Topic: Education Issues
Unions find innovative solutions for staff development
Career development has been a convenient target of budget cuts, but locals unions have found creative approaches for investing in staff.
A sabbatical program the AFT Guild negotiated with the San Diego Community College District allows nine classified employees a year to take 16 weeks paid leave to study at an accredited college.
Nathan Talo used his leave to take a giant step toward his psychology degree. Talo began working at Mesa College as a part-time account clerk 15 years ago, and is now a senior account clerk.
Massive Open Online Classes threaten quality of education
Low-cost educational alternative likely to widen digital divide
MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE CLASSES have been hailed by officials at the companies that run them (the three biggest are edX, Udacity and Coursera) as a way to provide access to classes at elite universities to everyone, but critics say that MOOCs — free online course with potentially thousands of students, many of them outside the United States — would undermine education quality, increase the digital divide and cost teachers their jobs.
Researcher Berliner describes how the education “crisis” is manufactured
David Berliner began criticizing the school reform industrial complex when he co-authored The Manufactured Crisis 17 years ago. He brought his case, strengthened by new statistical evidence, to delegates at the CFT Convention.
Adult educators build awareness, support to save schools
United street action and online communities making a difference
Adult education has been on the ropes, yet it continues to come back swinging to defend programs that are vital to many California communities.
Why does Union City, New Jersey, matter in California?
David Kirp says lessons learned in this Latino community offer a narrative of hope
Editor’s note: In his new book, Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for American Education, UC Berkeley Professor David Kirp chronicles how a poor urban district transports Latino immigrant children into the education mainstream. In Kirp’s words…
CFT files complaint taking community college accrediting agency to task
April 30, 2013, Novato—Today the CFT and its City College of San Francisco affiliate, AFT Local 2121, filed a complaint or “third party comment” with the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC), and sent a copy to the United States Department of Education (USDOE).
New CFT White Paper calls on three experts to describe what makes quality education
A new CFT White Paper summarizes the union’s public support for recommendations to build quality education that are based on sound research and best practices as recommended by three educational experts. The experts in the paper titled “What makes quality public education? Ask the experts. That’s what the education union did,” are widely published and have presented to CFT members and countless other progressive organizations.
CFT hosts member discussion about what defines “quality public education”
The union explores partnership of community and educators to launch quality public education campaign
Making schools community hubs is key to the union’s campaign for quality public education, CFT President Joshua Pechthalt told participants at the Leadership Conference. Connections with community members comprise the CFT’s greatest strength and he encouraged educators to mine those ties.
CFT launches member discussion of “quality public education”
Union explores partnership of community and educators to launch quality public education campaign
Making schools community hubs is key to the union’s campaign for quality public education, CFT President Joshua Pechthalt told participants at the Leadership Conference. Connections with community members comprise the CFT’s greatest strength and he encouraged educators to mine those ties.
Seattle teachers ratchet up movement against high-stakes tests
Garfield High School teachers boycott administration of state-mandated assessment
Seattle’s Garfield High School teachers made the momentous decision in January to refuse to administer the state-mandated Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test — and it began with a discussion in the teachers’ lounge.
Members work to end high-stakes test for second graders
CFT continues efforts to abolish STAR test for state’s youngest learners
Stephanie Bernstein says her second graders are typical seven-year-olds: “They need to get up and move about every 15 minutes.”
CFT supports community college funding solution
Bill gives breathing space to colleges under accreditation sanction
CFT President Joshua Pechthalt speaks at a rally in front of San Francisco City Hall with Assemblymember Paul Fong, D-San Jose, who introduced AB 1199. The much-needed legislation will provide community colleges under accreditation sanction breathing room.
Faculty and students rally to save San Francisco City College
Alisa Messer, president of AFT Local 2121 at City College of San Francisco, speaks to a crowd of several hundred faculty and students outside Diego Rivera Theater. The rally was held at the same time as the interim chancellor was delivering her remarks on Flex Day to a nearly empty auditorium.
City College of San Francisco defends part-timers during accreditation crisis
AFT Local 2121 continues the fight to save City College of San Francisco after the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges labeled the college with its most severe accreditation sanction, “show cause.”
Classified Conference highlights staff as partners in student success
Attendees hear how co-workers educate, mentor kids
For Esmeralda Grubbs, success starts when a Local 1475 member takes a preschool boy or girl by the hand and begins to build a foundation for lifelong learning.
Grubbs works with the Early Childhood Federation, a Los Angeles County local representing preschool workers, from faculty and teaching assistants to custodians and kitchen staff. Challenges can be daunting, especially in low-income communities. In October, a drive-by shooting threatened a Head Start program in a Watts housing project.
How and why Mexico’s City University came to be
Q&A with Manuel Perez Rocha, founding president of the university
Q&A by David Bacon, Labor Journalist
Manuel Perez Rocha was the founding president of the first major university established in Mexico City in decades, the Autonomous University of Mexico City. Mexico doesn’t have the equivalent of two-year community colleges, but the UACM is very close to the ideas on which our community college system is based.
Community stands with beloved City College of San Francisco
Report faults school for having too little money and doing too much for students
In early July, more than 300 people packed a San Francisco meeting hall to express their outrage over a letter from the Accrediting Commission for Community & Junior Colleges saying City College of San Francisco must prove its fiscal stability by March 15 to remain accredited.
The way forward: Greatness by Design
Over the past year CFT was a proud participant in developing the recommendations of Superintendent Tom Torlakson’s Educational Excellence Task Force and we applaud the results of this lengthy process.
San Francisco defends part-timer progress during accreditation crisis
Though faculty and students at San Francisco City College are fighting to keep their college open following a report from the Accrediting Commission for Community & Junior Colleges, Local 2121 says changes such as reducing health benefits for part-time faculty are off-limits.
“No Time to Quit”
A look at school desegregation by former CFT President
By Miles Myers, Former CFT President
In the nation’s first school desegregation case, on February 13, 1931, in Lemon Grove, California, the Mexican parents of Roberto Alvarez went to court to stop the Lemon Grove Grammar School from denying access to Mexican children. A victory for Roberto in the local court stopped the case from reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. But the same issue did reach the U.S. Supreme Court almost twenty-two years later (1953) when the Black parents of ten-year-old Linda Brown sued the Topeka (Kansas) School Board, demanding that skin color (and race) not be used to deny her access to her neighborhood public school. Unlike the Lemon Grove court, Topeka courts did rule that skin color could be used to deny Linda’s entrance to the nearby public school and, thus, the case was appealed to the Supreme Court. Her local public school, she said, was her gateway to opportunity, and thus, that gateway should not be blocked by segregationist policies. She won.