No. 5 on the Seattle Hit Parade

A Seattle band called the Refusers musically review State Education.

Brown v Accreditation

Former senator Hank Brown demonstrates how USA education has been in decline as accreditation has been ascendant. With all of the accredited risible schools out there, the accreditors are going after UV:

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni recently filed a complaint with the Department of Education decrying SACS's interference with the University of Virginia governance powers and processes established by Thomas Jefferson himself. Anyone who knows American history, and regrettably few students do, would realize that Jefferson would be mighty upset to learn that a bunch of federally empowered bureaucrats are overstepping their authority and interfering with the internal governance of his university.

And this is very odd.  At City College of San Francisco, serving people since 1900, is under attack for not having enough administrators, according to the accreditors. How would they know?  By what metric do they measure this?

It is time for the University of Virginia and presidents and boards across the country to say no to this meddling, and it is time Congress recognizes what a failure the system of accreditation has been. Over the years, accreditation has increased costs without protecting quality. A new, transparent system of quality assurance is needed to protect the public—before it's too late.

The solution is to return to the system in which the students pay the instructors directly, and rate their instructors online for all to view.  There is ratemyprofessor.com but that is the wrong approach with confidential reviews which are too often poison pen letters.  A rating system would have to be by adults who sign their names to the review and verified they actually took the course.

What Other Teachers Need

Schools are run by administrators with students as the target market.    The teachers are given tenure and academic freedom, which is a pretty good deal.  What more could we want?

The tenured professors are a miniscule portion of those who carry the teaching load.  It would be interesting to know what percent of college teachers, or FTE, is tenured, and what the trendlines are.  My rough guess would be 80% of the instructors at a state college would be tenured, and maybe 25% at a community college.  In any event, given the amount of continuing and unaccredited ed going on in USA, I'd guess the majority of FTE in adult ed in USA is taught by not-tenured instructors.

The lucky few who have tenure are out of the debate, so a powerful voice in benefitting instructors is in effect bought off.  Nobody minds a system at which they win.

There is no doubt that this group would like representation.  We have the term "gypsy instructors" and there is a lovely website called http://www.adjunctnation.com which advocates for adjunct rights.

Now, what rights?  It seems to me that is heading in the wrong direction.  To try to struggle with administrators is to play their game, acknowledging the administrators as the source of instructors weal.

Now instructors are as varied in their needs as students.  Why sign on to a group that will necessarily fight limited battles for limited gains?  Why put any energy into fighting at all?

Why not an organization that is designed for the instructors, not the students?  What teachers want essentially is steady work, academic freedom and just compensation.  The definition thereof will be unique to each instructor.  They also want as little administrative requirements as possible.  Then the instructors need a means for promotion and enrolling students.

The Seattle Teachers' College provides precisely that.  It is modeled on the ancient system of the student paying the instructor directly.  Instructor quality is doubly assured by a combination of online feedback and reviews plus student payment of instructor directly upon performance.

We need to build up a cadre of instructors so we can get a critical mass of 300 instructors and 400 courses in order to have a solid launch of one working model from which to duplicate into as many markets as the world needs.  That is the task at hand.  let me know if you can join us either live in the Seattle area or online worldwide.

Insights On Online Education

Callum sent in this hour long discussion that I recommend for a listen.

http://files.libertyfund.org/econtalk/y2012/Klingeducation.mp3

I referred to it last night when mentioning the idea of “flipping the classroom.”

I’ve been thinking this through, what would it look like?  I’d put my lectures online for free (done) and assign the lectures as the weekly homework.

What is not the weekly homework...  find a product, name the customers, approach the customers.  How would they approach customers while in class?  Well, what if I was at my desk while the students headed out to businesses (open evenings?) and everyone was tweeting or email or phoning in their experiences?  And then do the research steps in the allotted class time...

Ken Lay, of Enron fame, made an insightful comment:  the point of the web is mass customization, not mass distribution.  For example, to use the web to offer a course to 150,000 students does not help much, anymore than making in essence a video free online.

But to sell a course to 100 participants each quarter, giving them customized attention to their particular problem, and let 149, 900 people observe no charge, might be very helpful to all concerned. those not paying and not participating yet observing will be drawing their own conclusions and can make efforts parallel to the course.

A few other random ideas form the conversation:

The fellows were talking about a teaching technique in which a quiz is given say every ten minutes in class to see if everyone got it.  If vast majority got it, move on.  Vast majority did not, re-present the material.  If it is 50/50, then stop teaching and tell students to convince each other they have the right answer.  The retest to see if the people with the right answers carried the day.  Struck me as a good idea.

IRC is controversial among those who have not taught online because it is ancient technology.  Yet there is none that allow more interaction more efficiently, and one in which that quiz technique above is easy to accommodate.  IRC allows everyone in the class to go into private IM and communicate.  After arguing, they could present their decisions.

Testing was an interesting topic, and they noted how it is conflict of interest for the teacher who teaches to also test the students.  A teacher who grades tests will grade easy so he can get good reviews.  It is proven the easier the grader the higher the ratings.  i did not know this.

So is the answer to have independent grading?  They talked about how hard it is to have even say one economics professor grade another's tests.    I imagine so, there are plenty of  other business teachers out there, how could any of them grade how well my students understood my material?

But the upshot would be with independent grading students would want tough teachers who got them well prepared to do well on tests.  Maybe.

I never liked giving instructor feedback in college as a student.  The rationale is by being secret the student is not subject to retaliation by the professor.   First, I don’t like the idea that professors might retaliate.  Second, it had to be secret, and that offends my sense of fairness - if I’ve got something to say I should say it to his face, the instructor should be able to face his accusers, etc.  Third, adults making secret assessments of other adults is just too much like snitching, and Soviet style reporting on people.  

But what about signed feedback? That is exactly what I do in my classes.  Especially face to face schools all have secret feedback forms, and I also offer signed feedback forms, of my own composition.  

Doesn’t this solve the problem of easy grading?  If feedback is in the open, won’t students be frank and open and thus teachers do not have to worry about poison pen feedback?  It seems to me it would defuse the problem.

There was some discussion of accreditation,  of teacher and school and student.  I think any accreditation is very bad news. the only accreditation needed is student feedback.

They were concerned about community colleges have less than 50% completion rate....Once here were Junior colleges which were mostly private, cheap and plentiful  You paid your own way to learn bookkeeping, haircutting or auto mechanics.  Now they are terribly expensive to run, taxpayer subsidized and crammed with people who don’t care to graduate.  

Partially because the students read at a 4th grade level and cannot understand the anthropology textbook.

The solution is to simply get the state out of education.  Just as there are enough restaurants without state intervention, so there would be schools.

Some talk of degrees, and what it confers.  Why not an unaccredited degree ...? but no, such a person would just be self-employed, and not a cog in the wheel.

Avatars In Education

A German fellow based in Hong Kong has taken an older idea and seems to be actually making it work for education.

Amazon Launches New Talent

Amazon has launched the career of yet another author, one who says, in passing:

And I can assure you that freedom fuels creativity, risk-taking, and passion. We get to bring you our stories in the way we want to tell them, without the dilution and sculpting from publishing houses. 

Just so.  When I had an agent in the 1980's I was told to never write more than 2 chapters and an outline, because the publisher would want to "shape the book."  I took that to mean censor it and change it to support the beast. The old model is built on a free press in which the industry is given in essence tax exempt status if the industry will in turn only proffer books that support the regime.

IN the Soviet Union you could go to prison for writing something critical.  In USA if you write something critical is will not see the light of day.  But but but...  anyone can publish anything!  Yes, but will it get distribution?

A big reason I left iUniverse was they said my book sold exceptionally well, and they would get behind it if I changed it.  Wait, what?  I have that in writing.

Things might be changing.  Self-publishing may actually work, what with the reach of the internet.

Spam Books

Too many people are pretending to be "authors" and just throwing up books onto Amazon and Kindle, and some of it makes customers just throw up.

It will sort itself out, but this is exactly the kind of problem where in the past the state jumps in, too early.  When telephone companies open on every corner,  New York began to look like it would be buried in telephone lines, something like Vietnam today.

 It is likely someone will ask the government to "do something."  Hope not, it'll sort itself out.

Hotel Offers Night School?

A Seattle Hotel is extending its mission into education by offering debates on music, readings by local authors and how to make cocktails in the bar.  Creative.