wrote a very provocative, insightful essay for the National Association of Scholars about the recommendations of the Student Success Task Force about how to revamp community colleges. In it, Clemens rips the recommendations as nothing more than "a power grab by the Chancellor and a profit center for software peddlers."
"The recommendations ... in fact have nothing to do with either real students or real success but if implemented, they will fundamentally retool the largest higher education system in the world. Their adoption by the BOG puts California in a familiar place: on a collision course with reality. Simply put, the reform scheme is pure behaviorist claptrap based on fictional students being taught in fictional ways by fictional teachers."
I've reported in the past how Monterey Peninsula College administrators, faculty and students opposed the recommendations, which would effectively discourage offering life-enrichment classes in favor of more academic courses such as remedial math and English. Both President Doug Garrison and Board President Lynn Davis wrote impassioned letters to the Board of Governors, opposing adoption.
Well, the recommendations indeed have been adopted and now are on their way to the Legislature for consideration. How and when will they become a reality will take some time, given how our bureaucracy works.
In the meantime, Prof. Clemens essay has brought the debate to the national arena: his essay was blogged about in The Hechinger Report and now is being discussed in the public forum of the National Education Writers Association.
To call these recommendations a sore spot is an understatement. And they'll remain so for a long time to come.
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