The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights announced today that it will subpoena the records of 19 higher education institutions, including Shepherd University, in the Washington, DC area to determine whether those institutions discriminated against female applicants for undergraduate admission in violation of Title IX. As discussed in a post several months ago, men are becoming a scarcer commodity in higher education, and I’d be surprised if it weren’t the case that at least a few of these institutions have de facto affirmative action programs for men to counterbalance that trend, which would violate Title IX if it can be proven.
16 December 2009
15 December 2009
As someone responsible for overseeing a higher education personnel study for three long, miserable years, I read with interest the Charleston Daily Mail‘s story about state employees being asked to update their position descriptions as part of a (desperately needed) personnel system overhaul.
Position descriptions are critical to any effort to classify, compensate, or set performance expectations. Despite this rather obvious fact, I received no support whatsoever for my efforts to get position descriptions updated across higher education. To the contrary, numerous efforts were undertaken to ensure that I was stopped as several human resources “professionals” asserted with straight faces that higher education as we knew it would cease to exist if such a radical idea were not checked.
As a result, state employees will have up-to-date position descriptions come February, while higher education employees (also state employees) will not. It’s amazing what a little leadership can accomplish.
15 December 2009
First three posts from this morning’s New York Times home page RSS feed:
- Three sites hit by bombs in Baghdad. A series of apparently coordinated car bombs exploded on Tuesday morning, killing at least four people and wounding 14 others ….
- Bomber strikes near hotel in Kabul. A blast killed at least eight people and wounded 40 more outside a hotel frequented by foreigners ….
- Bomb explodes in central Pakistan. A suspected car bomb ripped through a market near the home of a politician in central Pakistan on Tuesday, killing at least 10 people and wounding 25 others ….
There’s something happening here.
What it is ain’t exactly clear.
There’s a man with a gun over there.
Telling me I got to beware.
It’s time to stop, hey what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down.
14 December 2009
Last Tuesday a United States District Judge in Maryland effectively shut down Invenergy’s Greenbrier County wind turbine project, at least for a while, because of concerns about an endangered species called the Indiana bat. Several observations:
1) This decision is not likely to play well in Peoria or Parkersburg:
- Why should a West Virginia resident care about Indiana bats? Of course, they’re endangered in West Virginia; they’re “Indiana” bats.
- The environmentalists are no longer satisfied with shutting down fossil fuel production; now they’re shutting down renewable energy production, too.
2) Although this decision will not play well, it appears that Invenergy could have done something very simple – apply for an Incidental Take Permit – to satisfy the Endangered Species Act. Indeed the judge referred to Invenergy’s plight as “self-imposed.”
- Why do companies like Invenergy not jump through reasonable hoops like the Incidental Take Permit process?
- Invenergy is lucky that the bats hibernate from mid-November to the end of March, which means it can operate its wind turbines while it submits its permit request.
3) Even “clean” energy solutions sometimes raise environmental concerns, as this specific case illustrates. The road to a carbon neutral world is likely to be a long and bumpy one.
14 December 2009
Last week Dr. Tom Loveless issued a report about the effects of tracking – grouping students into separate classes based on achievement – and detracking on middle school students in Massachusetts for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
When I was a student in West Virginia, tracked classes were common, but that has changed over the years. The same trend has occurred in Massachusetts. Why? A concern that teachers effectively use tracking to stereotype and discriminate against students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
What does the study find? Controlling for socio-economic status, more tracked students perform at advanced and proficient levels, and more detracked students perform at failing or needs improvement levels. Indeed the more tracks your school has, the better students are likely to perform.
What schools are least likely to track? Urban schools serving mostly poor children.
Could our efforts to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds with detracking actually be hurting them? That is the real question.