Daily Archives: January 29, 2020

There wasn't enough red on the screens Wednesday to quality as a "sell the news" reaction, but the lack of progress on "good news" is a little worrisome.

Apple (AAPL) held onto its gains and managed to close up more than 2% at an all-time high, but there wasn't the wild chasing that would have likely occurred if the stock was less extended.

The Fed was about as dovish as could possibly be without actually cutting rates, but the market failed to gain any traction. Fed ChairJerome Powell, however, made it clear that the Fed will continue to expand its balance sheet into the second quarter of 2020.

The S&P 500 closed at the lows of the day on slightly negative breadth of 3,500 gainers to 3,900 advancers.

In the background is some continued concern about the coronavirus. Powell mentionedthe virus that is quickly spreading as a risk, but stated that it was too early to quantify its impact.

When the market has strong, positive news, but fails to make any real progress; that is a warning sign, but it is still early and we need to see the reaction to reports Wednesday night from Microsoft (MSFT) and Facebook (FB) .

Microsoft beat on both the top and bottom lines and is trading up initially about 2%. This is very similar to what Apple did last night. The test will be holding onto those gains as the news is digested.

Facebook is ahead, but not to the extent of Microsoft or Apple, and the stock is trading down sharply with a loss of around 6%.

The Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) is down following that news. We'll see how this develops, but the big risk here is that good news will not be enough to push this market even higher. The conditions were good for more upside today but market players used up plenty of energy for little progress.

Have a good evening. I'll see you tomorrow.

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Lack of Progress on 'Good News' a Concern for Market - TheStreet

With recent success in the expansion of North-South rail, in some ways it feels like there is momentum finally building for an East-West line. However, Gov. Charlie Baker seemed to throw some cold water on that last week during the opening of a handicapped-accessible platform at Springfield Union Station, saying that any East-West rail option would be contingent on favorable findings in an ongoing feasibility study.

An insight into what East-West is up against came in the form of a recent column from Boston Globe writer Joan Vennochi, who seemed to believe she had ventured out from the comfort of the metropolis into the wilds of Western Mass. Her piece, ostensibly about a possible solution to Bostons housing and congestion crisis, identified Western Mass as a possible new hot neighborhood of Boston that is, if anyone from Boston ever wanted to go to Western Mass. Its clear from the tone of her piece, which reads as if Western Mass were a Somerville-sized community containing Tanglewood, UMass Amherst, and all of Hampden County well within walking distance of one another, that Vennochi doesnt know much about the area.

Vennochi, who implied that most in Boston would view a trip to our part of the state as a mercy mission, came out to Exit 5 on the Pike on the invitation of state Sen. Eric Lesser of Longmeadow, a key East-West rail proponent. As Lesser seems to have figured out, she is exactly the type of person our part of the state needs to convince if were going to have a good shot at East-West rail. Vennochi quoted Lesser as saying that Western Mass needed evangelists.

As off-putting as I found some of Vennochis piece, dripping with the Boston-centric thinking she advocates dropping, I agreed completely with its central premise the Eastern and Western parts of this state need to be better connected than they are now. In some ways, the very fact that I found Vennochis probably well-meaning article insulting is a case-in-point Eastern and Western Mass feel disjointed. Meanwhile, they have a lot to offer one another: quality of life on the Western Mass side and economic opportunities in the East.

East-West rail would not solve every problem, but it would create more of a meaningful link, economically and physically among the different parts of the state. For my own part, I use the Pike a lot less since robotic cameras that investigative reporting has shown have been misused for surveillance replaced the toll booth operators. Rail offers the promise of a better, more consistent connection, provided that the ticket price is affordable.

East-West rail is something to keep an eye on, and I encourage all interested to attend a public meeting next month on Wednesday, Feb. 12, from 6 to 8 p.m. at UMass Center at Springfield, 1500 Main St., Springfield.

Last year, David Daley wrote in the Advocate about how tax preparation giants, including H&R Block and Intuit (which owns TurboTax), had used their lobbying power to effectively kill the countrys free file program. By law, those who make less than $66,000 per year should have access to a free tax filing program. However, as ProPublica reported, those free filing programs were hidden from Google and other search engines and very difficult to find.

With tax season approaching, ProPublica last month reported that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has reformed the free file program following the news organizations reporting. Companies can no longer hide their free products from search engines and the IRS dropped an agreement not to compete with TurboTax. Free tax programs are subject to different requirements, but the program can now easily be found at https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile. Thanks, investigative reporting! And happy tax filing.

Dave Eisenstadter can be reached at deisen@valleyadvocate.com.

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Editorial: The slow progress of East-West rail - Valley Advocate

Key lawmakers maintainedTuesday that they are makingprogress in their efforts to put together the country's first comprehensive online privacy bill after hitting several bumps in Congress late last year.

At the tech-funded State of the Net conference in Washington, D.C., lawmakers on the relevant House and Senate committeessignaledtheyaregrapplingwith the same obstacles that resulted in Democrats and Republicans putting out separate versions of a privacy bill last year but insistedthey're still dedicated tobipartisan negotiations.

"Im continuing to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to get a bill that will get us across the finish line," Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger WickerRoger Frederick WickerHillicon Valley: UK allows Huawei to build 5G in blow to Trump | Lawmakers warn decision threatens intel sharing | Work on privacy bill inches forward | Facebook restricts travel to China amid virus Lawmakers claim progress on online privacy bill GOP senator asks tech audience for sympathy over Trump impeachment trial's no phone rule MORE (R-Miss.) said during his keynote address.

Last year, Wicker and his Democratic counterpart on the committee, ranking member Sen. Maria CantwellMaria Elaine CantwellHillicon Valley: UK allows Huawei to build 5G in blow to Trump | Lawmakers warn decision threatens intel sharing | Work on privacy bill inches forward | Facebook restricts travel to China amid virus Lawmakers claim progress on online privacy bill Senators fret over lack of manpower to build 5G MORE (D-Wash.),offered dueling versions of legislation to create more privacy for Americans online. Cantwell's legislation "was a pretty goodbill," Wicker said, but "any privacy bill will need bipartisan support to become law."

Cantwell, alongside a group of Democratic members of the committee, released a proposal in December that included several provisionsseen as non-starters for Republicans. Cantwell's bill would allow individuals to sue companies for violating their privacy rights, a provision called the "private right of action," while Wicker's bill would not allow individual people to sue.

Meanwhile,Wickers bill would override any state privacy laws, including the tough California law that went into effect in January, a provision that has been the target of Democratic skepticism.

"Theres always room for conciliation and compromise," Wicker told reporters on Tuesday afternoon as he defended his bill. "Clearly, theres going to have to be some give-and-take. I think everyone wants a good, strong protection for consumers."

Meanwhile, the top Republicanworking on acomprehensive privacy bill in the House, Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (Wash.), acknowledged "other efforts" to work up a privacy bill "have fallen apart this Congress."

"But it needs to happen," McMorris-Rodgers, the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee focused on privacy, said during a discussion at the conference.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee in December unveiled afirst draft oftheir bipartisanfederal privacy bill, though they left several controversial issues off the table. They have solicited broadfeedback on the staff-level draft over the past month.

The chairwoman of the consumer protection subcommittee, Rep. Jan SchakowskyJanice (Jan) Danoff SchakowskyHillicon Valley: UK allows Huawei to build 5G in blow to Trump | Lawmakers warn decision threatens intel sharing | Work on privacy bill inches forward | Facebook restricts travel to China amid virus Lawmakers claim progress on online privacy bill House Democrats may call new impeachment witnesses if Senate doesn't MORE (D-Ill.), saidthey have received over 90 comments so far "and they're still coming in."

"A lot of people on all sides are really not happy," Schakowsky said. "We're in the process right now of processing all of that."

Continue reading here:

Lawmakers claim progress on online privacy bill | TheHill - The Hill

Mediation over Puerto Ricos central government debt is making progress, a Puerto Rico Oversight Board attorney said Wednesday.

Puerto Rico bankruptcy judge Laura Taylor Swain ordered parties involved with the central government debt types to go into mediation in July.

Board attorney Martin Bienenstock said it was possible that in the coming month there would be an announcement manifesting mediation progress. Bienenstock, a partner at Proskauer Rose, made the comment in Wednesdays Title III omnibus bankruptcy hearing in the U.S. District Court for Puerto Rico.

Bienenstock also said he hoped the board would make a Title VI bankruptcy filing for the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company sometime after March.

In the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, Title III lays out a traditional court-supervised bankruptcy process. Title VI lays out a process for creditors to negotiate and approve agreements before the board presents them to the court.

Also on Wednesday, Swain ordered some changes to how she will deal with issues around revenue bonds, with bonds from the Highways and Transportation Authority, Puerto Rico Infrastructure Finance Authority, and Convention Center District Authority affected.

Swain said that instead of holding a hearing about all revenue bond topics on Feb. 27, there would be a preliminary hearing on March 5 and maybe March 6 and that it would only covers issues of standing and security interest. She said she wanted a meet and confer meeting with parties by Feb. 7.

Swain indicated that she would push back arguments around lifting stays on litigation for the revenue bonds to a date after March 6.

Judge Barbara Hauser told the hearing that her mediation team planned to make recommendations concerning the treatment of the revenue bonds in its anticipated Feb. 10 report.

Finally, Swain gave leave to bond insurer Ambac Assurance to amend a motion concerning the application of the automatic stay to the revenues securing the PRIFA rum tax bonds. Board lawyers had opposed Ambacs motion to be allowed to submit its supplement.

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Progress reported in Puerto Rico debt mediation - Bond Buyer

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last week launched a new initiative designed to help the world's corporations put their weight behind efforts to achieve the 17 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the 2030 deadline.

SDG Ambition is the latest program from the U.N. Global Compact, a U.N. body working with businesses around the world to help them align their activities with the SDGs. Aiming to drive progress through the goals' last decade, the initiative is to provide organizations with a management framework to help them incorporate the SDGs into their normal business operations.

It also will provide guidance on how they can measure and manage their performance against a range of targets set by the SDGs.

"The global business community is not moving at the speed or scale needed to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals," said Lise Kingo, CEO and executive director of the U.N. Global Compact. "The goals will not become a reality without greater ambition as well as deeper integration within companies everywhere. We hope that SDG Ambition will establish a new normal for the global business community that is both bolder and more strategic in efforts to achieve the world we want."

The SDGs will not become a reality without greater ambition as well as deeper integration within companies everywhere.

Implementation of the program will be led by the U.N. Global Compact Local Networks. Located in more than 60 countries, the networks will enable SDG Ambition to engage with more than 1,000 companies operating in diverse industries across 40 countries, helping the firms focus their sustainability efforts on high-impact strategies and business models, the group said.

Launched in 2000, the U.N. Global Compact supports the global business community in advancing U.N. goals and values through responsible corporate practices. With over 10,000 companies and 3,000 non-business signatories based in more than 160 countries, it is the world's largest corporate sustainability initiative.

The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals were adopted by U.N. Member states in 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. They aim to provide a blueprint for progress against a broad range of benchmarks, divided into 17 goals, such as tackling poverty, gender equality and climate action.

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New UN Global Compact initiative aims to spur private sector progress towards the SDGs - GreenBiz

Last year, Publishers Weekly's annual salary survey showed minimal improvement in terms of creating a more diverse publishing industry. This week, Lee and Low, which conducted its own survey focusing on diversity in the book business in 2015, released the results of its latest update, for 2019. They were much the same.

The survey found that in the industry overall, 76% of employees who responded to the survey were white, 74% were cis women, 81% were straight, and 89% were non-disabled. At the executive level, 78% were white, 60% were cis women, 82% were straight, and 90% were non-disabled. Some other big takeaways: there's some more diversity at the top, but editorial departments continue to trend even more toward white hires, while the industry's interns are vastly more diverse than the industry itself.

The findings come as adult publishing finds itself mired in a controversy over one of Flatiron Books' top titles for the season, Jeanine Cummins's American Dirt, a book acquired at a competitive auction in a seven-figure deal that is written by a woman who identified as white up until recently and tells the story of two Latinx refugees. Many members of the literary community, especially those who identify as Latinx, have argued that the book and the massive publicity push surrounding it is not only in poor taste but is proof that a predominantly white industry continues to preference white authors over authors of color.

The controversy around American Dirt comes on the heels of another, at the Romance Writers of America. There, mass resignations, the cancelation of this year's Rita Awards, and a publisher boycott of the organization's conference followed uproar over the improper dismissal of the group's former ethics chair.

In children's literature, where the hashtags #ownvoices (which spotlights books where the creator and protagonist share a cultural background and marginalized identity) and #DVpit (which was designed to help creators from diverse backgrounds query agents and editors) have popped up over the past few years and have been buoyed by such organizations as We Need Diverse Books, these conversations have typically been more common. In the adult book world, despite efforts from such groups as People of Color in Publishing, these conversations have remained more in the marginsor at least more often comfortably behind closed doors.

While the American Dirt and the RWA controversies have certainly not been the first to rattle the publishing industry's hierarchy, they have been the most significant since the #MeToo movement began in 2018. And as the discourse on American Dirt continues on through a second week, it's becoming clearer that the conversations they have brought to the fore will not be going away.

"Until we all start to care about equity, we will not make progress, and any gains the industry makes will continue to be not statistically significant," Jason Low and Hannah Ehrlich wrote in their analysis of the survey. "So, the same questions that we asked four years ago bear repeating: How can company cultures be more welcoming for diverse staff?"

See the rest here:

New Lee and Low Survey Shows No Progress on Diversity in Publishing - Publishers Weekly

On days when Romeo Kamta has to go to his off-campus research station, it doesnt mean getting in his car and hitting the Southern California freeways. Instead, it means hiking about 20 miles through dense rainforest to reach the Bouamir Research Station, which is only accessible by foot. Kamta is the camp manager of the Congo Basin Institute, UCLAs first international affiliate that was formed in 2015 with in-country partner International Institute of Tropical Agriculture. Kamta is based full time in Cameroon, where he is rising young scientist.

As a public university filled with people dedicated to making a positive impact, UCLA has people like Kamta living and working in sub-Saharan Africa, partnering with higher education and nonprofit leaders, community members, the private sector, physicians, scientists, students and researchers to help them develop treatments and solutions to complex issues like malnutrition and environmental sustainability.

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block; Cindy Fan, vice provost for international studies and global engagement; Patricia Turner, senior dean and vice provost of undergraduate education; Charles Alexander, associate vice provost for student diversity and director of the Academic Advancement Program;and several other UCLA administrators and faculty, are in Africa from Jan. 27 through Jan. 30 learning more about the field work being done in sub-Saharan Africa, which includes projects in Cameroon, Malawi and Mozambique.

They also joined a UCLA delegation that included Abel Valenzuela, director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment and professor of Chicana and Chicano studies,at the Diversity in Higher Education Colloquium in Bloemfontein, South Africa, an annual interdisciplinary conference co-hosted by the University of the Free State in South Africa, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and UCLA. The tripartite collaboration established in 2014 aims to promote diversity and equity in higher education institutions across the globe through research, teaching and collaboration. This years conference, attended by about 70 people from five countries, focused on the ways many students, staff and faculty confront fragility and resilience in their daily discourse and interactions, and through media, politics and more.

UCLAs partnerships in sub-Saharan Africa have been incredibly successful in helping tackle regional issues to improve quality of life, Block said. As a public research university, it is important for UCLA to both share our expertise as well as learn from and collaborate with colleagues around the world for the advancement of society.

A large part of what has made these partnerships successful is UCLA employees who havededicated themselves to working in Africa full time. Here UCLA spotlights a few of them:

Chris Buck supports pediatric, surgery and family medicine residency training programs throughout Mozambique, as director of the UCLA-Mozambique Academic Partnership, which is part ofUCLAs Global Health Program. Buck, who is an assistant professor of pediatrics, also oversees the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLAs Partners for Pediatric Progress program in Mozambique, which started in 2008. At that time, there were 10 pediatricians and no pediatric surgeons in a country with more than 10 million children. Working closely with the countrys main medical school, the Eduardo Mondlane School of Medicine, and its adjacent teaching hospital, that number grew to 90 pediatricians as of 2019.

Dvora Joseph Davey, assistant professor in epidemiology in the Fielding School of Public Health, works full time in Capetown, South Africa, where she is principal investigator in a study looking at the effectiveness of the HIV-prevention drug PrEP in pregnant and breastfeeding women. The study is part of an NIH-funded Fogarty International Research Science Development Award. She is also an honorary senior lecturer in epidemiology at the University of Cape Town. Davey is one of more than 10 UCLA researchers and students conducting health research in South Africa.

Romeo Kamta is the camp manager of UCLAs Congo Basin Institute, which launched in Cameroon in June 2015. A partnership with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, the institute functions as a one-of-a-kind center to address the challenges of food and water security, climate change, biodiversity loss, public health and emerging diseases. UCLA biologist Tom Smith is co-director of the institute, while Matthew LeBreton oversees day-to-day operations in Cameroon, providing researchers an opportunity to study and test solutions to address deforestation, mining, fast-growing urbanization, poverty, poaching, lack of sanitation and clean water, infectious diseases and more. Embodying the idea that Africans are the greatest change agents for Africa, the institute seeks to end what has too often been a brain drain of African scientists relocating to more developed economies.

Congo Basin Institute

Ruksan Bose, education director of the Congo Basin Institute, assists a Baka elder in teaching Baka children. Bose works for the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, which UCLA partners with to run the CBI.

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Dr. Sundeep Gupta is the programs director for Partners in Hope, Malawi. In this role, Gupta oversees all UCLA and Partners in Hope public health program and research grants in Malawi, while also serving as the in-country focal point for all UCLA medical students and residents conducting clinical and science rotations. Gupta is also an assistant professor in the division of infectious diseases in the medical school and a part of the UCLA Global Health Program, which is led by director Dr. Risa Hoffman.

People from UCLA have collaborated with many others in countries throughout Africa to help make impacts in fields spanning health care to the arts to of course, scholarship.

Anne Rimoin, professor of epidemiology in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, has conducted research in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the past 18 years and her work has yielded several findings, including the emergence of monkeypox since the cessation of smallpox vaccination and the identification of new pathogens in animals and humans. In 2004, when Rimoin joined UCLA, she founded the UCLA-DRC Health Research and Training Program. The program provides training opportunities for U.S. and Congolese epidemiologists to conduct infectious disease research in low-resource, logistically complex settings. The Fielding School has a full-time research and training team, led by Rimoin, in the DRC that has been active for more than a decade. Rimoin also serves as director of the Fielding Schools Center for Global and Immigrant Health.

UCLA team helps create facility for Ugandan women who suffered childbirth injuries

Dr. Thomas Coates, founding director of the UCLA Center for World Health, which is now the UCLA Global Health Program, has directed community-randomized clinical trials in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Thailand to determine the impact of strategies for destigmatizing HIV community-wide, as well as led a prevention clinical trial in South America as part of a five-country effort. Coates, who is the Michael and Sue Steinberg Endowed Professor of Global AIDS Research within the infectious diseases division, serves as director of the University of California Global Health Institute.

David Gere, founding director of the UCLA Art & Global Health Center and professor of world arts and cultures/dance in the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, teaches courses in arts activism. Gere spearheaded the Through Positive Eyes initiative at the International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa.

Founded in 1959, the UCLA African Studies Center, which is part of the UCLA International Institute, engages a global network of students, scholars, educators, policy makers, entrepreneurs, artists and activists committed to research that makes an impact. The center, which enjoys an excellent reputation in Africa, strives to promote change based on collaboration with African partners, international colleagues and organizations.

The centers current initiatives Africas Readiness for Climate Change Forum and Refugee Worlds, Refugee Lives involve African educational, nonprofit, government and private sector partners. The ARCC Forum will convene at UCLA in April 2020 to elaborate on a collaborative green development agenda for the continent, including a five-year action plan. The forum will engage many Africans doing cutting-edge work in sustainable energy and development. The refugee initiative seeks to rethink the contemporary refugee crisis in Africa by approaching refugee camps as communities with the potential to solve the very problems they represent.

Future projects will focus how cultural beliefs affect the use of modern health care services in Malawi and the shrines, rituals, deities and dungeons associated with the slave forts that were sites of monumental human commodification during the Atlantic slave trade.

Students have also been involved. The six members of the 2019-2020 Sustainable Ebony Practicum Team are raising money via UCLA Spark so they can travel to Africa to work with Cameroonian locals on ebony production that is environmentally sustainable and helpful for local economies. This project is a collaboration among Taylor Guitars, Cameroonian locals and the Congo Basin Institute.

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and Africa: A history of partnership, a future of shared progress | UCLA - UCLA Newsroom

Welcome to this week's edition of "Transforming Teaching and Learning," a column that explores how colleges and professors are reimagining how they teach and how students learn. Please share your ideas here for issues to examine, hard questions to ask and experiments -- successes and failures -- to highlight. And please follow us on Twitter @ihelearning.

***

When I started this column this month, I said it would provide lots of practical advice and highlight interesting experiments (successes and failures alike) to help campus practitioners rethink their work to improve learning.

I still vow to deliver that -- eventually. But right now, I've got some big, messy questions buzzing in my brain that I need to try to work out, with help from those of you who are interested.

The one I'm puzzling over the most right now has emerged from recent conversations with a group of people who've been working on teaching and learning issues for a long time:

How can we align into a coherent whole the enormous amount of exploration that many individuals and organizations have been doing in classrooms, on campuses and in disciplines to understand and improve learning?

Let's break that question down into its subparts.

First, it's important to acknowledge the unfairness of the oft-heard criticism that college teaching and student learning has hardly changed for decades, if not centuries. Just look around.

At most colleges over the last decade or two, individual professors or academic departments have explored and in many cases embraced significant innovations in teaching format, curriculum or pedagogical practice. You can find scores if not hundreds (or thousands) of examples in publications like Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle, in presentations at disciplinary and accrediting conferences, and at a teaching and learning center near you.

Those campus teaching and learning centers have spurred faculty experimentation, and administrators have sought to seed those efforts with teaching awards and other incentives.

Associations representing a range of disciplines have promoted new methods tied to their fields.

Up a layer, organizations like the POD Network, the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment, the Association of American Colleges & Universities, and, before it, the now-defunct American Association for Higher Education have tried to build national networks of professionals interested in improving their own work and the learning of their students.

Foundations like Spencer and Teagle have a particular focus on learning, and if you widen the lens to focus more broadly on "student success," many other foundations are also funding experiments and initiatives aimed at understanding or bolstering college-level learning. (The most visible philanthropic players in higher education, Lumina and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations, do pay attention to the quality and amount of learning within their larger push for greater postsecondary attainment, but it often gets lost in the shuffle. Lumina's Degree Qualifications Profile was one particularly ambitious effort.)

And in the last decade-plus, the accrediting agencies (collectively, though with some variation) have significantly upped their efforts to prod institutions to set goals for what students learn and to show how and whether they are doing so. (More on that later.)

So, yes, lots of activity in lots of places involving lots of players.

***

Which brings us to a second assumption embedded in my question above -- that there is a need to "understand and improve learning."

(Point of clarification: Please remember that I'm very purposefully differentiating "learning" from the currently popular focus on "student success," which may include learning but tends to focus more on whether students complete their programs and earn credentials. As important as that is, it is insufficient as a way to judge the quality of higher education, as Derek Bok argued here. Earning a degree or certificate does not ensure that learning occurred; the macro-level question I'm asking in this column is, ultimately, "Completion of what?" What learning did a student gain in the process of earning that credential?)

Saying that we need to understand "learning" means that it is an important element of what happens in higher education, which I doubt anyone would argue with. But suggesting that higher education needs to "improve" learning is another matter: that implies some inadequacy or insufficiency in how much learning is going on right now.

Is that fair? The short answer is we don't really know, at least in any systematic way.

But key constituents of higher education -- many employers, some parents and students, and parts of the general public -- seem to be increasingly doubting whether sufficient learning is taking place on college campuses.

While concerns about affordability and campus politicization tend to top the public's concerns (depending on the political party), questions about whether students emerge well educated and the quality of education are also commonly cited in surveys of public attitudes.

In addition, consider this study showing that students think they're prepared for the workforce, but employers don't; this study showing mixed results on a wide range of learning objectives, including critical thinking and writing; and perhaps most importantly, a report on this effort by a collection of institutions to capture performance metrics in important areas, which concluded that the institutions produced too little evidence to try to gauge the quality of learning at the program level.

It's possible to reject the idea that college students aren't learning enough (or the right things) and still think that colleges, programs and individual instructors can do more to ensure that their students learn, and learn more.

Several recent studies, like this one, have found that practices that have been shown to help students succeed are often available only to small numbers of students. And administrators and faculty members at many, many campuses -- as professionals who want to be better at what they do, and who care about how their students fare -- invest time and energy in faculty development programs aimed at improving teaching.

***

A third assumption I made above is that it is either desirable or possible to "connect and align" the multitudinous efforts I've described into "a coherent whole."

What I'm envisioning is a unified effort, first, to better define the learning that we want to see in students; second, to develop better evidence about the extent of learning that is occurring, and to the extent that there's some good news there, as there almost certainly is, to make the case better; and third, to the extent shortcomings exist, as there also almost certainly are, to find agreement on how to fix what's not working and spread the use of what is to try to raise the bar.

At this point I can hear some of you echoing the words the president of a highly selective university said to me years ago when s/he insisted that a new pedagogical approach involving technology would improve the learning on his/her campus.

I asked "How will you know?" and the response came back, "Don't tell me you're buying in to that assessment crap?"

"Assessment" is a dirty word in some quarters of higher education, and for (some) good reasons.

Far too much effort and attention has been paid, critics (including many faculty members) argue, to what Natasha Jankowski of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment described at a conference last year as "assessment as bureaucratic machine." This approach often resulted, Jankowski said, in institutions slapping together ill-conceived efforts to try to measure something to prove to accrediting agencies or government regulators that they were doing so.

Rather than spending time on assessment "for them" (the politicians and accreditors that about half of faculty respondents to an Inside Higher Ed survey believe assessment is all about), professors and institutions should be focused on understanding learning for their own sake, and that of their students, John Etchemendy, former provost of Stanford University, said during the same conference session.

The goal should be more about checking "whether were teaching what were trying to achieve, and is the design still a good design, or maybe times have changed," Etchemendy said. "If we discover that our class is not working or that our students are not getting what we want them to get out of the class, then I would think we would all try to change it. Those are the good parts of assessment, and I think anybody can buy in to that."

The effort I'm talking about above does not involve the federal government. The administration of President George W. Bush tried that more than a decade ago, Congress blocked it (with the strong support of higher education) and the push stalled (though it definitely drew attention to the question of learning and lit a fire under the accreditors that are recognized by the Education Department. They, in turn, turned up the heat on the colleges they accredit).

Any new effort must come from within higher education and, ideally, be "bottom up," says Peter Ewell, president emeritus of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems and a longtime expert in the domain of student learning.

At the most ambitious, he envisions a consortium of organizations and institutions that view student learning as a priority and work together to create a "community of judgment," as the Quality Assurance Agency in the United Kingdom did more than 20 years ago. They might reach a common understanding of what students should know and be able to do to earn certain credentials, or to be deemed to have certain levels of proficiency, and then create a framework for judging whether institutions are helping their students achieve those levels.

More within reach, he said, might be replicating and expanding the work of the Multi-State Collaborative to Advance Learning Outcomes Assessment, an effort by the Association of American Colleges & Universities and the State Higher Education Executive Officers. It aimed to get professors from around the country to (a) agree on a set of general education outcomes and (b) use that rubric to judge actual classroom work from representative groups of students at colleges around the country. No standardized tests, no bright-line outcomes.

Adrianna Kezar, Deans Professor of Leadership and director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California, shares the view that too much work aimed at improving teaching and learning unfolds in silos, within academic departments and among diffuse organizations.

"It happens in these pockets, with no synergy," Kezar said. "There's great work on learning being done around student engagement and collaborative learning, and within disciplinary associations, and by groups focused on diversity. Why don't these communities speak to and learn from each other? Could they come up with a set of common things they're exploring and work together on them?"

A historical strength of the American higher education ecosystem is that it isn't a system -- there's no government ministry that manages it, and little to no formal organizing structures at the national level. That relative independence and decentralization has in many ways allowed higher education to flourish, through competition and innovation, over time.

On the flip side, it also makes it difficult to take ideas to scale; it's hard to bring about systemic change in a nonsystem. The existing structures all have their frailties when it comes to leading any kind of nationwide effort: national associations can't get too far out in front of their members, for instance, and the institutions that higher education often looks to for leadership -- the most selective and wealthiest colleges and universities -- don't have any incentive to focus on better measuring learning because they are already assumed to be the best.

So where might leadership on this issue come from?

One of the more fascinating developments of recent years in higher education has been the emergence of new "networks" of institutions formed to attack specific problems or challenges. Achieving the Dream, which focused on student success at community colleges, was one of the earliest; the University Innovation Alliance, a coalition of research universities interested in increasing college attainment, and the American Talent Initiative, selective institutions aiming to diversify their campuses, are more recent examples.

Might there be a new organization in the offing that can pick up the ball from all the good work that others are doing now (and have done previously)? Or at least better align their work into a more coherent strategy?

Or am I missing something that's already out there that could be a better solution?

Feel free to weigh in in the comments section below if you have thoughts to share. And thanks for reading.

Original post:

Can there be national progress on postsecondary learning? If so, who leads? - Inside Higher Ed

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Police are searching for a man who reportedly burglarized a store in Tompkinsville late on Tuesday night.

An eagle-eyed New York City Department of Correction officer witnessed what appeared to be a burglary and alerted police, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

A woman saw an unknown man apparently breaking into a grocery store at 111 Victory Blvd. at about 11:50 p.m. on Tuesday, according to a spokesman for the NYPDs Deputy Commissioner of Public Information. The suspect then exited the store and fled, police said.

Police described the man as wearing all-black clothing and a backpack.

A level-one mobilization was called for an officer needing assistance because the Correction officer was a witness, according to the source with knowledge of the investigation.

Emergency radio communications indicated that the search for the suspect lasted for hours early on Wednesday morning and the level-one mobilization was called off shortly after 6 a.m.

Read more:

Source: Correction officer reports store burglary in progress in Tompkinsville - SILive.com

A key issue facing businesses and citizens alike is how will our state capitalize on the current economic boom to prepare workers for 21st century jobs. Before analyzing Bureau of Labor Statistics data and their implications for policymakers, we begin by noting there is much good news:

STARS: Alabamas Original Alignment Program

When Sen. Jimmy Holley wrote the 1994 bill creating Alabamas Statewide Transfer and Articulation Reporting System, transfer was from one 2-year college to one 4-year university. Today, transfer is a dynamic process that integrates and aligns advanced placement, dual enrollment, and CTE credits earned in high school prior to college entry. Just a third of Auburn University and University of Alabama graduates in 2015-16 earned all their credits at these two universities. With half of all CTE credits at community colleges on Pell Grants, Pell can be considered a workforce training program. Nearly every high-wage, high skill job requires at least some credits beyond high school, which is why Alabama needs a better aligned systems across all P-22 education and our workforce training system to save students and families time, credits, and money. This is what the unsung hero of our states alignment efforts, the STARS program, does.

Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning: Volume 51 Issue 3 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00091383.2019.1606607

Lower Unemployment

Alabama had the largest percentage decline in its unemployment rate among all fifty states from November 2018 to November 2019. Alabamas decline of -1.2 percent was three times better than the national average of -0.4 percent. Our statewide unemployment rate of 2.7 percent rate was tenth lowest. Chart 2 compares the unemployment rates of the state of Alabama and national average over four decades. Every county in Alabama saw improved unemployment rates in 2019 compared to 2018.

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Labor Force Participation Rates

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Recent national publications have cited the diverging Alabama and Mississippi economies, which were two peas in a pod for nearly 150 years. For decades, the two were roughly six to seven percentage points below national averages. Then, in 2017, Alabamas labor force participation rate suddenly ticks up toward the national average, while Mississippis ticks down.

Alabamas investment explains why. Alabamas labor force participation rate was 56.8 percent in April 2017 when Governor Ivey assumed office. It has improved by 1.8 percent in just two and a half years.If Alabama gets to the national average of 63.2 percent, 196,000 more Alabamians would be working. This is roughly 40 percent of Governor Iveys target of 500,000 new Alabamians by 2025. However, we note that other states are moving forward too, so Alabama cannot satisfy itself by being average.

Moving Forward: Progress and Prospects

Alabamas Strong Start, Strong Finish program is comprehensive in sweep and scope that includes but is not limited to:

A statewide task force charged to create a pipeline of computer science teachers for Alabama schools was begun, and the first class of new computer science teachers graduated in 2019 (recent Praxis test results for the initial class are promising). Efforts to seamlessly integrate early childhood, K-12 education, and workforce development efforts, combined with new funding, appears to have accelerated Alabamas progress in 2019 and 2020. Today Alabama is a top destination for new business locations, and Kay Ivey is among the ten most popular governors of any state

Alabamas state-level investments build upon federal efforts led by Senator Richard Shelby in 2016 to make the Pell Grant program year-round. This was accomplished on May 4, 2017 as President Donald Trump signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017, which created a summer Pell grant of about $3,000 per student. Since Alabama has the lowest state-student aid program of any southeast state, federal student aid undergirds our states alignment programs, as Chart 1 shows.

Todays positive position is in part due to enactment a decade ago of the Rolling Reserve Fund, which sought to end the boom and bust education funding cycles. When combined with federal and state alignment efforts, Alabama is positions well. Todays challenge is to better align our education and workforce programs with services such as transportation, childcare, food security, and housing.

Alabama has built positive momentum to give our current and future workers the 21st century skills needed to compete in the global economy. K-12, community college, regional and flagship university, and independent non-profit education leaders are combining with our states workforce training system to create a seamless journey all the way through. Now, as the Alabama Legislature considers a lottery to fund universal pre-K and establish a statewide College Promise program, our future is limited only by our vision. Alabamas challenge is to match potential with possibilities for progress.

Stephen G. Katsinas is Director of the Education Policy Center at the University of Alabama and Professor of Higher Education and Political Science. Noel Keeney is a Research Associate at the EPC. Katsinas coordinated a visit by Alabama leaders, including State Superintendent Eric Mackey, Alabama Commissioner on Higher Education Jim Purcell, and ACCS officials to visit Knoxville to see the Tennessee Promise, in May 2019.

See the original post here:

Study | Alabama's Economy: Progress and Prospects - alreporter.com