Group items tagged

academic freedom is a value of deep institutional importance to the independence of the University from entrenched power. Free speech demands no such institutional defense, and is rightly deprioritized when in conflict with other interests such as equity of access to education, or the health and wellbeing of students

To listen to trans students and graduates is to be sure that, whatever the British gender critical academics argue, the training of the professoriate on this issue is woefully inadequate

Many trans and non-binary students reported challenges finding built environments where they could feel safe at college. “They keep housing me with men,” wrote one trans woman; another trans woman reported that, despite being roomed with “transphobic students,” her administrators “weren’t, in general, willing to cut me a whole lot of slack because I hadn’t legally changed my gender marker.” A trans man reported being “placed on an all-girls floor even though I stated clearly on my housing form that I’m a trans guy.” Another student described the non-accommodation of trans students as an official policy: “my school matches roommate based on assigned sex, and refuses to accommodate trans students.”

Many students wrote with great enthusiasm about LGBTQ support centers on campus, which provide trans students with community and guidance. One writes that “younger uni empoyees and employees who were queer or allies were actually pretty great”; another says “the campus LGBT centers at two of the institutions where I experienced […] discrimination were amazing”; another writes that “the gender equality center is really working to help students and we have queer profs and Pride programming.” Another describes the vibe at the LGBTQ center as “quite tumblr but very supportive.” Students reported valuing the opportunity to invite speakers and guests themselves, though some report a wish that more resources for such programming were available.

A number of students wrote to express their dismay at the poverty of counselling resources for trans students

A large majority of respondents – close to all - explicitly reported experiences with “deadnaming” and “misgendering” by their academic advisors – their professors and mentors. Some of these instances were “deliberate,” “malicious,” “continued,” or “transphobic,” while others were merely “ignorant” or “accidental.” One respondent reported having been taught by two kinds of teacher: “profs who never asked for pronouns and always misgendered me, and profs who asked for pronouns but would still misgender me every time and apologize every time under the guise of ‘trying their best’.”

Sometimes being misgendered at a key moment in one’s school career throws students into emotional disarray at an inopportune moment.

colleges and universities are failing to establish adequate infrastructure for trans and non-binary students (especially in respect of digital architecture, which perhaps receives less attention than bricks-and-mortar)

staff and faculty, far from being the mindwiped drones of the gender critical academics’ fantasy, are mostly pretty incompetent at addressing and discussing trans students

I have a responsibility as a teacher to ensure minimum standards of care and equitable access to education for all my trans students, but also that I have a responsibility to push back against those institutional disincentives

The scores of fourth- and eighth-graders on reading tests have climbed steadily since the 1990s, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. But those of 12th-graders have fallen. Just 37 percent of high-school seniors graduate with “proficiency” in reading, meaning they can read a text for both its literal and its inferential meanings.

While those with bachelor’s and graduate degrees maintained the highest levels of literacy overall, those groups also experienced the steepest declines. Just 31 percent of college graduates were considered proficient readers in 2003, by that test’s definition, down from 40 percent in 1992.

“We quickly realized that unless you actually assign a grade for the out-of-class component, students just won’t do it,”

“Harvard students are really not that different in terms of how they behave. They’re bright, they’re academically more gifted,” she says. But they’re also “incredibly good at figuring out how to do exactly what they need to do to get the grade. They’re incredibly strategic. And I think that’s really true of students everywhere.”

turns the classroom into a social-learning environment

“We have young people who are coming away from high school with a very sort of test-driven training — I won’t call it education — training in reading.”

Teaching students how to read in college feels “remedial” to many professors

Faculty members are trained in their disciplines. “They don’t want to be reading teachers. I don’t think it’s a lack of motivation,” says Columbia’s Doris Perin. “They don’t feel they have the training.” Nor do they want to “infantilize” students by teaching basic comprehension skills, she says.

Tie reading to a grade: Quizzes and assigned journals, which can determine about 20 percent of the final grade, can double or even triple reading compliance — but rote formats that seem to exist for their own sake can encourage skimming or feel punitive.“Do away with the obvious justifications for not doing the reading,” says Naomi Baron, at American U. “If you summarize everything that’s in the reading, why should students do it?”Ask students to make arguments, compare, and contrast — higher- order skills than factual recall.Using different media is fine, but maintain rigor. “You can do critical reading of anything that has essentially an academic argument in it,” says David Jolliffe, at the U. of Arkansas. Video and audio, in fact, may sometimes be better than textbooks — what he calls “predigested food.”Explicitly tie out-of-class reading to in-class instruction, going over points of confusion and connecting lessons and texts to each other.Teach reading skills. “Hundreds” of strategies exist, all of which make “explicit the processes that proficient readers use without thinking about it,” says Doris Perin, at Columbia.

“A lot of faculty members, myself included, are saying, If they’re not doing the reading, we can get unhappy, we can get angry,” she says. “Or we can do something about it.”

Seattle teachers who went on strike in September included a call for more mental health supports for students as one of their bargaining points. The strike settlement included part-time social workers at most schools

“We’ve seen increases in anxiety, disordered eating, suicidal ideation, OCD and many other mental health challenges,”

Last school year, nearly 40 percent of schools nationally reported increases in physical attacks or fights, and roughly 60 percent reported more disruptions in class because of student misconduct, according to federal data.

“School-based health centers fill a void, particularly in low-income communities,” said Robert Boyd, chief executive at the nonprofit School-Based Health Alliance. “In rural communities, sometimes it’s the only provider around.”

school systems are expanding social-emotional learning intended to help students understand and regulate their emotions, develop positive relationships and face challenges. These lessons may be embedded in classes (say, a discussion of empathy related to characters in a novel) or they may come directly through an activity about, for instance, decision-making. In some parts of the country, social-emotional teachings are tangled up in the culture wars, particularly when material deals with gender and racial equity.

Critics see the excused days off as counterproductive for students who have already missed too much school, but supporters say the laws recognize the stressful reality of many students’ lives and elevate the stature of mental health so that it is comparable to physical health.

The purported demographic crisis is being used around the country to fundamentally remake higher education. For example, this is the main argument being advanced by Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature seeking to radically reshape the University of Wisconsin system. This plan calls for the significant expansion of online education, regionalization of the comprehensive campuses, increased campus specialization and program consolidation and elimination, among other long-standing priorities.

The current context of higher education provides fertile ground for the uncritical acceptance of the demographic cliff. Higher education enrollments have declined since reaching historic highs in 2010. And decades of political decisions have made higher education tuition-driven, one state budget cycle at a time. We are vulnerable to the demographic cliff framing because of the politically imposed financial crunch in which we exist. Enrollments dictate everything we do.

the demographic cliff is an austerity-driven narrative that assumes that public funding will never—and should never—come back

Programs must be eliminated, online education must be expanded and, if necessary, even entire campuses must be closed. Higher education must be agile because tax increases are off the table, even as stock markets reach new highs and the income and wealth of the highest earners skyrockets. The interests of corporations and the wealthy will dictate public policy.

official population and education data—which come with no political assumptions, narrative or products for sale—show a slowly increasing population, including higher education enrollments, in the coming years.

demographic cliff is a manufactured crisis

takes advantage of a tuition-dependent higher education system to implement even greater austerity while imposing an education policy agenda that could never be adopted through normal political means