WASC accredits substandard school?

Discussion in 'Accreditation Discussions (RA, DETC, state approva' started by SteveFoerster, Jun 4, 2004.

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  1. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Here's a direct quote from the Useful Facts page on the web site of the College of the Marshall Islands:

    Um, excuse me?

    -=Steve=-
     
  2. MichaelR

    MichaelR Member

  3. -kevin-

    -kevin- Resident Redneck

  4. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    You should have kept reading, Steve. The webpage gives a pretty good description of what newly hired instructors at the college will face.

    English is a second language for most students, the local school system is weak and Marshallese culture makes students unresponsive in class. (They don't like to draw attention to themselves, appear smarter than their fellows or contradict people of higher social rank.)

    I think that part of the function of community colleges is to provide educational opportunities to adults on an open admissions basis. That means that they have to deal with people who are poorly prepared for higher education. So community colleges routinely provide remedial instruction of various sorts.

    I think that the page was warning prospective instructors that the College of the Marshall Islands has to offer proportionally more sub-university level work, compared to colleges in the States. A new hire might find him or herself teaching high-school level classes.

    Here's the page for the College of the Marshall Islands' Develpmental Studies department:

    http://www.cmiedu.net/CMIcatalog/developmental_studies_program.htm

    None of this means that if a student takes first semester calculus at the College of the Marshall Islands, that he or she will learn stupid island people's coconut calculus. It does suggest that fewer students at CMI enroll in and successfully pass calculus. Those that do might have to take a running start at it, taking several preparatory math classes to get up to speed.

    In the same way, before you can teach university level English classes to your students, you may have to provide them with ESL work and help pull them up to high-school level language skills first. But if a CMI student does succeed in taking a university level for-credit English class, I see no reason to sneer at him or her and to consider the achievement inferior.
     
  5. Jeff Hampton

    Jeff Hampton New Member

    Yes, WASC should adopt the "Garrison Keillor Standard" and mandate that all accredited schools be above average.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 4, 2004
  6. Ian Anderson

    Ian Anderson Active Member

    "100 students at its Kwajalein campus"
    Most probably all these students are US citizens (US military or contractors). A dream job for me exists on Kwajalein but since I can't take my wife I had to forgo it.
     
  7. Ian Anderson

    Ian Anderson Active Member

    Re: Re: WASC accredits substandard school?

    I have heard two California politicians state quite emphatically that it is "unconscionable that 50% of high school students are below average".


    Also re the statement "Although an accredited part of the US community college system, the standard at the college, due in part to the English proficiency level of the students and in part to the Marshallese education system, is well below US standard."

    A problem with this statement is that there are no supporting statistics provided; "well below" what"? If the US standard is the 50% level (mean) then if this college is at the minus one-sigma level then they are better than 16% of US colleges.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 5, 2004
  8. Han

    Han New Member

    Doesn't this give creedence to the Professional accreditation needs i.e. AACSB?
     
  9. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    Re: Re: Re: WASC accredits substandard school?

    Thanks for the belly laugh.
     
  10. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    The page that Michael linked to appears to be filled with what at least superficially looks like Latin. I'd guess that WASC's Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges homepage has been hacked.
     
  11. MichaelR

    MichaelR Member

    huh.... Worked for me.....
     
  12. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    Then perhaps you might like to clarify what your point was in posting the link with the words "weird but true".

    It does seem to be the correct url for WASC's Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges. But when I click on it, I get a page that says:

    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. ...


    And on and on like that.
     
  13. MichaelR

    MichaelR Member

    Well, basically, I was saying that they are accredited by WASC. Why the link doesn't work for you is beyong me. It works for me. Everything is in English when I go there. Are you sure your turn everything into latin button isn't clicked? :p
     
  14. Mike Albrecht

    Mike Albrecht New Member

    I got

     
  15. Mike Albrecht

    Mike Albrecht New Member

  16. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    Re: Re: Re: Re: WASC accredits substandard school?

    It would be funny if Ian were joking. Unfortunately, I know of several California politicians who have this type of mentality toward education (and it shows in the kinds of education legislation that they foist upon our state).

    Tony Pina
    Faculty, Cal State U. San Bernardino
     
  17. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    In the county in which I live (Riverside, CA), only 3 out of 10 high school graduates go on to college. Of those three, two of them, on average, need English and/or math remediation before they are able to enroll in freshman English or college algebra. So 10% are demonstrably able to handle college-level work upon receipt of their high school diplomas.

    By the way, we are talking about high schools that are WASC accredited. It appears that at the secondary ed level, WASC may be accrediting many "substandard schools".

    Tony
     
  18. Han

    Han New Member

    I used to live in Riverside. The top two high schools with the largest percentage of teen pregnancy is found within Tiverside county. This makes the data skewed a bit. It may not be becuase of the level of teacing, it may be because of other priorities. At the high school I was involved with, one of my students had 4 kids by their senior yeara. The adminstration was working har dot try to make it not a "cool" thing, which is was considered by students at this high school.
     
  19. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    Good point. Riverside County does have an extraordinarily high teen pregnancy rate and there are cultural challenges when one tries to reverse this trend. However, some policies at our local schools (such as "minimum days", where students get out at 12:00 or 1:00 every Wednesday) seem to exacerbate the problem.

    Besides the low college attendance rate, the low achievement of those who do go to college is another source of concern. We have a county superintendent who likes to brag that test scores are up (and uses that reasoning to give himself a $10,000 salary raise each year--he now makes more than our Governor, Senators, Congresspersons or any top federal government official, including Colin Powell!), but our outcomes remain the same.

    I do not fault teachers and principals (those on the front lines) for these problems--we have this "one size fits all" system that does not fit for many of our students.

    Tony Pina
    Faculty, Cal State U. San Bernardino
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 7, 2004
  20. MichaelR

    MichaelR Member

    Tony,

    The one size fits all problem is only propegated by No child left behind.

    When I was doing desktop support for AISD I would go into computer labs and listen to the teachers explain to the children that they had to teach them the test (TASP) so they could pass and continue on. At one school, a prinicipal told a group of 3rd graders if they flunked the test they would be labelled as failures. What I want to know is what ever happened to giving teachers material and saying teach it any way you can as long as the children learn we don't care what methods you use. Now a days it seems that teachers are limited in what they can tell the kids and how they can teach it.
     

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