Community - American Federation of Teachers

Transcription

VOL. 32, NO. 4 | MARCH / APRIL 2013
Wolves in sheep’s clothing
2
Safeguarding students
7
Flash mob for R-E-S-P-E-C-T
12
Help in a time of need
13
Concerns about MOOCs
16
It takes a
Community
New York unions marshal broad
coalition to save hospital that
serves 2.5 million PAGE 8
Motivation matters
What’s in it for students
taking high-stakes
tests? PAGE 2
Retention strategies
Could distance ed help
achieve completion
goals? PAGE 3
The politics of sex ed
Academic freedom
fight unfreezes a
$1 million grant PAGE 4
Where’s that $16 M?
What the voters giveth,
administrators taketh
away PAGE 5
HOMEBUYING + REFINANCING
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WHERE WE STAND
From grief to action
RANDI WEINGARTEN, AFT President
Gun violence is a tragic, pervasive
part of American life. Americans are 20 times
more likely to be killed by a gun than residents of other developed countries. Even
those who had grown numb to the everyday
carnage were shaken by the murder of innocent children and educators at Sandy Hook
Elementary School. And the murder of a girl
who, just days before, had performed at
President Obama’s inauguration called attention—albeit briefly—to the horrifically
common shooting deaths in Chicago and
other urban areas.
Gun violence has intruded into colleges
and universities, as well. Maybe it is at this
moment—when the country has been
shocked by the deaths on college campuses
and in schools, movie theaters, places of worship and other public spaces we expect to be
safe—that reducing gun violence could be
within reach.
On campuses where faculty and staff have
representation, unions have been among the
first to ask the tough questions about how
our members and their students are protected. Not only is campus safety a necessary
working condition, it is a fundamental right
for all those engaged in teaching and
learning.
When a gunman entered a lecture hall at
Northern Illinois University five years ago
and opened fire, the university’s level of preparedness and awareness—with input from
the University Professionals of Illinois—was
a major factor in mitigating disaster. Because
of lessons learned after the shootings at Virginia Tech a year earlier, NIU had updated its
crisis response and communications plans.
RANDI WEINGARTEN
President
LORRETTA JOHNSON
Secretary-Treasurer
FRANCiNE LAWRENCE
Executive Vice President
Kris havens
Communications Director
© 2013 American Federation
of Teachers, AFL-CIO
Cover Photo:
The Voice/United
University Professions
College campuses have unique safety
needs and should have discretion as to how
they address them. Some need to boost mental health and counseling services to ensure
Many campuses have opted to utilize security personnel
as part of their safety plans. However, proposals to arm
students and faculty are irresponsible and dangerous.
As educators, our role is to teach and nurture our students,
not to be armed guards.
students’ emotional and social needs are
met. Despite budget pressures, this is not a
time to cut mental health services to students
or staff.
Many campuses have opted to utilize security personnel as part of their safety plans.
However, proposals to arm students and
faculty are irresponsible and dangerous. As
educators, our role is to teach and nurture
our students, not to be armed guards.
Smart planning and increased access to
mental health services are essential, but they
are not enough. Since the Newtown tragedy,
350 college presidents have endorsed commonsense gun violence legislation that
would require every buyer to pass a background check, would get military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines
off our streets, and would make gun trafficking a federal crime.
The AFT has also suggested ways to reduce gun violence while respecting the Second Amendment. Unfortunately, the gun
Roger S. Glass
Editor
jennifer Chang
Production Manager
barbara mckenna
Managing Editor
michelle furman
Pamela Wolfe
Graphic Designers
adrienne coles
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mike rose
Contributing Editors
LAURA BAKER
JANE FELLER
Copy Editors
lobby—which is not synonymous with responsible gun owners—has vigorously
fought virtually every attempt to reduce gun
violence. While the gun lobby may be dou-
Sharon Wright
Production Specialist
Sharon FRANCOUR
Production Coordinator
Shawnitra Hawkins
alicia nick
Production Staff
bling down, there is widespread public support for many gun safety measures, even
among gun owners.
There is a recognition that Second
Amendment rights, like First Amendment
and other rights, come with responsibilities
and limitations. There is no reason both sides
of the gun debate can’t support policies that
not only protect the right to legally own guns
for sport and safety, but also reduce the likelihood of mass fatalities.
The real change we seek must come swiftly, and we need your help. Please spread the
word to family and friends—we must call,
write, e-mail, tweet or use Facebook to reach
our respective members of Congress and ask
them to pass legislation to curb gun violence
and to increase access to mental health services. The status quo is unacceptable, and we
all must play a part in seeking to make America a safer place.
Join the movement at http://go.aft.org/
safeschools.
AFT ON CAMPUS (ISSN
1064-1971, USPS 008-636) is
published five times a year in
Sept./Oct., Nov./Dec., Jan./Feb.,
March/April and May/June
by the American Federation
of Teachers, 555 New Jersey
Ave. N.W., Washington, DC
20001-2079.
Phone: 202-879-4400
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Although advertisements
are screened as carefully as
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advertisement does not imply
AFT endorsement of the
product or service.
CAMPUS CLIPS
Wolves in sheep’s clothing
Feds ask, do college students need protection from their banks?
Selçuk Demirel
The Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau is seeking consumer feedback on two
financial issues that are big in the lives of students: campus bank accounts and student
loans. On the first issue, the CFPB is looking at
bank “products,” such as student identification cards that double as debit cards, cards
used to access scholarships and student loans,
and school-affiliated banks accounts.
Setting up a bank account can be one of
the first things first-year students do when
they arrive on campus. Usually, a bank branch
is located there for their convenience. But a
report released by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group last year shows that students
need to be concerned about more than
convenience.
“The Campus Debit Card Trap” reveals
that more than 9 million students are at risk
for increased educational debt, due to the arrangements colleges and universities have
entered into with banks. The arrangements
are called affinity partnerships. The physical
manifestation is a branded debit card/student
ID card that directly receives federal student
aid disbursements as well as the deposits to
the student’s bank account.
The cards come with per-swipe fees of 50
cents, inactivity fees of $10 or more after six
months, overdraft fees of $38 (which accrue
more with novice students) and more.
Both educational institutions and banks
make millions, long-term, from these affinity
arrangements. Unfortunately, the students
most reliant on financial aid and most likely
to snap up the cards come from low- to moderate-income families. You can read the U.S.
PIRG report at www.uspirg.org/reports/
usp/campus-debit-card-trap.
On the second issue, student loans, the
CFPB wants to learn more about how student
debt affects undergraduates’ and recent
graduates’ decisions about whether to become teachers or primary care providers and
whether to work in hard-to-serve areas. The
agency will use the information as part of the
rulemaking process for private student loan
lending. Federal agencies will hear a lot from
the banks on this, so it’s important that the
voices of those carrying the weight of the debt
are heard too.
The CFPB is accepting public comments
until mid-March on debit cards and until April
8 on student debt. For more information, go
to www.consumerfinance.gov.
Motivation matters
For high-stakes tests to be reliable,
students have to care about the results
2
AFT ON CAMPUS | MARCH / APRIL 2013
p a r t i c i pa nt s f ro m
three difference kinds
of institutions. The researchers offered $50
to complete a 36-item
multiple-choice test
and essay question
online, followed by a
survey that measured
student motivation. To
establish motivation, students were asked to
sign one version of three possible consent
forms: 1) individual test results could be
shared with faculty and potential employers
(the “personal” condition); 2) individual test
results would be private, but scores would be
averaged from all participants from that college and could be shared with faculty and
employers (the “institutional” condition); or
3) test results were for research purposes only
and would not be shared (the “control”
condition).
Selçuk Demirel
Here’s something to take the wind out of
the sails of accountability proponents who
want to link higher education funding to how
well students perform on standardized assessments like the Collegiate Learning Assessment or the ETS Proficiency Profile. New research—from the Educational Testing Service
itself—shows that such tests are not reliable.
The problem: Students who aren’t motivated to do their best on the tests don’t take
them seriously. This affects their scores. And
if you throw in an essay, as opposed to multiple-choice questions, the test-takers can be
even more disaffected, further dampening
their performance.
This was a finding of three researchers at
the Educational Testing Service who published the results of their study, “Measuring
Learning Outcomes in Higher Education:
Motivation Matters,” in the December 2012
Educational Researcher.
In their study, the researchers tested 757
The results showed that students in the
personal and institutional groups performed
“significantly and consistently” better than the
control group. Students with the highest personal stake showed as much as a two-year
jump in level of learning, making their institutions appear to be that much more effective.
Performance on the essay question was only
strong for the personal group. “It may take a
stronger reason than caring for one’s institutional reputation for seniors to be serious
about writing an essay,” say the researchers.
Download a free copy of the motivation
study from bit.ly/VIcfPe.
SPEAK OUT
Can distance education boost completion rates?
WEIGH IN! We want to hear
your thoughts on the current
YES
NO
If at first they don’t
succeed, they can try again
Face-to-face is best
“Speak Out” question. Go to
www.aft.org/speakout
By Shanna Smith JagGars
and Di Xu
By Ray Schroeder
In order to improve college completion rates, we
must first focus on the large number of students who begin college but never complete it. For example, approximately 8 million students attend community college each
year, but fewer than half graduate. These students tend to
be low-income, with poorer academic preparation, and
the first in their families to attend college. Can distance
learning help improve college completion among these
students? We are skeptical.
Our recent research shows that, among community
college students, a given student is susbtantially less likely to complete a course
he or she takes online. If the student does
complete the course, he or she tends to
earn a lower grade than he or she would
in a face-to-face section. Importantly,
these performance gaps are wider among
students who already struggle in college—including males, black students
and students with lower prior GPAs.
Why do community college students
struggle in online courses? In many such
courses, students experience low levels
of interpersonal interaction with their
instructor. In qualitative investigations,
students told us that while they appreciated the flexibility of online courses, as
well as the instructional technology incorporated into some courses, they still preferred to take
online courses only for “easy” subjects—that is, subjects
they felt they could “teach to myself.” For difficult or particularly interesting courses, they wanted the guidance,
encouragement and personal feedback of an instructor,
and thus chose face-to-face courses when possible.
So, in order for online learning to help disadvantaged
students succeed in college, such courses may need to
incorporate higher levels of instructor presence and interaction than most currently do. Yet the trend seems to
be moving in the opposite direction: In massive open
online courses (MOOCs), students may see videos of their
famous instructor, but they are unlikely to ever interact
with him or her individually. Accordingly, we remain
skeptical that online learning will be a panacea for the
problem of low college completion rates.
___________
Ray Schroeder is professor emeritus and director of the Center
for Online Learning, Research and Service, University of
Illinois Springfield. Go to http://online.uis.edu.
___________
Shanna Smith Jaggars is assistant director, and Di Xu is a
senior research assistant, at the Community College Research
Center, Teachers College, Columbia University.
David Cutler
Online education is a valuable tool for reaching the
many students the country needs to complete college. In
my experience, it broadens opportunities for those taking
their second and third crack at earning their degrees.
Over the four decades I have taught at the university,
the faces of students, the topics and the delivery modes
have changed. Some of those faces disappeared over the
years—departing for wars, finances, job opportunities
and myriad other human reasons unique to their lives. Now, many of those students are returning in online
classes. Here are brief excerpts from the first three
introductions posted in my
Internet in American Life
class this spring semester:
“... senior in the English
bachelor’s degree program.
... I live in a small town and
work as the executive director of my local United Way.
Although I love my job, I
found myself longing to finish my degree.”
“... liberal arts major, 30
years old. I decided it was
time for me to finish my degree that I had started 10
years before. I had completed over 100 credit hours by the time I turned 22, but got a
great career opportunity.” “... 52 years old and working on my BA in Liberal Arts,
I have an AAS in Marketing and Merchandising. ... I work
now at a middle school.”
Most all of the other 21 students in the class are also
returning students. They are in Illinois primarily, but also
Alaska, Washington, South Carolina, Florida and other
states. They are, for the most part, working people who
have families. And they are returning to finish what they
left long ago.
The University of Illinois Springfield offers seven degree-completion programs taught by our on-campus
faculty to more than 800 distance learners. Degree completion in the online programs meets or exceeds the oncampus versions.
In the last issue of
AFT On Campus,
our “Speak Out”
question was:
Is it safe to assume
you may livetweet at academic
presentations?
ONLINE POLL RESULTS
29%
yes
71%
no
Applications for the
2013 Robert G.
Porter Scholars Program
are available
online. AFT
members and
their children
are eligible to
participate in the program,
which awards four $8,000
scholarships to graduating
high school seniors who
are dependents of AFT
members and $1,000 grants
to AFT members who are
continuing their education.
To apply:
• Download the application from the AFT website at http://go.aft.
org/scholarships; or
• E-mail an application request to
porterscholars@aft.org.
Application deadline
is April 1, 2013.
3
Joining the fold
Sex education good to go in North Dakota
Oregon labor board rules
for grad research assistants
University frees up funds after decision
from attorney general
Two faculty members
at North Dakota State University—who were barred from
implementing a sex education course for teens because
conservative lawmakers protested the university’s partnership with Planned Parenthood—have had their $1.2
million grant unfrozen after
protests by their colleagues
and a positive ruling from the
state attorney general.
In September 2012, Brandy Randall, associate professor in the Department of Huma n D e v e l o p m e nt a n d
Family Science, and Molly
Secor-Turner, assistant professor of nursing, got word they had won
the three-year grant funded under the Affordable Care Act. They would be offering
a comprehensive sex education and lifeskills training course outside of school to
at-risk 15- to 19-year-olds in Fargo, N.D.,
who voluntarily signed up and got their
parents’ consent. It was to begin at the end
of January.
Key to the program was the collaboration of Planned Parenthood Minnesota,
North Dakota, South Dakota, a community-based agency in Fargo that had an evidence-based program already in place and
could identify teens to participate.
On Jan. 1, a newspaper reported on the
program. Soon after, a few conservative
JESSE SKOUBO/CORVALLIS GAZETTE-TIMES
Support high-quality
higher education at CUNY
Faculty and staff at the City University of New York have launched a national petition
calling for high-quality education at the university and a moratorium on implementing a
new, watered-down general education curriculum called Pathways. Thousands of CUNY
educators have spoken out in opposition to the new curriculum, which was enacted by the
CUNY Board of Trustees and is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2013.
The Professional Staff Congress, the AFT union representing 22,000 faculty and staff at
CUNY, has protested in particular the manner in which the curriculum is being implemented.
Yet, instead of addressing faculty concerns about Pathways, the administration is barreling
ahead, says the PSC, threatening departments with reprisals if they do not comply, and
doing CUNY students a great disservice. (See coverage of the retaliation in the November/
December 2012 AFT On Campus.)
Please go to the PSC website and sign the petition: http://psc-cuny.org/pathwayspetition.
4
Molly Secor-Turner, left,
and Brandy Randall won
an academic freedom
battle for NDSU.
Michael Vosburg/Forum
The Oregon Employment Relations Board
ruled on Jan. 4 that all graduate teaching and research assistants at Oregon State University are
public employees and have the right to bargain
collectively. The decision allows nearly 700 graduate research assistants, who signed cards and
petitioned the labor board for an election last
spring, to vote on being represented by the Coalition of Graduate Employees.
CGE is affiliated with AFT-Oregon, and since
1999 has represented more than 900 graduate
employees who are predominantly teaching assistants. When the union formed, the university
successfully argued that those graduate assistants who were engaged in research were ineligible to be part of the bargaining unit.
Last spring, a majority of the unrepresented
graduate employees indicated their desire to be
represented by CGE by signing authorization
cards. On review, an administrative law judge
found that the grad assistants both are employees and share a community of interest with their
graduate colleagues in CGE. That
Oregon grad
was the decision the board just
employees rally to
have research
upheld. The graduate employees
assistants in the union.
will hold an election this spring.
lawmakers objected, threatening to cut the
university’s funding because of the connection with Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides family planning
services, citing a statute from the 1970s. In
the course of an interview on a conservative radio talk show, NDSU president Dean
Bresciani announced he’d frozen the
funds.
The NDSU faculty quickly responded,
through both the faculty senate and the
North Dakota Public Employees Association, which is the AFT state federation that
has been defending employee rights on
campus (although faculty do not have the
right to collective bargaining). Faculty senate chair Thomas Stone Carlson, who is
also an NDPEA member (as are Randall
and Secor-Turner), wrote an open letter to
the president saying the freeze violated
academic freedom. Faculty, staff and
members of the community rallied and
held forums, and the NDPEA got more
than a hundred new members in short order. “People are able to see that it’s not just
about one grant or one issue,” says
Randall.
On Feb. 15, the state attorney general
released an opinion stating that the cited
statute had been found unconstitutional in
1981 and was therefore invalidated. The
president immediately unfroze the funds,
acknowledging his respect for the faculty
and the large size of the grant.
Working for free
Instead of a paycheck, part-time faculty get a lecture
On Jan. 15, full-time faculty, staff, librarians
and others working at Kalamazoo Valley Community College in Michigan got their first pay
of the semester. Part-time faculty, whom the
college relies on to teach 60 percent of the
classes, did not. They would have to teach for
the rest of the month before they would see a
paycheck in February.
Delayed pay was a reason the part-time
faculty organized last year and voted to be
represented by the KVCC Federation of Teachers, notes KVCCFT co-president Catherine
Barnard. That, and the fact that the college
pays around $2,400 per class, one of the lowest
rates in the country.
In the fall, the part-time faculty were paid
on time, perhaps lulling them into a false
sense of security about their employer. On Jan.
7, the first day back after winter break, when
Donations of food and Meijer gift cards, which
can go to groceries, gas and pharmacy expenses, poured in. They raised between $500
and $750.
Some of the instructors wore buttons that
read “I Am Working Without Pay.”
“The students told them, ‘We’re glad you’re
here,’ ” says Barnard.
The union points out that it costs the college nothing extra to pay the 300 part-time
faculty on time, just a little compassion. “It’s
easy for someone making $194,000 a year to
sit in her office and say, ‘You should have
planned better.’ ”
As negotiations for the first contract proceed, KVCCFT members are realizing that
with a union, they can make sure their pay—
and other working conditions—aren’t subject
to whim.
Barnard and her co-president, Kelly O’Leary,
found out that part-time faculty would not be
paid on time, they went to the college’s vice
president for human resources, Sandy Bohnet.
“We asked, ‘Please, please release the checks,’”
says Barnard, “because we had people who
were in dire need. It’s a time when we’re
stretched thin—after the holidays, end-of-theyear taxes. The best thing Bohnet could offer
was the phone number for people to call for
free counseling!
“One person who suffers from diabetes did
not have enough money for insulin and prescriptions,” says Barnard. “Human Resources’
response was, ‘People need to plan better.’ ”
The part-timers decided to mount a food
drive. The full-time faculty (represented by a
chapter of the American Association of University Professors) put the word out as well.
What voters giveth, administrators taketh away
Students, faculty, staff and community supporters of the City College of San Francisco did not have much time to savor the
passage of a ballot initiative in November
designed to fill a $14 million hole in CCSF’s
budget.
Proposition A, which earned the support
of 73 percent of voters, establishes a parcel tax
that, beginning in 2013-2014, is to provide
upward of $15 million a year for eight years to
the college that serves nearly 85,000 full- and
part-time students. The vote of confidence
from San Francisco voters was to save the college, based on language geared to maintain
programs, courses and services for students;
“offset state budget cuts”; and “prevent
layoffs.”
In December, the college blew off that
mandate, pushing through pay cuts and layoffs. In January, it imposed a 9 percent pay cut
on faculty represented by AFT Local 2121—
union members who had already negotiated
and agreed to pay cuts and other cost-saving
measures at the beginning of the year, for the
fourth year in a row. The union grieved and
filed an unfair labor practice.
Another pressure: AFT 2121’s contract expired Dec. 31. At the bargaining table, it has
received proposals from the college that
Follow the battle at
www.saveccsf.org.
would reduce pay and health benefits for fulland part-time faculty, as well as reduce the
number of full-time faculty. Overall, says AFT
2121 executive director Chris Hanzo, the goal
seems to be to take a contract carefully built
over the years to produce a quality workforce
that is balanced between full-time and parttime faculty and compensated fairly, and to
transform it into one patterned after the
worst—though not uncommon—exploitative
staffing models.
At the bargaining table, the revenue from
Prop A did a disappearing act. While the college administration had been including a winning scenario in its planning document, the
funding got zeroed out after its receipt was
assured. Where did it go?
Management swept it up to meet accreditation requirements, resulting from the
“show-cause” sanction leveled on the college
by the Accreditation Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (see related story
in the September/October 2012 AFT On Campus). CCSF has until March 15 to submit a plan
showing why the college should not lose its
accreditation this summer.
The union has taken the show-cause
sanction and the resulting process to retain
accreditation very seriously, says Alisa Mess-
Stephen Lam Photo
City College of San Francisco community asks: Where did the $16 million go?
er, AFT 2121 president. “We’ve Nearly 75 percent of
been fully engaged in the col- voters said yes to a tax
to support City College.
lege’s joint work to respond to
the sanction,” she reports, citing in part hundreds of hours spent in committee work, assessments and meetings.
“We’ve also sought to deepen the dialogue
and call into question top-down administrative actions in the name of accreditation that
will downgrade working and learning conditions and the educational quality of the institution.” ACCJC will hold hearings in June and
make its decision in July.
In the meantime, AFT 2121 is organizing.
It is preparing members for a job action and
preparing the community to fight for an education it has shown that it values.
5
AFT raises its healthcare voice
ditions they need to advocate for the
people they serve.”
Barbara Crane, a registered nurse
and president of the NFN, says, “A
strong voice for nurses is particularly
important now in this time of transition, when America’s healthcare system is
being redesigned.”
The NFN is active in Montana, Ohio, Oregon and Washington state. The affiliation
agreement maintains the organization’s autonomy and structure, and provides substantial resources for growth and development of
the NFN’s membership. The NFN’s constituents will continue membership in their state
and national organizations, as well as in the
American Nurses Association.
The agreement also means affiliation
within the AFL-CIO, and it represents a major development in the healthcare professions at a time when nurses need a voice in
In a significant boost for our union, for
nurses, for patients and for patient care, the
AFT announced on Feb. 14 that it has joined
into an agreement with the National Federation of Nurses that will result in the affiliation
of 34,000 registered nurses. The AFT has 1.5
million members, 48,000 of whom are nurses,
and thousands more who work in other
healthcare professional fields.
“Both educators and nurses are nurturers.
This partnership solidifies the unity between
those who nurture body and mind—those
who heal our communities with those who
educate our children,” says AFT president
Randi Weingarten. “But nurturers need muscle to advocate on behalf of the students and
patients they serve. The affiliation is great
news for nurses, their patients and patient
care. It is a partnership based on mutual interests, mutual respect, and a mutual desire to
provide our members with the tools and con-
NFN photo
National Federation of Nurses is newest affiliate
implementing the Washington nurses will
Affordable Care Act swell the union—and their
voices—under the new
effectively.
affiliation agreement.
Speaking to the
New York Times after the announcement, Weingarten pointed
out that the affiliation demonstrates the AFT’s
ability to grow despite legislative actions that
have weakened public sector unions in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
“When many people out there are trying to
write our obituary, this is a pretty big inflection point—this shows the opposite,” Weingarten said. “This will make a very big difference in terms of the size of the AFT’s voice in
healthcare.”
AFT applauds immigration reform plans
Urges protections for workers exploited under visa programs
AP Photo/Alan Diaz
The AFT supports immigration reform
plans that are circulating on Capitol Hill, but
is also calling for measures to protect workers who are sometimes exploited under
certain visa programs.
In January, President Obama released a blueprint
for immigration reform and the U.S.
Senate followed suit
with a bipartisan reform framework. The
plans present “a commonsense, compas-
Undocumented students
brought to the United States
as children are fighting for a
pathway to citizenship that
runs through college.
6
sionate, comprehensive immigration reform plan that provides a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented
immigrants who currently reside in the
United States,” AFT president Randi Weingarten says.
The president’s proposal “strengthens
our borders, ensures immigrant children
can go to school without fear, keeps families
together, and promotes safe and secure jobs
for all workers. His continued support of the
DREAM Act gives DREAMers the chance to
dream by giving hardworking students who
play by the rules an opportunity to pursue a
college degree.”
At the same time, the AFT and other
members of the International Labor Recruitment Working Group coalition will be monitoring reforms to ensure that recruited professionals, such as teachers, are protected
from abuse. On Feb. 5, the coalition released
“The American Dream Up for Sale: A Blueprint for Ending International Labor Recruitment Abuse,” which details abusive and exploitative practices by those who recruit
immigrant workers for jobs in the United
States. The report calls for a comprehensive
immigration reform plan to include measures to protect the rights of those who come
here under various work visa programs.
Three years ago, the AFT brought to light
the abuses of nearly 350 Filipino teachers
recruited to work in Louisiana. These teachers borrowed money to pay massive fees,
had their documents seized, and faced
threats and extortion. Their story was a
shock to the AFT—and a call to action. One
of them, Ingrid Cruz, is profiled in the new
report. Through a federal lawsuit pursued
by the AFT and the Southern Poverty Law
Center, the recruitment agency and its
owner were ordered to pay $4.5 million to
these teachers in December.
“The AFT and others in this coalition have
outlined a set of core principles for the kind
of treatment that any worker in our nation
should be able to expect,” Weingarten says.
“As our nation begins the essential work
of comprehensive immigration reform, we
must roll up our sleeves and put all the important issues on the table. It is imperative
that the agenda include reasonable regulation of the international recruitment
process.”
To see the full report on international recruitment,
visit http://go.aft.org/ILRWGblueprint2013.
AFT members join their communities
in tightening school security
From Columbine to Virginia Tech,
Northern Illinois University to Lone Star
College, Americans are not strangers to gun
violence at educational institutions. But the
tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School
has rocked the nation to its core, swaying
public opinion in ways that earlier shootings
did not.
After the shooting, the AFT hastened to
provide support to our affiliates in Newtown, Conn.: the Newtown Federation of
Teachers, the Newtown Federation of Education Personnel and the Newtown Federation of Custodians. Now, educators, families
and policymakers are evaluating what can
be done to protect our children and young
adults going forward.
Knowing that our schools will never be
safe as long as it remains easy for criminals
or the mentally ill to acquire guns, AFT
president Randi Weingarten, at the White
House Jan. 16, commended President
Obama and Vice President Biden for their
plan to reduce gun violence and promote
safety, including:
■ Banning sales of large ammunition clips;
■ Expanding background checks before gun
purchases, and cracking down on those who
lie on background checks;
■ Stopping illegal gun trafficking;
■ Banning assault weapons;
■ Enforcing gun laws, and investing in research on stopping gun violence; and
■ Investing in mental health services.
At the school level, schools are reviewing
and revamping their emergency plans to
ensure safe, secure and nurturing learning
environments. “Some schools may decide
that appropriately trained police officers are
necessary,” says Weingarten. “Other schools
may decide that more school guidance
counselors, social workers and psycholo-
Stand for safe
communities
The AFT is pledging to do everything
within our power to make sure our
schools, colleges and communities are
safe. We all have a role to play. Join
the movement at http://go.aft.org/
safeschools.
gists are needed. These decisions should be
made by individual school communities.”
Sadly, planning for gun-related emergencies is ground the higher education
community has already had to cover. After
the mass shootings at Virginia Tech six
years ago, when 32 people died and 17 more
were injured, colleges and universities
moved to improve their security procedures. Today, they are much safer places,
says Robert Spitzer, distinguished service
professor and chair of the Political Science
Department at SUNY Cortland. A member
of the United University Professions/AFT,
he is the author of The Politics of Gun Control, now out in its 5th edition.
The safety measures, he says, “include
the ability to call all phones on campus
(and all cell phones registered with colleges) to inform them of any emergency; campuswide alert systems (which often include
loudspeakers on top of buildings); improved training of campus police forces,
especially regarding how to handle “active
shooters”; placement of video cameras
around campuses; more programs to assist
and intervene with those having mental or
emotional problems; heightened awareness campaigns aimed at students to encourage them to walk in groups at night, for
example; and better lighting.”
When a shooter struck at Northern Illinois University just eight months after Virginia Tech, the protocols put into place as a
result of the earlier tragedy protected the
NIU community, said Sandy Flood at the
time. Flood is president of the United Professionals of Illinois NIU chapter, and was
involved, along with her members, in upgrading the emergency plan.
Cortland’s professor Spitzer adds that
“campuses should not become armed
camps, both because they are places of
learning, and because campuses are remarkably safe to begin with, as compared
with their surrounding communities.”
Weingarten also emphasizes that under
no circumstances should educators have
the responsibility of carrying weapons.
“The role of educators is to teach and nurture our children, not to be armed guards,”
she says.
Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
A shield against gun violence
Obama recognizes
public servant heroism
During his State of the Union address,
President Obama raised an emotional rallying
cry for Congress to give the victims of gun
violence in the United States a voice in finding
solutions. “We were sent here to look out for
our fellow Americans the same way they look
out for one another, every single day, usually
without fanfare, all across this country,” said the
president. “We should follow their example.”
Obama recognized Officer Brian Murphy,
who was the first to arrive on the scene when a
white supremacist opened fire on an Oak Creek,
Wis., Sikh temple, Aug. 5, 2012, killing six and
injuring three. Murphy did not consider his own
safety, recounted Obama, as he took 12 bullets.
He fought on until police backup arrived and
fellow officer Sam Lenda shot the gunman and
ended the shooting spree.
Both Murphy and Lenda are officers of the
Oak Creek Police Department and part-time
police science instructors at Milwaukee Area
Technical College. Lenda is a member and
Murphy a former member of AFT Local 212.
Murphy has not been teaching this academic
year. When he was asked how he managed to
focus on protecting the Sikh worshipers, Murphy
said, “That’s just the way we’re made.”
Lenda, a 1985 MATC graduate, teaches the
Active Shooter Training Course at MATC’s Oak
Creek campus. He helped to design and is the
range master for the campus shooting range,
which has been the training center for hundreds
of federal, state and local law enforcement
officers. “I firmly believe that my MATC
education kept the body count [at the Sikh
temple] down,” he says.
Like Murphy, he is humble about the
dangerous nature of his work as a member of
the Oak Creek Police
Department. “I’m just an
Photo above, Officer
officer who did my job,
Brian Murphy (in
no different from the 200
uniform) sat behind the
First Lady, with other
or so officers who
honorees for the
responded that day,” he
president’s State of the
told a local radio station.
Union address.
“No better, no worse.”
7
It takes a
Community
New York unions marshal
broad coalition to save hospital
that serves 2.5 million
By Barbara McKenna
Dianne Brown and her
daughter Jewel are
fighting to keep Downstate Medical Center open.
8
When Brooklyn, N.Y., resident Simuel Stevenson collapsed while playing
basketball, he was taken to a nearby hospital that diagnosed a heart problem.
As his family absorbed the news that the 19-year-old needed open-heart surgery, his mother, Deborah Stevenson, started thinking, “second opinion.”
“I took him straight to SUNY Downstate,” she says.
Turned out, Simuel was dehydrated and his heart was fine. Six years later,
his grateful mother still says the State University of New York Downstate
Medical Center saved her son’s life—or at least the needless pain and anxiety
associated with unnecessary surgery.
Downstate was a lifesaver for Dianne Brown, too. Her daughter, Jewel, was
born at Downstate 15 years ago with “congenital abnormalities,” as the
doctors said. She was missing crucial internal organs. Brown was told her
baby would not survive, but nevertheless, the hospital doctors, nurses and
medical staff did everything within their power to save her—multiple
surgeries, dialysis in the specialized
pediatric dialysis center, then a kidney
transplant.
Today, Jewel is a lovely young
teenager with a radiant smile. Her
mother is doing her part to save the
hospital that saved her daughter.
SUNY and the New York governor
have targeted Downstate for downsizing, privatization or possible closure.
On Dec. 6, 2012, Brown stood up at a
community forum in Brooklyn
organized by a coalition of labor,
faith-based and community groups to save jobs and medical services at
Downstate. She testified to the role of the hospital in her and her daughter’s
lives: “I’m here because I had nowhere else to go with Jewel,” she said.
“There’s a saying that it takes a village to raise a child. Well I say, it takes a
hospital to save a child.” And, Brooklyn residents might add, it takes a
community to save a hospital.
Bishop Orlando Findlayter,
right, helps deliver petitions
with 10,000 signatures to the
state Legislature in January.
The Voice/United University Professions photos
Rowena Blackman-Stroud, at
mike, is among the
community leaders taking
their case to Albany.
“We are facing the fight of our lives,”
says Phillip H. Smith, an AFT vice president and president of the United University Professions of SUNY, an affiliate of the
New York State United Teachers (NYSUT)
that represents 35,000 SUNY faculty and
staff—3,300 of them at SUNY Downstate.
The health hub of the borough
It seems unthinkable that the only public
medical center serving a population of 2.5
million people could be viewed as expendable—a candidate for closure. Here are some
more facts about the size and reach of
Downstate:
■ Downstate cares for 400,000 patients a year;
64,000 come into its emergency room. It runs
75 community health clinics and outreach
programs. As a state hospital, it provides
treatment to all, whether or not they have
health insurance or have the ability to pay.
■ As a medical school, Downstate has trained
more New York City doctors than any of the
other four SUNY medical centers in the
state—many of them people of color. More
than 1,700 students are studying to be doctors, nurses or other healthcare professionals
at Downstate’s colleges of Medicine, Nursing,
Public Health Related Professionals and
Graduate Studies.
■ Downstate is also a center for pioneering
research. It attracts some $60 million in research grants. In 1998, one of its scientists
won the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
■ Finally, Downstate is the fourth-largest
employer in Brooklyn. Of its 8,000 employees, 68 percent live in Brooklyn. It is gauged
to have a $2 billion economic impact on a
community that has been hard-hit by job
losses and foreclosures in the aftermath of
the recession and the meltdown of Wall
Street financial markets. Should the center
be closed, not only would the community be
deprived of ready access to healthcare, thousands would be put out of work.
A hospital put on life support
Downstate and the other SUNY health science centers reflect the pressures on all
healthcare systems in the United States, facing soaring costs. There have been hints of
political interest in privatizing public health
services for decades. But Downstate was
managing to keep its head above water until
the SUNY board made “the really bad managerial decisions to take over two hospitals in
distress,” says Rowena Blackman-Stroud, an
associate director of nuclear medicine and
UUP Downstate chapter president.
In 2011, a report of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s
Medicaid Redesign Team Work Group came
out with a call for Downstate to eliminate
inpatient services and transfer inpatient care
to one of those hospitals, Long Island College
Hospital. The same year, the governor’s budget proposed cutting the budgets for all four
of SUNY’s health centers in half.
Because of the patients they serve, the
impact on the Downstate community would
be especially dire. Central Brooklyn is a diverse area with high levels of poverty. Twothirds of the population is African-American
or from the Caribbean. According to the U.S.
census, one-half of families there live below
the poverty line.
“Other area hospitals would simply be
unable to handle the influx of patients if the
emergency room at University Hospital [part
of Downstate] were to close,” BlackmanStroud told lawmakers at the time. “Patients
seeking treatment for critical illnesses and
life-threatening injuries would be diverted to
distant emergency rooms. Travel times and
waiting periods to see medical staff would
increase dramatically.”
In labor-management meetings, UUP
“This move represents the
political abandonment
of black Brooklyn.”
—Karen Benker, United University Professions
asked that its professionals be allowed to
help design solutions to the financial problems at the center. But mismanagement and
a lack of transparency was the management
mode of the day. UUP was turned down.
Bringing in the community
Blackman-Stroud began organizing her
union and reached out to others representing
hospital workers, including the New York
State Public Employees Federation, an AFT
affiliate that represents nearly 800 nurses at
the hospital, and the Civil Service Employees
Association. Their coalition convinced the
entire Brooklyn delegation of legislators to
support keeping the hospital open, and the
state Legislature reinstated some of the
funds.
Last year, talk of “restructuring”—downsizing—began anew. This time, pink slips
and nonrenewal notices went out, and UUP
started losing members. Potentially, the impact of hundreds, even thousands, of lost
jobs on Brooklyn’s fragile economy would be
severe. It would have a ripple effect of unem-
9
To get the word out about
healthcare cutbacks, UUP
members attended
community events like the
West Indian Day Carnival
parade, above.
Downstate supporters
went to the state Capitol in
Albany on Jan. 8, led by
UUP president Phillip H.
Smith, at the podium,
right.
ployment, more foreclosures, families unable
to make tuition payments, and so on.
But the word was not out in the community.
“Very few people could take a 50 percent
cut in their income and survive,” says NYSUT
executive vice president Andrew Pallotta,
who is an AFT vice president. “Our SUNY
hospitals have suffered just that, but I doubt
anyone who has been a patient in these hospitals in the last two years would know how
much funding they have lost, because staff
members are meeting this challenge through
heroic efforts.”
UUP started broadening its organizing efforts, escalating actions in the community.
The chapter organized marches monthly,
demonstrated, and attended huge community
gatherings, such as the West Indian Day Carnival parade that attracts a million people. It
blanketed neighborhoods with fliers.
“We spoke at health fairs, tenant association meetings, at community board meetings,”
says Blackman-Stroud. “To apprise a huge
population is a lot of work, but people were
stunned” when they learned what was afoot.
Bishop Orlando Findlayter is pastor of New
Hope Christian Fellowship in Brooklyn and
also chair of Churches United to Save and
Heal, a coalition of 179 churches based mostly
in New York. “We want to keep quality healthcare here in the neighborhood,” he says.
That’s why Findlayter decided to jump into
10
the fight to save the hospital when a UUP member
reached out. Since then,
his group has held informational forums for clergy
and community members. “Our challenge is
getting the word out to people because many
of them don’t know what’s happening,” he
says. And every Sunday is an opportunity for
him to talk to his 200-member congregation.
Many members of his group have been involved in a variety of activities, from delivering
petitions to the governor and visiting legislators to rallying in Albany.
“The powers that be respond to numbers,”
says Findlayter. He is encouraged by the work
of the coalition.
Another year,
another budget battle
In January, Gov. Cuomo submitted his budget
to the state Legislature. Again, he proposed
cuts to the SUNY hospitals—this time, cuts of
32 percent. Again, the community coalitions,
led by UUP members and leaders, are rallying
to defend the healthcare services and save jobs.
UUP president Smith provided testimony
to the New York State Assembly Committee on
Health on Feb. 8, reporting that the restructuring plan at Downstate has already put hundreds of UUP members there on notice that
they will be losing their jobs by the end of the
summer. He warned the community could not
withstand another blow to its economy.
“Over one-quarter of the residents in
Downstate’s primary service area earn less
than $15,000 per year,” Smith testified. “A significant loss of jobs at Downstate would have
a horrific impact on Central Brooklyn—jobs
will disappear, homes will be lost, and small
businesses will shut down. Central Brooklyn
is already suffering from one of the highest
unemployment rates in New York City. It
would take years for the Central Brooklyn
economy to recover from the loss of more jobs
at Downstate.” Also delivering testimony to the legislators
was Karen Benker, a UUP member, physician,
and associate professor of health policy and
management in the Downstate School of Public Health, who explained the severe need of
Central Brooklyn residents for access to primary care. There are too few primary care
physicians practicing in the area, too few
people with insurance, and fewer with the
ability to pay. The structures of the insurance
programs that exist—Medicare, Medicaid and
Family Health Plus—don’t reimburse enough
to cover the cost of supporting primary care
practices.
“The powers that be
respond to numbers.”
—Bishop Orlando Findlayter,
New Hope Christian Fellowship
Lacking access to care, people don’t manage their health and end up seeking help in
emergency rooms. The toll is great—more
chronic diseases, shorter life spans, higher
infant mortality, greater need for highly specialized services and more suffering. Downstate is there for them.
To close the hospital, said Benker, or “turn
this public hospital over to a business corporation, … evades governmental responsibility for
providing the care that residents of Central
Brooklyn need and deserve. This move represents the political abandonment of black
Brooklyn.”
Blackman-Stroud notes that the health
professionals at Downstate are a medical brain
trust that can address the problems at the
medical center and set the stage for implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Closing the hospital now
would be a terrible missed opportunity, she
says, when the union has repeatedly offered a
solution based on collaboration.
Benker echoes that thought: Wrapping up
her remarks to the Assembly Committee on
Health, Benker said, “As the only academic
medical center in Brooklyn, Downstate is in an
excellent position to become part of a trial site
for an Accountable Care Organization under
the Affordable Care Act.” “It makes no sense for the state to take an
action that will so negatively affect a community that needs more—not less—state assistance,” says Smith.
___________
Adrienne Coles contributed to this story.
To keep up with the fight, go to
savejobsatsunydownstate.org and
“like” the organization on Facebook.
Court says recess appointments to NLRB are unconstitutional
Nevertheless, labor board will take up two important higher ed cases
The U.S. Court of Appeals ruling on Jan.
25 that President Obama breached his constitutional authority in making recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board
on Jan. 4, 2012, is “breathtaking” in its overreach, says AFT general counsel David Strom.
A three-judge panel of the court’s D.C. Circuit
found that the Senate wasn’t technically in
recess when Obama appointed two Democrats
and a Republican to the NLRB.
But the court went a step further than deciding the narrow question at hand—on the
validity of an unfair labor practice ruling that
came out of the NLRB after the recess appointments were made. The court added an interpretation of when the vacancy that leads to the
recess appointments may occur, holding that
they may only occur during a recess.
That interpretation upends centuries of
practice and, more immediately, throws into
question the validity of decisions coming out
of judicial bodies and government agencies,
says Strom.
The decision is “radical and unprecedented,” says AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka.
“The court panel interpreted the Constitution
in such a way as to deprive presidents of both
major parties of a critical tool they’ve used
hundreds of times over the years.”
“If you open the door totally to how many
individuals from any number of areas of the
federal government have been subject to recess
appointments, the impact is almost breathtaking,” says Strom. “Which is why the decision is
so disturbing. The court should have just based
its decision on the facts before it.”
More than 300 decisions that came out of
the NLRB in the past year are now in question.
Also, the board has before it two cases that are
significant for higher education. One is a challenge to the NLRB v. Yeshiva ruling, which
found that faculty at private colleges were
managers and not eligible to bargain collectively. Faculty at Point Park University in Pittsburgh have been pursuing a legal right to
unionize with the Communications Workers
of America since 2003. Last year, the NLRB
indicated that it would review the case and
asked for comments.
The other case before the board has to do
with the right of graduate teaching and research assistants at New York University to
unionize. They are seeking a reversal of a 2004
decision of the Bush administration NLRB that
ruled graduate employees at private universities were students, not employees, and therefore didn’t have the right to bargain.
NLRB chair Mark Gaston Pearce says the
board “respectfully disagrees with the ruling”
invalidating the president’s appointments and
will continue to issue decisions.
“We do not know whether this decision will
chill the board’s willingness to make precedent-setting decisions such as in Point Park
and NYU,” says Strom. “Nonetheless, the board
will move forward with its duties to decide
cases until this issue is resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
In the meantime, he adds, employers who
want to take advantage of the uncertainty the
Court of Appeals has created will have a new
tool to stall and obstruct workers’ rights. “The
Chamber of Commerce has just issued a memo
advising all members to appeal decisions to the
D.C. Circuit as opposed to the Court of Appeals
in the circuit where they are located. Then,
when they get the board’s decision, they will
argue that it lacks authority to decide.”
For-profit colleges put on notice
Welcome mat is not out in Milwaukee, after Everest College debacle
AFT 212 president
Michael Rosen
simone bonde photography
The city of Milwaukee, burned by a recent experience with for-profit Everest College,
is about to pass an ordinance that seriously
limits the amount of financial help new forprofit enterprises can expect from the city.
Introduced in the Milwaukee Common
Council, the proposal requires for-profit colleges to prove they are in ongoing compliance
with U.S. Department of Education regulations
pertaining to program integrity in order to receive financial breaks such as below-market
rates on land or building leases. The education
businesses would have to prove compliance
over the life of the loan or benefit.
The proposal stems from the rapid rise and
fall of Everest College, a part of a for-profit
chain owned by Corinthian Colleges Inc. When
the community got wind of the for-profit’s plan
to move in just blocks from Milwaukee Area
Technical College and a low-income housing
project, it mounted an opposition, largely
spearheaded by Michael Rosen, president of
AFT 212 at MATC, and one of the city council
members. But to no avail.
Everest opened in October of 2010. Less
than two years later, after students were failing
to stay long enough to complete their courses,
and with a 5 percent job-placement rate, Everest announced it was pulling out. Eventually,
Corinthian agreed to pay off all the loans of
students who dropped out of the college.
The ordinance is a legacy of that experience,
says Rosen. “Everest put a spotlight on the
bottom-feeder for-profit colleges,” he commented to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Another entity that is responding to the
Everest debacle is the Wisconsin Educational
Approval Board (EAB), which has been monitoring the influx of for-profit colleges to the
state in recent years. It is in the process of establishing performance standards related to
program completion and graduate employment for private trade, technical, career, distance learning and degree-granting schools.
The standards are part of an ongoing effort to
hold schools accountable for student results.
The EAB has created a Performance Standards Advisory Committee to study the adoption of a 60 percent program-completion rate
and a 60 percent employment rate for graduates. The committee, which includes EAB
members, state representatives, a University of
Wisconsin faculty member and representatives
of trade schools, will make recommendations
to the board at its June 2013 meeting.
11
The Iberia Federation of Teachers
and Support Personnel, with more
than 500 members, has become an AFT
affiliate five years after the chapter started
with just 12 members.
“Our overall goals are that we’re able to
have a voice for our profession and to work
with the district in order to make decisions
that affect not only the teachers, but the
students and the other staff members,” local
president Trasima Richard told the Daily
Iberian.
One reason for chartering the local,
Richard notes, is to have a local voice as well
as being part of the Louisiana Federation of
Teachers.
In addition to teachers, the Iberia
affiliate includes clerical, food service and
transportation workers. “When teachers
and school employees can share their
expertise and voice their concerns, they are
better able to serve the children,” Richard
told the newspaper.
MI
The Lecturers’ Employee Organization (LEO), which represents
1,500 contingent faculty lecturers at the
University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor,
Dearborn and Flint campuses, held a flash
mob in Ann Arbor at the Fishbowl on
Central Campus at noon on Jan. 30.
Donned in bright yellow LEO t-shirts, they
surprised the campus community by
singing and dancing to an adaptation of
Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.” As their
revised lyrics indicate, they seek “respect
for [their] teaching” via a contract that
gives them equal pay for equal work, good
benefits and job security. Here’s a peek at
their message, but watch the whole thing
at www.leounion.org:
What you want
Baby, we got it
What you need
You know we got it
All we’re askin’
Is for a little respect for our teaching
A little respect for our teaching
12
A flash mob of LEO supporters,
channeling Aretha Franklin,
show what they want at the
bargaining table.
A little respect for our teaching
A little respect!
its own First Book campaign. AFT Local 212
at the Milwaukee Area Technical College,
the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses &
Health Professionals, and Voces de la
Frontera kicked off their campaign on Jan.
6, with an event at St. Hyacinth Church in
Milwaukee.
After morning mass at the church,
children were treated to a reading of a
Curious George story in English and
Spanish. Volunteers then distributed 100
gift-wrapped books to the kids, provided
through the AFT’s partnership with First
Book. A nonprofit organization, First Book
has distributed more than 90 million new,
high-quality books to kids across the
country who otherwise could not afford
them. “We understand that investing in
early childhood education is really the most
important investment any community can
make. We want to give
Latino children in
every child in MilwauMilwaukee get
kee the opportunity to
bilingual books
thanks to a First
succeed,” says Michael
Book partnership
Rosen, president of AFT
between AFT locals
Local 212.
and the community.
ND
In historic votes on Feb. 2, the
North Dakota Public Employees
Association and the North Dakota
Education Association approved a merger
of the two organizations.
The combination, which will be known
as North Dakota United, will become the
state’s largest public employee union,
with more than 10,000 members. The
NDPEA is affiliated with the AFT, while the
NDEA is affiliated with the National
Education Association. “The creation of
North Dakota United is a terrific outcome
for the employees represented by this new
organization and for all North Dakotans,
who rely on the public services they
deliver every day,” AFT president Randi
Weingarten says.
“This merger brings together employees
who provide all citizens with the public
services—from schools to safe roads to
health programs—that are the foundation
of North Dakota’s quality of life. These
workers will gain a louder, stronger and
more united voice in their efforts to
strengthen public services, and that is
good for the entire state.
NDPEA president Gary Feist stresses
that the votes for merger were the
culmination of years of collaboration
between the two unions.
NDPEA represents more than 500
higher education members at North
Dakota State University, the University of
North Dakota and other colleges.
WI
In an effort to get bilingual books
into the hands of Milwaukee’s
Latino children, members from the AFT’s
higher education and healthcare locals
partnered with a low-wage workers and
immigrants rights organization to launch
Susan Ruggles/SLR images
LA
Marc Ammerlaan
STATELINES
LIFETIMES
There in a time of need
Retirees help colleagues recover from Superstorm Sandy
david grossman
WHEN SUPERSTORM SANDY had finished
ravaging the East Coast, members of the
United Federation of Teachers retiree chapter
took action. UFT retiree chapter members
were running an
Election 2012
phone bank when
Sandy struck in
late October, but
the devastation
that affected New Yorkers prompted the
union to turn the phone bank into a call center for UFT members in need.
Sheila Fishbane, who lives just outside of
Coney Island, was among the first to volunteer. The storm left her own house untouched,
but she was devastated by the destruction she
saw nearby. Fishbane, a recent retiree who
taught English as a second language, couldn’t
help others rebuild—but she could make
phone calls. “I was so happy there was something I could do,” she says.
For several weeks following the storm, the
volunteers returned calls from members who
requested help with all sorts of things, ranging from getting their paychecks to locating
supplies. Some members of the retiree chapter received training from the Federal Emergency Management Agency so they could
help members whose homes had been damaged file applications for federal aid.
“Most retirees understand the ins and
outs of phone banking; so when FEMA came
in, we picked things up quickly and were able
to assist members with their problems and
From left, retirees Betty
Gottfried, Joyce Magnus and
Sheila Fishbane helped AFT
members affected by
Superstorm Sandy move
forward in the aftermath.
help them move forward,” says retiree Joyce
Magnus. She lives on Staten Island, but her
home weathered the storm. Magnus, a retired
elementary education teacher, is active in the
retiree chapter and got involved because she
wanted to help. “The UFT is always doing
these kinds of things. It’s who we are. It’s what
we do.”
Some of the stories members had to tell
were painful to hear, but the retirees gave
them a sympathetic ear, says retiree Betty
Gottfried. “I don’t know how people we spoke
to were in such good spirits. It amazed me.”
Gottfried, who taught adult education, is a
regular volunteer for the retiree chapter. She
was particularly pleased to take part in the
Superstorm Sandy relief effort. “I have many
friends who were affected by the storm, and
it was good to see everyone pull together. This
was a very collegial effort.”
The retirees continued their involvement
by joining union members from Baltimore,
Philadelphia, Connecticut and other parts of
New York state who gathered in New York
City to lend a hand with stuffing 30,000 backpacks for students in need. They also participated in a program they named “Adopt a
Class” during the December holidays. The
retiree chapter collaborated with several organizations to provide 548 children at Public
School 188 with gifts.
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13
MAILBOX
Trade-offs between ‘eff’ and ‘eff’
Learning and teaching online are not about
maximizing efficiency. They are about
maximizing effectiveness of the learning
experience. (We instructional designers are
always thinking about trade-offs between
“eff and eff,” as I like to say.)
I have two observations. We—in colleges
and in society at large—don’t always help
students to become discriminating caretakers of their own education. I see it all too
often in the DL classes I help to create:
Many students just want an “easy” learning
experience. Let me do the reading, submit
the homework assignment, take the online
quiz, and move on to the next unit. They
don’t realize how much they are shortchanging themselves!
As faculty, we become complicit in the
problem when we create really facile
learning experiences for students. I think
one of the reasons administrators are
salivating over MOOCs is that instructors
haven’t set the bar high enough, allowing
many administrators to think that minimal
feedback is just fine. We who teach and
who care about education clearly need to
do a better job of defining and highlighting the unique value we add; otherwise
we’ll always be in danger of being replaced
Thank you for the terrific Technology
column in the January-February 2013 issue,
“The Myth about Online Courses.” I teach
as an adjunct professor at Stony Brook
University. Maybe it’s because I teach in the
College of Business, or because I get to
work alongside technology startups in my
full-time job, but Eaton’s commentary was a
welcome addition to the ongoing conversation that is taking place at Stony Brook, and
elsewhere, on the subject of Massive Open
Online Courses (MOOCs). I will continue to
be an avid reader of AFT, and look forward
to more informed debate regarding the use
of technology in the classroom, its potential
for distance learning, and the net effect
such innovations will have on college
research and instruction.
—Justin Belkin
Stony Brook, N.Y.
I work in the distance learning department
of my community college and have become
an avid reader of the Technology column
for the past year. You’ve really hit on an
important issue that we who work in DL
and who teach online need to champion:
by MOOCs and other terrible ideas.
Thanks for getting my cognitive engine
running and please keep on sharing your
great ideas and thoughts with us.
—Peter Seaman
Portland, Ore.
AFT On Campus welcomes letters to the editor. They can be
sent to Editor, AFT On Campus, 555 New Jersey Ave. N.W.,
Washington, DC 20001, or e-mailed to online@aft.org.
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14
YOUR MONEY
You really could save more
BY DON KUEHN
WHEN WALL STREET closed the books on
2012, every domestic stock market index
showed significant gains for the year. The Standard & Poor’s 500 was up 13.4 percent, the
NASDAQ composite topped the list at 15.9, the
Russell 2000 small-company index gained 14.6
and the benchmark Dow rose 7.3 percent.
All of this in spite of the lingering recession,
crises in Europe, the “fiscal cliff” debate, a
stubborn unemployment picture and the dayto-day calamities fabricated by the 24-hour
newsmongers.
Over the years, I have urged you to get involved in no-load, low-cost mutual funds. But
you may be among those who say, “Sure, easy
for you to say, but where am I going to get the
money to do that?”
Take inventory. You can save by buying
electronic accessories online rather than retail, or not using dry cleaners when other options would be as effective. Programmable
thermostats, multipolicy insurance disFor an expanded version of this article, go to:
www.aft.org/publications/your_money.
counts—small potatoes. Here are a few other
ways to save:
Cigarettes and alcohol are on many people’s saving agendas, as are cell phone contracts with too-large data plans and premium
cable channels. Rent movies, keep your tires
fully inflated, mow your own lawn, and turn
down the thermostat on the water heater. Save
on stamps by paying bills online. Sign up online at sites like Groupon or LivingSocial to
save on restaurants, entertainment and other
services.
My mother used to love getting her hair
done at the beauty school. It was inexpensive,
the students were closely monitored, and she
felt like a queen when she left. By the way,
there are similar places where you can get
your pet groomed.
But the biggies are saving your next salary
increase before you get used to having it, paying off your mortgage early, paying cash for
your next car, saving until you can pay cash
rather than using a credit card. If you must
borrow, shop around for the lowest rates. Try
the credit union or online banks. Never—
I repeat, never—use payday loans or title loans
to meet short-term needs. For long-term
loans, like mortgages or car loans, check the
local newspaper and do the math to decide
between low rates or discounted prices.
Speaking of cars, if yours is more than 10
years old you can probably cancel your collision coverage because it would cost more to
repair the car than it’s worth. Keep personal
injury and property damage coverage.
The point? It’s your money. Saving a little
bit each week or month can put you in a position to open your first no-load mutual fund.
Developing good spending and saving habits
can put you on the road toward an investment
portfolio of funds that yields returns like we
saw in 2012.
________
Don Kuehn is a retired AFT senior national
representative. For specific advice relative to your
personal situation, consult competent legal, tax or
financial counsel. Comments and questions can be
sent to dkuehn60@yahoo.com.
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15
TECH NOTES
Faculty views of online ed The
recent survey conducted by the Babson
Survey Research Group shows that faculty are
skeptical about rapid expansion into massive
open online courses (MOOCs) offered by
others and into online offerings as a central
part of long-term academic planning. The
survey, “Changing Course: Ten Years of
Tracking Online Education in the United
States,” provides insights from the point of
view of chief academic officers at 2,800
colleges and universities:
■ MOOCs are not ready for prime time
Academic leaders remain unconvinced that
MOOCs represent a sustainable method for
offering online courses, but they do believe
MOOCs provide an important means for
institutions to learn about online pedagogy.
Also, they worry that credentials received for
MOOC completion will cause confusion
about higher education degrees.
TECHNOLOGY
Education ain’t iterative
Faculty concerns about MOOCs
By Cynthia Eaton
I’m not anti-MOOC.
I see the value in the massive, providing access to thousands of learners worldwide
who might otherwise have no
access to higher education. I fully believe in
the open, providing free educational opportunities to these learners regardless of institutional affiliation. And the online course
part comes naturally to me; I’ve taught online
literature and composition courses for the
past 12 years.
But there are MOOCs, and there are
MOOCs. Stephen Downes, who with George
■ Online learning is critical to longterm strategy Ten years ago, half of survey
respondents said online education was
critical to their long-term strategies. Now 70
percent say so.
■ Students are warming to online
classes While enrollments overall in higher
ed are stagnant, in online education, they’re
booming. This year, one-third of all students
were taking at least one online course at the
time of the survey. That’s at an all-time high.
Chief academic officers say that while the
number of programs and courses online
continues to grow, faculty acceptance of this
learning modality has actually decreased
since 2004. Only 30.2 percent of CAOs believe
their faculty accept the value and legitimacy
of online education.
■ Online teaching takes more time and
effort The CAOs say faculty find teaching
online course asks more of them than
teaching face to face. At nonprofit institutions, the percentage reporting that has
increased from 41.4 percent in 2006 to 44.6
percent this year. At for-profits, the number
is reversed, with 31.6 percent in 2006 saying
it was harder, compared with 24.2 percent
who said that in 2012.
■ Barriers to adoption Academic officers
have two major concerns about the ability of
their institutions to fully adopt online
learning: Students who enroll in these
courses need greater discipline, and, related
to that, the courses have to address ways to
improve retention.
16
David Cutler
■ Most faculty don’t see value of online
tive process. That is, in the xMOOC universe,
education becomes a procedure in which
learners repeat specific steps to achieve a
desired outcome on a computerized summative assessment. If they achieve the outcome,
they advance to the next computerized assessment. If they don’t, they repeat the loop
until they pass the test.
But for Clarke, the single greatest threat to
the faculty’s role as instructional leader is the
use of adaptive assessments in these courses.
Adaptive assessments are increasingly popular among data-driven obsessed administrators—and they’re big business for the testmaking companies. These electronic exams
present a student with an initial
question, which if answered correctly is followed by a more difficult question. Increasingly
difficult questions continue to
appear until the student seems
to have reached his or her highest level of ability. If the student
responds incorrectly, less difficult questions appear until the
student seems to have reached
his or her lowest level of ability—
a process called bracketing.
Marketed as being able to
provide the “extremely accurate” data administrators so
long for, they present an enticing method for MOOC managers to resolve the tricky issue of
having a single faculty member grade thousands of students simultaneously. There
seems little concern about whether they
genuinely assess what students know, if students can apply their knowledge in realworld situations, and—most importantly—
why students respond to questions as they
do; these things aren’t as neatly packaged
into data sets.
And the troublesome underlying assumption behind all standardized tests, of course,
is that there’s one right answer for every
question.
Siemens led one of the very first MOOCs, has
popularized the terms “cMOOC” to identify
the original MOOCs—which are learning
experiences based upon connectivist educational philosophies—and “xMOOC” to refer
to the more recent corporate version represented by Coursera and its ilk.
I’ve no problem with cMOOCs. As I speak
with faculty about xMOOCs, however, I hear
a great deal of concern.
Charlie Clarke of Monroe Community
College, for example, recently chatted with
me about the push to get college credit for
xMOOCs and about the Gates Foundation
grants to develop MOOCs for developmental
math and writing courses.
The problem, we agreed, is the way in
which MOOCs reduce education to an itera-
___________
Cynthia Eaton is associate professor of English at
Suffolk County (N.Y.) Community College and a
distance education mentor for her union, the Faculty
Association of SCC. Send comments to her at
cynthia@fascc.org.
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