CUNY Academic Commons

Dear Commons Community,

For much of the past decade, the federal government  and the U.S. Department of Education have trumpeted the importance of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) […]

Dear Commons Community,

Arne Duncan is pulling back on several of the deadline requirements of the new Common Core program. As reported in The Huffington Post:

“In what some see as a tacit recognition of the […]

Dear Colleagues,

I have been asked to promote the Sloan-C Blended Learning Conference that will be held in Milwaukee in July.  I have been involved with it since its inception ten years ago and I can say […]

Dear Commons Community,

For-profit colleges and universities that were emerging as a major disruptive force in higher education are now being disrupted themselves. Due to a combination of federal government […]

Dear Commons Community,

Luis Urbinas, outgoing President of the Ford Foundation, has an op-ed piece in the New York Times today, drawing attention to the fact that many Americans especially the poor do not have […]

Dear Commons Community,

With one week remaining in its current term, the Supreme Court is set to hand down several high-stakes rulings in coming days.

The high court is first expected to rule in Fisher v. […]

Dear Commons Community,

Arrived yesterday on Nantucket for two weeks of beach.  Still working on my Internet connection but should have it resolved shortly.  Above is the view from the lawn on the beach […]

Dear Commons Community,

The worst fears of Chicago Public School (CPS) teachers and staffers were confirmed Friday when district officials announced it was laying off some 850 employees.

“Given the historic […]

Dear Commons Community,

As summer vacation nears and we start thinking about where to bring the kids or in my case, the grand kids, you might consider an exhibition, The Art of the Brick, at Discovery Times […]

Dear Commons Community,

The number of Americans graduating from college has surged in recent years, sending the share with a college degree to a new high, federal data show.  The surge follows more than two […]

Dear Commons Community,

I was recently ask to write a short piece on the commoditization of higher education focusing on for-profit higher education.  It was published this morning by evoluTTTion, an online […]

Dear Commons Community,

The backlash against high-stakes standardized testing in public schools received a significant boost yesterday when Governor Rick Perry of Texas signed legislation reducing the number of […]

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a short piece/announcement about a new research initiative funded by the Gates Foundation, to examine student experiences/perceptions of MOOC […]

Dear Commons Community,

In the wake of the growing outrage that the National Security Agency is engaged in a wide-ranging surveillance program of Internet users through a system called Prism, the world’s […]

Dear Commons Community,

Diann Woodard, President of the American Federation of School Administrators, has a post today exposing the philanthropic priorities of corporate-affiliated foundations. Her major point […]

Dear Commons Community,

Andrew Hacker, emeritus professor of political science at Queens College, City University of New York, and Claudia Dreifus, adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of […]

Dear Commons Community,

First we had Benghazi, then the F.B.I. investigation of journalist James Rosen for security leaks, then the IRS scandal, and now the collection of telephone and email records of […]

Dear Commons Community,

The online version of The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting on a study of student performance in a MOOC course offered at M.I.T.   The major finding was that online learners who […]

Dear Commons Community,

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents […]