Corporate Education Reform Hits San Francisco Community College

Corporate Education Reform Hits San Francisco Community College

Tuesday, 19 March 2013 14:53
By David Bacon, Truthout | Report


On March 14, the day before the trustees at San Francisco Community College District handed in the report that may decide the life or death of California's largest community college, student and faculty marchers headed downtown to City Hall. A sinuous line of hundreds of chanting, banner-waving people stopped traffic on Mission Street, the main artery through the city barrio. Their mood combined equal parts of desperation at the prospect of the closure of the school, and anger and defiance at the kinds of changes that authorities are demanding to keep it open.

Shanell Williams, urban studies major and president of the Associated Students at SFCC, told a rally at the march's starting point on the college's Mission campus that the required changes are part of a larger effort to turn students into commodities and move toward the privatization of education. "Next year, students will be affected by the Student Success Act," she warned. "Every student will have to have an education plan; there will be repeat limits, and a 90-credit cap on the Board of Governors fee waiver (that allows poor and working-class students to petition to waive tuition fees). Now is the time when they need more student services and support from the administration, but they're cutting part-time counselors and taking other actions that will be even greater barriers."

Closing San Francisco Community College became a possibility last spring, when the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) sent a team to San Francisco as part of a six-year accreditation cycle. The district, the largest public school system in California, had been warned earlier about deficiencies and knew there would be problems. With 85,000 students and 1,650 faculty and an annual operating budget of $200 million, SFCC had never been sanctioned. But under the impact of cuts in state funding, last year it had a deficit of $6 million.

In July 2012, commissioners released a set of findings that found the district deficient in 14 areas and put the district on "show cause" status, the most serious sanction short of shutting down the college entirely. The commission gave the college credit for a very diverse faculty and high-quality libraries and counseling. Commissioners said, however, that the college's governance, planning and leadership were inefficient and that it had not documented adequately a set of assessments called "student learning outcomes." ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/15213-corporate-education-reform-hits-san-francisco-community-college