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Ben Rimes

Executive Summary | U.S. Department of Education - 9 views

www.ed.gov/...executive-summary

shared by Ben Rimes on 15 Mar 10 - Cached
  • regardless of background, languages, or disabilities,
  • personalized learning
  • critical thinking, complex problem solving, collaboration, and multimedia communication should be woven into all content areas.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • In all these activities, technology-based assessments can provide data to drive decisions on the basis of what is best for each and every student and that in aggregate will lead to continuous improvement across our entire education system.
  • Another basic assumption is the way we organize students into age-determined groups, structure separate academic disciplines, organize learning into classes of roughly equal size with all the students in a particular class receiving the same content at the same pace, and keep these groups in place all year.
    • Ben Rimes
      Ben Rimes on 28 Mar 10
       
      For good reason at the elementary level. It's called socialization. Students that are 2 or 3 years apart can exhibit radically different thought processes, levels of self-control, but more importantly, there are huge developmental differences socially, emotionally, and physcially.
  • The NETP accepts that we do not have the luxury of time – we must act now and commit to fine-tuning and midcourse corrections as we go. Success will require leadership, collaboration, and investment at all levels of our education system – states, districts, schools, and the federal government – as well as partnerships with higher education institutions, private enterprises, and not-for-profit entities.
    • Ben Rimes
      Ben Rimes on 28 Mar 10
       
      Perhaps one of the most frightening statements in the document to a large number of school districts. Teachers quite often are able to enact a mid-course shift, and students are most always extremely flexible, but at the administration and district level change can often be glacial as such radical change could very well mean replacing the hierarchy of leadership throughout a district, shifting positions, or eliminating them, and large organizations have a tendency towards self-preservation.
  • Vicki Davis on 15 Mar 10
     
    Current update to National Education Technology plan in the USA. Highlighted with diigo with comments.
  • Ben Rimes on 28 Mar 10
     
    Current update to National Education Technology plan in the USA. Highlighted with diigo with comments.
Michael Walker

Recommended iPod Apps (Grade Levels & Subjects) Escondido Union School District - iRead... - 22 views

spreadsheets.google.com/lv

ipod apps education

shared by Michael Walker on 06 Apr 10 - No Cached
  • Ben Rimes on 06 Apr 10
     
    Over 80 Apps for the iPod Touch sorted by their grade level, subject area, and type (resource, creative, game, etc.). Also includes a short description of the application, it's link in iTunes, and it's price.
  • Michael Walker on 21 Apr 10
     
    Grade level and subject spreadsheet showing iPod apps and cost. Nicely done!
Ben Rimes

A Call for Technology Leadership - 16 views

www.districtadministration.com/viewarticle.aspx

shared by Ben Rimes on 10 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • (1) modeling the use of new technologies in communicating to students, teachers and the general public; (2) ensuring that technology becomes integral to teaching 21st-century skills from critical thinking and problem solving to collaboration and information literacy in the classroom; (3) boosting Web 2.0 applications and tools as key components of student learning; (4) offering professional development in these technologies and deploying the online tools that help teachers create learning communities among themselves; and (5) requiring better balanced assessments of student work—including project-based learning enhanced by technology tools—in an age driven by NCLB-oriented testing and better use of data from the assessments to help students improve their performance.
    • Ben Rimes
      Ben Rimes on 10 Jan 11
       
      Asking any leader to model effective strategies makes sense, but shouldn't the imperative of offering professional development in newer communications tools come first? Some district leader's I can see jupming into new tools and ways to communicate, but you can't expect all veteran leaders to adopt new tools without the development and support they'll need.
    • Ben Rimes
      Ben Rimes on 10 Jan 11
       
      I'm curious to know in how many districts does the Superintendent serve as the curriculum leader capable of making the sweeping changes to move a district towards project-based learning. I have an inkling that many superintendents find niches that make them valubale, whether it's focusing on assessment, community relations, curriculum, or something else.
  • The revised edition also includes a self-assessment for superintendents to evaluate how far their districts have come along the technological curve. CoSN’s CEO Keith Krueger explains that his organization’s research shows that many district leaders are behind that curve, and the new document opens with a letter:
    • Ben Rimes
      Ben Rimes on 10 Jan 11
       
      Not surprising at all...
  • e cautions that the large-scale changes CoSN is advocating are most likely to happen for district leaders who are not engaged in dozens of other initiatives. “Everybody wants the superintendent to be in the middle of everything,” Reeves explains. “The real acid test is whether you can execute the ‘not-to-do list,’” adding that superintendents need to resist establishing too many priorities. Each of the five areas featured in “Empowering the 21st Century Superintendent” includes a set of resources and a series of action steps for superintendents and district leadership teams. For instance, in the 21st-century skills section, leaders are urged to improve their own such skills, create a vision for integrating them into K12 instruction, audit the district’s strategic plan to see which might be missing and adjust professional development accordingly.
    • Ben Rimes
      Ben Rimes on 10 Jan 11
       
      Love the pragmatism in this quote. Good acknowledgement that district superintendents are engufed in far too much at times, and thus tech-integration may not realistically happen. Good to know that the framework provided by CoSn also includes some directions for district tech teams.
Kelly Faulkner

Make Any Text Area Speech-Input Friendly (Chrome) - 13 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...eech-input_friendly_chrome.php

Speech-Input text chrome speech speak speech to text dragon google

shared by Kelly Faulkner on 26 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Kelly Faulkner on 26 Jul 11
     
    for the chrome browser.
Steve J. Moore

InformIT: The Business of Understanding > Aesthetic Seductions - 1 views

www.informit.com/...article.aspx

shared by Steve J. Moore on 10 Aug 11 - No Cached
    • Steve J. Moore
      Steve J. Moore on 10 Aug 11
       
      How much of the Web would you consider "technical writing"?
  • Writers
    • Steve J. Moore
      Steve J. Moore on 10 Aug 11
       
      What role do teachers in all levels and content areas play in this search for new words to describe designing to understand?
Ted Sakshaug

iKnowthat.com Punctuation Paintball Game - Online Multimedia Educational Games for Kids... - 0 views

www.iknowthat.com/...L3

grammar punctuation interactive education english LanguageArts

shared by Ted Sakshaug on 26 May 09 - Cached
  • Ted Sakshaug on 26 May 09
     
    learn punctuation using a video game format
Ruth Howard

Technology Integration Matrix - 0 views

fcit.usf.edu/matrix

Technology Integration matrix education tech_integration pedagogy edtech technologyintegration

shared by Ruth Howard on 21 Apr 09 - Cached
  • What is the history behind the tool? The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) was developed to help guide the complex task of evaluating technology integration in the classroom. Basic technology skills and integration of technology into the curriculum go hand-in-hand to form teacher technology literacy. Encouraging the seamless use of technology in all curriculum areas and promoting technology literacy are both key NCLB:Title II-D/EETT program purposes. The Inventory for Teacher Technology Skills (ITTS) companion tool is designed to help districts evaluate teachers’ current levels of proficiency with technology and is also used as a professional development planning and needs assessment resource. The TIM is envisioned as an EETT program resource which can help support the full integration of technology in Florida schools. What is in each cell? Each cell in the matrix will have a video (or several videos) which illustrate the integration of technology in classrooms where only a few computers are available and/or classrooms where every student has access to a laptop computer.
  • Transformation  The teacher creates a rich learning environment in which students regularly engage in activities that would have been impossible to achieve without technology.
  • Active
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Indicator: Given ongoing access to online resources, students actively select and pursue topics beyond the limitations of even the best school library.
  • Collaborative
  • Indicator: Technology enables students to collaborate with peers and experts irrespective of time zone or physical distances.
  • Goal Directed
  • Indicator: Students use technology to construct, share, and publish knowledge to a worldwide audience.
  • Authentic
  • Indicator: By means of technology tools, students participate in outside-of-school projects and problem-solving activities that have meaning for the students and the community.
  • Constructive
  • Indicator: Students engage in ongoing metacognative activities at a level that would be unattainable without the support of technology tools.
  • You can download the Technology Integration Matrix for printing as a PDF.
Vicki Davis

Seattle Public Schools | MS Cyberbullying Curriculum - 0 views

www.seattleschools.org/...cbms.html

education learning technology techintegrator

shared by Vicki Davis on 15 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 15 Apr 09
     
    Free middle school cyberbullying curriculum!
Dave Truss

Google Docs, Wikis, and Tracked changes in Word: Looking at Collaborative Writing :: Ah... - 0 views

ahhhhsandahas.blogspot.com/...se-to-kim-mcgills-blog-re.html

collaboration collaborativewriting teaching studentteacher mycomments

shared by Dave Truss on 16 May 09 - Cached
  • writing is moving into the public sphere. Most writing that is published electronically is, by nature, works in progress. We post, we receive feedback (solicited or not) and we often rewrite or reconceptualize. In this way, teaching collaborative writing explicitely is crucial.
  • For me, the value of collaborative writing does not lie in the product but in the process; students are challenged to think critically, negotiate tactfully and engage meaningfully in a real life skill. The learning is layered and seamless.
  • when I first starting incorporating technology into my teaching repetoire, I must admit that it was the driving force of the lesson. In this way, I was trying to teach tech...which is not my area of expertise. However, when I finally figured out that I was not a tech teacher but rather someone who was using technology as a means to teach the skills and processes that have always been important to me...everything seemed so much more focussed and doable.
  • Dave Truss on 16 May 09
     
    A new blogger doing great things... drop by and leave her a comment.
  • Dave Truss on 16 May 09
     
    ...writing is moving into the public sphere. Most writing that is published electronically is, by nature, works in progress. We post, we receive feedback (solicited or not) and we often rewrite or reconceptualize. In this way, teaching collaborative writing explicitely is crucial. For me, the value of collaborative writing does not lie in the product but in the process; students are challenged to think critically, negotiate tactfully and engage meaningfully in a real life skill. The learning is layered and seamless.
Vicki Davis

Educational Videos and Games for Kids about Science, Math, Social Studies and English - 1 views

www.neok12.com

Education news

shared by Vicki Davis on 03 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Ted Sakshaug on 03 Jun 09
     
    Educational videos for k-12. Most subject areas
  • Vicki Davis on 08 Mar 12
     
    Great new website NeoK12 with tons of videos, quizzes and puzzles. There is a lot here, especially for science teachers.
Ted Sakshaug

Florida Virtual School - Course Overview - 0 views

www.flvs.net/...CourseOverview.aspx

social_studies game education Florida history

shared by Ted Sakshaug on 17 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Ted Sakshaug on 17 Jun 09
     
    Learning and game-play collide in Conspiracy Code, the first in a revolutionary new series of courses. An innovative, complete online class, Conspiracy Code engages students in interactive learning while maintaining all the engagement of a high-quality entertainment product. All Conspiracy Code courses are teacher-supervised, academically-viable, complete classes that fuse the best of online gaming with proven pedagogical techniques and standards to produce a truly unique learning environment for high school students.
Vicki Davis

Tactile Defensiveness - The Facts About the Wilbarger Brushing Protocol - 1 views

ezinearticles.com/?Tactile-Defensiveness-The-Facts-About-the-Wilbarger-Brushing-Protocol&id=1776984

education ADHD

shared by Vicki Davis on 13 Oct 09 - Cached
  • The Wilbarger Deep Pressure and Proprioceptive Technique (DPPT) & Oral Tactile Technique (OTT)
  • many parents are a bit skeptical
  • The chest and stomach area are always avoided
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • most children find it pleasurable after a few sessions and may even ask for it when they are feeling "off"
  • Oral Tactile Technique, or OTT
  • If you think that your child would benefit from this form of therapy, it is important to seek guidance from an Occupational Therapist.
  • Vicki Davis on 13 Oct 09
     
    Nice article about Wilbarger brushing and ADHD. See your occupational therapist.
Kelly Faulkner

How I create and publish podcasts » Moving at the Speed of Creativity - 19 views

www.speedofcreativity.org/...-i-create-and-publish-podcasts

podcasting how-to

shared by Kelly Faulkner on 27 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 27 Oct 09
     
    If you want to know how one of the pro's makes and publishes podcasts, here is Wesley Fryer's how to - a must read for anyone working in this area of technology.
  • Kelly Faulkner on 28 Oct 09
     
    wes fryer's how to with excellent links
David Hilton

Collection and Subject Area Overviews (Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Library of ... - 6 views

www.loc.gov/...collguid.html

images primary sources ancient medieval modern europe america asia africa britain france germany ottoman african-americans culture cartoons photographs

shared by David Hilton on 09 Nov 09 - Cached
  • David Hilton on 09 Nov 09
     
    A large set of collections focussing mainly on US history, however also containing primary images from other regions of the world. Mainly photographs.
Sam Ezz

Medicine in Pharaonic Times - 1 views

www.squidoo.com/ancientegyptianmedicine

Ancient Egypt Pharaoh Anatomy Physiology Mummification

shared by Sam Ezz on 29 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Sam Ezz on 29 Jun 11
     
    It is obvious that ancient Egyptians were proficient in medicine exactly as they were proficient in other areas such as engineering, architecture, and mummi
Deron Durflinger

Niall Ferguson: How American Civilization Can Avoid Collapse - The Daily Beast - 4 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...zation-can-avoid-collapse.html

History collapse ferguson america US education skills pay vanmeter van meter

shared by Deron Durflinger on 03 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • “killer applications
  • Competition
  • The Scientific Revolution
  • ...29 more annotations...
  • Modern Medicine
  • The Consumer Society
  • The Work Ethic
  • The Rule of Law and Representative Government.
  • these killer apps were essentially monopolized by Europeans and their cousins who settled in North America and Australasia
  • the great divergence
  • They also grew more powerful
  • 20th century, just a dozen Western empires—-including the United States—controlled 58 percent of the world’s land surface and population, and a staggering 74 percent of the global economy.
  • tendency of Western societies to delete their own killer apps.
  • But there is a second, more insidious cause of the “great reconvergence,” which I do deplore—and that is the
  • Ask yourself: who’s got the work ethic now? The average South Korean works about 39 percent more hours per week than the average American. The school year in South Korea is 220 days long, compared with 180 days here. And you don’t have to spend too long at any major U.S. university to know which students really drive themselves: the Asians and Asian-Americans
  • Yet life expectancy in the U.S. has risen from 70 to 78 in the past 50 years, compared with leaps from 68 to 83 in Japan and from 43 to 73 in China.
  • On no fewer than 15 of 16 different issues relating to property rights and governance, the United States fares worse than Hong Kong. Indeed, the U.S. makes the global top 20 in only one area: investor protection
  • The future belongs not to them but to today’s teenagers
  • The latest data on “mathematical literacy” reveal that the gap between the world leaders—the students of Shanghai and Singapore—and their American counterparts is now as big as the gap between U.S. kids and teenagers in Albania and Tunisia.
  • Yet statistics from the World Intellectual Property Organization show that already more patents originate in Japan than in the U.S., that South Korea overtook Germany to take third place in 2005, and that China is poised to overtake Germany too
  • the United States’ average competitiveness score has fallen from 5.82 to 5.43, one of the steepest declines among developed economies. China’s score, meanwhile, has leapt up from 4.29 to 4.90.
  • Perhaps more disturbing is the decline of meaningful competition at home, as the social mobility of the postwar era has given way to an extraordinary social polarization. You don’t have to be an Occupy Wall Street leftist to believe that the American super-rich elite—the 1 percent that collects 20 percent of the income—has become dangerously divorced from the rest of society, especially from the underclass at the bottom of the income distribution.
  • Far more than in Europe, most Americans remain instinctively loyal to the killer applications of Western ascendancy, from competition all the way through to the work ethic. They know the country has the right software. They just can’t understand why it’s running so damn slowly.
  • What we need to do is to delete the viruses that have crept into our system: the anticompetitive quasi monopolies that blight everything from banking to public education; the politically correct pseudosciences and soft subjects that deflect good students away from hard science; the lobbyists who subvert the rule of law for the sake of the special interests they represent—to say nothing of our crazily dysfunctional system of health care, our overleveraged personal finances, and our newfound unemployment ethic
  • And finally we need to reboot our whole system.
  • If what we are risking is not decline but downright collapse, then the time frame may be even tighter than one election cycle
  • Western Civilization's Killer Apps
  • COMPETITION
  • THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
  • THE RULE OF LAW
  • MODERN MEDICINE
  • THE CONSUMER SOCIETY
  • THE WORK ETHIC
Vicki Davis

Teaching Resources, Classroom Resources & Lesson Plans - TES Resources - 5 views

www.tes.co.uk/TaxonomySearchFunnel.aspx

education inquiry-based learning teaching lessonplans research

shared by Vicki Davis on 21 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 21 Apr 12
     
    Here is an interesting point as I research inquiry based learning and move to look in a database that is largely built from overseas. Many places called "inquiry" "enquiry" so in this set of lessons across the curriculum, I have to search using the term "enquiry" to turn up what have been tagged as "inquiry based" lesson plans. There are many nuances like that as you start looking at best practices across the world to remember. Eventually, hopefully, language searches will translate between common languages (like English) to help us bridge best practices. If you're looking into inquiry-based learning (or equiry-based depending upon where you're from) - this is a database of lesson plans from Kindergarten up in different categories.
Ed Webb

The academy's neoliberal response to COVID-19: Why faculty should be wary and... - 1 views

academicmatters.ca/eoliberal-response-to-covid-19

Canada education online neoliberalism capitalism opinion analysis pandemics

shared by Ed Webb on 29 May 20 - No Cached
  • In the neoliberal economy, workers are seen as commodities and are expected to be trained and “work-ready” before they are hired. The cost and responsibility for job-training fall predominantly on individual workers rather than on employers. This is evident in the expectation that work experience should be a condition of hiring. This is true of the academic hiring process, which no longer involves hiring those who show promise in their field and can be apprenticed on the tenure track, but rather those with the means, privilege, and grit to assemble a tenurable CV on their own dime and arrive to the tenure track work-ready.
  • The assumption that faculty are pre-trained, or able to train themselves without additional time and support, underpins university directives that faculty move classes online without investing in training to support faculty in this shift. For context, at the University of Waterloo, the normal supports for developing an online course include one to two course releases, 12-18 months of preparation time, and the help of three staff members—one of whom is an online learning consultant, and each of whom supports only about two other courses. Instead, at universities across Canada, the move online under COVID-19 is not called “online teaching” but “remote teaching”, which universities seem to think absolves them of the responsibility to give faculty sufficient technological training, pedagogical consultation, and preparation time.
  • faculty are encouraged to strip away the transformative pedagogical work that has long been part of their profession and to merely administer a course or deliver course material
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • remote teaching directives are rooted in the assumption that faculty are equally positioned to carry them out
  • The dual delivery model—in which some students in a course come to class and others work remotely using pre-recorded or other asynchronous course material—is already part of a number of university plans for the fall, even though it requires vastly more work than either in-person or remote courses alone. The failure to accommodate faculty who are not well positioned to transform their courses from in-person to remote teaching—or some combination of the two— will actively exacerbate existing inequalities, marking a step backward for equity.
  • Neoliberal democracy is characterized by competitive individualism and centres on the individual advocacy of ostensibly equal citizens through their vote with no common social or political goals. By extension, group identity and collective advocacy are delegitimized as undemocratic attempts to gain more of a say than those involved would otherwise have as individuals.
  • Portraying people as atomized individuals allows social problems to be framed as individual failures
  • faculty are increasingly encouraged to see themselves as competitors who must maintain a constant level of productivity and act as entrepreneurs to sell ideas to potential investors in the form of external funding agencies or private commercial interests. Rather than freedom of enquiry, faculty research is increasingly monitored through performance metrics. Academic governance is being replaced by corporate governance models while faculty and faculty associations are no longer being respected for the integral role they play in the governance process, but are instead considered to be a stakeholder akin to alumni associations or capital investors.
  • treats structural and pedagogical barriers as minor individual technical or administrative problems that the instructor can overcome simply by watching more Zoom webinars and practising better self-care.
  • In neoliberal thought, education is merely pursued by individuals who want to invest in skills and credentials that will increase their value in the labour market.
  • A guiding principle of neoliberal thought is that citizens should interact as formal equals, without regard for the substantive inequalities between us. This formal equality makes it difficult to articulate needs that arise from historical injustices, for instance, as marginalized groups are seen merely as stakeholders with views equally valuable to those of other stakeholders. In the neoliberal university, this notion of formal equality can be seen, among other things, in the use of standards and assessments, such as teaching evaluations, that have been shown to be biased against instructors from marginalized groups, and in the disproportionate amount of care and service work that falls to these faculty members.
  • Instead of discussing better Zoom learning techniques, we should collectively ask what teaching in the COVID-19 era would look like if universities valued education and research as essential public goods.
  • while there are still some advocates for the democratic potential of online teaching, there are strong criticisms that pedagogies rooted in well-established understandings of education as a collective, immersive, and empowering experience, through which students learn how to deliberate, collaborate, and interrogate established norms, cannot simply be transferred online
  • Humans learn through narrative, context, empathy, debate, and shared experiences. We are able to open ourselves up enough to ask difficult questions and allow ourselves to be challenged only when we are able to see the humanity in others and when our own humanity is recognized by others. This kind of active learning (as opposed to the passive reception of information) requires the trust, collectivity, and understanding of divergent experiences built through regular synchronous meetings in a shared physical space. This is hindered when classroom interaction is mediated through disembodied video images and temporally delayed chat functions.
  • When teaching is reduced to content delivery, faculty become interchangeable, which raises additional questions about academic freedom. Suggestions have already been made that the workload problem brought on by remote teaching would be mitigated if faculty simply taught existing online courses designed by others. It does not take complex modelling to imagine a new normal in which an undergraduate degree consists solely of downloading and memorizing cookie-cutter course material uploaded by people with no expertise in the area who are administering ten other courses simultaneously. 
  • when teaching is reduced to content delivery, intellectual property takes on additional importance. It is illegal to record and distribute lectures or other course material without the instructor’s permission, but universities seem reluctant to confirm that they will not have the right to use the content faculty post online. For instance, if a contract faculty member spends countless hours designing a remote course for the summer semester and then is laid off in the fall, can the university still use their recorded lectures and other material in the fall? Can the university use this recorded lecture material to continue teaching these courses if faculty are on strike (as happened in the UK in 2018)? What precedents are being set? 
  • Students’ exposure to a range of rigorous thought is also endangered, since it is much easier for students to record and distribute course content when faculty post it online. Some websites are already using the move to remote teaching as an opportunity to urge students to call out and shame faculty they deem to be “liberal” or “left” by reposting their course material. To avoid this, faculty are likely to self-censor, choosing material they feel is safer. Course material will become more generic, which will diminish the quality of students’ education.
  • In neoliberal thought, the public sphere is severely diminished, and the role of the university in the public sphere—and as a public sphere unto itself—is treated as unnecessary. The principle that enquiry and debate are public goods in and of themselves, regardless of their outcome or impact, is devalued, as is the notion that a society’s self-knowledge and self-criticism are crucial to democracy, societal improvement, and the pursuit of the good life. Expert opinion is devalued, and research is desirable only when it translates into gains for the private sector, essentially treating universities as vehicles to channel public funding into private research and development. 
  • The free and broad pursuit—and critique—of knowledge is arguably even more important in times of crisis and rapid social change.
  • Policies that advance neoliberal ideals have long been justified—and opposition to them discredited—using Margaret Thatcher’s famous line that “there is no alternative.” This notion is reproduced in universities framing their responses to COVID-19 as a fait accompli—the inevitable result of unfortunate circumstances. Yet the neoliberal assumptions that underpin these responses illustrate that choices are being made and force us to ask whether the emergency we face necessitates this exact response.
  • The notion that faculty can simply move their courses online—or teach them simultaneously online and in person—is rooted in the assumption that educating involves merely delivering information to students, which can be done just as easily online as it can be in person. There are many well-developed online courses, yet all but the most ardent enthusiasts concede that the format works better for some subjects and some students
  • Emergencies matter. Far from occasions that justify suspending our principles, the way that we handle the extra-ordinary, the unexpected, sends a message about what we truly value. While COVID-19 may seem exceptional, university responses to this crisis are hardly a departure from the neoliberal norm, and university administrations are already making plans to extend online teaching after it dissipates. We must be careful not to send the message that the neoliberal university and the worldview that underpins it are acceptable.
Ed Webb

What Cliff? Data and the Destruction of Public Higher Ed | Just Visiting - 2 views

www.insidehighered.com/...d-destruction-public-higher-ed

education future futures demographics data policy politics neoliberalism analysis opinion

shared by Ed Webb on 01 Mar 22 - Cached
alexabliss and oktayakk liked it
  • That higher education institutions are facing a “demographic cliff” in the coming years has become conventional wisdom. But what if there is no cliff? What if we’ve instead been subjected to a narrative rooted in limited data that serves the interests of corporations and is doing real damage to our public institutions?
  • Currently, the NCES projects relatively constant numbers of high school graduates through 2030, with total graduates expected to increase in the mid-2020s, followed by a modest decline, making the projected 2029–30 number slightly greater than in 2016–17. Further, it is important to note that since the 1970s, the total number of high school graduates in the U.S. has declined several times before. More importantly for higher education, the NCES projects modest increases in higher education enrollments through 2029.
  • WICHE is an interest group with an explicit policy agenda—“focus areas”—which includes “developing and supporting innovations in technology and beyond that improve the quality of postsecondary education and reduce costs.”
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • 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
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