: 3/15/08)

Watch ACCJC's Babs Beno tell us she sees "a lot of progress"! (April, 2006)
(Beno appears at 6:27)


Watch the chancellor blame faculty for our Accred problems. Watch Trustee Fuentes essentially rejecting the Accreds' charge of board micromanagement! (March 2006)
(Fuentes' special moment starts at about 3:04)

"Let's just go with the oldest 'un"

• SPECIAL BOARD MEETING. Marla Jo Fisher of the OC Register’s “College Life” Blog informs us that

The SOCCCD has announced a special board meeting for 5 p.m. Monday (May 12) in the Health Sciences building auditorium at Saddleback College. Topic is to discuss the “concept plan and long range plan at the Advanced Technology and Education Park in Tustin.”

• RED STATE ADVICE: "HELPFUL PROFANE CAMPAIGN SLOGANS." Have you seen these guys? A friend sent me this video. Pretty damned funny (warning: one or two F bombs):



Some district history you may have missed:
vote of no confidence (2004)

New state chancellor

In this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

• The California Community College System has its new leader and, unlike elsewhere, board members didn’t have to choose between someone with legislative connections or a background in academe – they got both. State Senator Jack Scott, chair of the Senate Committee on Education and a lawmaker since 1997, previously served as president of Cypress and Pasadena City Colleges, and as a professor and dean elsewhere. He takes over in January after completing his legislative term – where, as chair of a subcommittee that controls the education budget, he’ll be confronting the multi-billion dollar budget shortfall that community colleges have reason to fear. In January, the governor proposed $525 million in reductions for the 109-college system.

• An instructor who lost her chance to teach at California State University at Fullerton because she refused to sign a required state loyalty oath is proposing a compromise, the Los Angeles Times reported. With help from the group People for the American Way, the instructor is now willing to sign an oath that also allows her to state her unwillingness — based on her Quaker beliefs — to take up arms. With People for the American Way threatening to sue, Cal State officials are willing to talk, but the job the instructor lost has already been filled.

That wacky Don Wagner!

.....Back in September, as always, Tracy’s Board Meeting Highlights described trustee reports given during the SOCCCD board meeting. Trustee Don Wagner, it said, reported that he had “attended the Education Alliance dinner and encouraged everyone in the community to take a look the organization, of which he is a board member.”
.....Near as I can tell, EA is growing and is becoming a player in OC politics. (For a brief review of its activities since 1994, read this.)
.....Well, ever since Tracy’s report, I have regularly visited the Education Alliance website (see), keeping an eye on the organization.
.....Education Alliance’s politics are typical of the religious right. Its platform (see) lists seven “principles”:

1. Back to basics education
2. Rights of parents
3. Local control
4. No bilingual education
5. Eliminating union and other special interests control over school administration
6. Promoting positive values and discipline
7. Term limits

.....Now wait a minute! Don’s on the board of EA, and EA favors term limits.
.....According to EA, term limits “prevent constant unbroken sustained long-term re-election of any particular individual to any particular office in the government of education.” That’s a bad thing, evidently.
.....OK, but Don Wagner holds office in the government of education. He’s a trustee of a community college district.
.....Don was elected in 1998. He was reelected in 2002. And then again in 2006.
.....Just sayin’.
.....From now on, though, I'm callin' him "Ralph Waldo" Wagner.

Some district history you may have missed: Wagner debates, 1998



SEE also Video: Wagner goes after "liberal busybodies"

Fear and loathing in Costa Mesa

A Gustavo Arellano review in this afternoon’s OC Weekly: Humberto Caspa's New Book Chronicles the Fear and Loathing of Mexicans in Costa Mesa

If Orange County is the Mexican-hating capital of America, then Costa Mesa is its capitol—the crucible where anti-immigrant measures get debated, adopted, executed, and then mimicked nationwide. The past four years alone have seen the city introduce America to Minutemen mayors, migra agents in city jails, shuttering of day-labor centers and human-relations commissions, and arresting local activists. Couple that with xenophobic NIMBYers, and no wonder Humberto Caspa titled his book chronicling Costa Mesa’s Mexican madness Terror in the Latino Barrio: The Rise of the New Right in Local Government….

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: The lawn is full of breathing statues

Some poetry. It helps.

from Elizabeth Spires:

The Faces of Children

Meeting old friends after a long time, we see
with surprise how they have changed, and must imagine,
despite the mirror's lies, that change is upon us, too.

Once, in our twenties, we thought we would never die.
Now, as one thoughtlessly shuffles a deck of cards,
we have run through half our lives.


The afternoon has vanished, the evening changing
us into four shadows mildly talking on a porch.
And as we talk, we listen to the children play
the games that we played once. In joy and terror,
they cry out in surprise as the seeker finds the one in hiding,
or in fairytale tableau, each one is tapped and turned

to stone. The lawn is full of breathing statues who wait
to be changed back again, and we can do nothing but stand
to one side of our children's games, our children's lives.


We are the conjurors who take away all pain,
and we are the ones who cannot take away the pain at all.
They do not ask, as lately we have asked ourselves,

Who was I then? And what must I become?
Like newly minted coins, their faces catch
the evening's radiance. They are so sure of us,

more sure than we are of ourselves. Our children:
who gently push us toward the end of our own lives.
The future beckons brightly. They trust us to lead them there.

Demea’s no dummy

.....As we’ve often noted, Trustee Tom Fuentes is among the directors of Eagle Publishing, of which Regnery Publishing is a subsidiary.
.....Regnery publishes books that are, shall we say, south of academe. They’re often south of honest, too. Consider the execrable Unfit for Command. You remember that one.
.....Occasionally, I check out Regnery’s “featured books.” Among them these days (see) is The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, by Jonathan Wells.
.....Regnery’s description of Wells’ book makes it sound like old news: the absence of transitional fossils, the Cambrian explosion. Evidently, Wells accuses some “Darwinists” of faking the evidence. Yeah, sure. It's all a plot. We'll meet at Disneyland later this summer and distribute the loot.
.....These days, no opponent of science leaves home without the “intelligent design” argument, which, in essence, judges that, since there exist complex natural phenomena the explanation of which we have not yet found, it follows that God (i.e., a grand intelligence) must be the explanation.

.....Imagine hanging with some ancient Babylonians. Suddenly, lightning hits a tree, sets it on fire. Everybody’s impressed. Babs (the Babylonian) says, “must’ve been God.” Lonnie (the Babylonian) replies, “Maybe it’s something else—something maybe we’ll figure out some day.”
.....Babs gets hostile. “Yeah, Mr. Wizard? Like what?”
.....Lonnie doesn’t come up with anything.
.....“OK, then,” says Babs. “It’s God.”

.....According to Regnery,

Wells … turns to the theory of intelligent design (ID), the idea that some features of the natural world, such as the internal machinery of cells, are too “irreducibly complex” to have resulted from unguided natural processes alone. [Yawn.] … As Wells explains, religion does play a role in the debate over Darwin—though not in the way evolutionists claim. Wells shows how Darwin reasoned that evolution is true because divine creation “must” be false—a theological assumption oddly out of place in a scientific debate….

.....I’m not sure what that last part's about. But it is often noted—by scientists and philosophers—that science is concerned with “the natural,” i.e., with nature. It is therefore not concerned with the “supernatural”—i.e., that which is beyond the natural. Bringing supernatural entities into the explanation of natural phenomena is, therefore, a mistake, like trying to open a bottle of beer with, say, a sentence fragment, or with a pain in one’s toe.
.....It’s just stupid.

.....The other day, I mentioned to one of my classes that there is, of course, a problem with the design argument, one noted 240 years ago by David Hume, among others. In his famous Dialogues, upon hearing a description of the design argument, the character Demea, a theist, immediately objects:

I shall be so free…, said DEMEA, as to tell you that from the beginning I could not approve of your conclusion concerning the similarity of the Deity to men; still less can I approve of the mediums by which you endeavour to establish it. What! No demonstration of the Being of a God! No abstract arguments! No proofs a priori! Are these, which have hitherto been so much insisted on by philosophers, all fallacy, all sophism? Can we reach no farther in this subject than experience and probability? I will not say that this is betraying the cause of a Deity. But surely, by this affected candor, you give advantage to atheists which they never could obtain by the mere dint of argument and reasoning.

.....Demea is saying that, if theists rely on this argument, they argue for a designer who operates at our level, the lowly level of human experience. That is, if we say that we must believe in God specifically because of what we see in the world, then we are talking about a God who makes worldly things, like cells and stars and cow pies. We are not talking about a God who makes things whose limits are only our wildest imaginings.
.....Demea may be a theist, but he’s no dummy. And he’s honest, too.
.....—Unlike the boorish yahoos of Regnery Publishing, including Jonathan Wells and Tom Fuentes—a man who helps to oversee South County's community colleges.
.....Good Lord!

March 2005: the community responds to Fuentes' nixing Spanish study-abroad: