SF City College to lose accreditation next year
Source: KTVU.com
"SAN FRANCISCO After undergoing months of scrutiny, the City College of San Francisco's accreditation will be revoked in a year, a regional accrediting agency announced Wednesday.
The embattled school's accreditation was scheduled to be terminated on July 31, 2014, according to the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges.
City College was placed on show cause status by the ACCJC last July and was required to file a report by March showing how the school planned to address problems identified by the commission.
The school was allowed to appeal the decision, and would remain accredited during the appeal process, according to the commission."
Read more: http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local/sf-city-college-lose-accreditation-next-year/nYdCR/
This is really horrible news.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)By the way, nice pre-holiday news dump, ACCJC. The decision was supposed to be announced last month. The repuke/M$M spin machine would be proud.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)No word yet on how that will affect this. I'm trying to get more info from Twitter.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)Some kangaroo court?
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)Despite City College's improvements the California Federation of Teachers is set on fighting the accreditation commission's decision. They filed a massive 280-plus page complaint to the U.S. Department of Education alleging that the accreditation commission violated many of its own rules in evaluating CCSF.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)Maybe they can convert the main campus into affordable housing. You know Arne Duncan's not gonna come down on our side.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)It's hard to say what will come of that though. Action or more strongly worded letters.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)When the Presidio was converted, didn't Dianne Feinstein get her special spot?
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)and why am I not surprised about DiFi (D-Who Needs Repukes?)
Hekate
(90,848 posts)Something really dirty is going on.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)I'm hoping this brings all the CCs on board. Have you read ACCJC Gone Wild? http://www.aft1493.org/component/content/article/168-accjc-gone-wild-in-depth-report-takes-on-accjc.html The longer report is linked in this piece, it is a PDF file.
Hekate
(90,848 posts)Hubby retired from 22 years teaching computer info. systems at city college a year ago and is back in the industry.
I'm a real believer in the California community college concept, as I went to one starting in 1965, transferred to university for my Bachelor's, and ultimately went on to earn a PhD in midlife. Classmates of mine took 2-year degrees in vital areas like nursing, accounting, electronics, and law enforcement, and went right out and got career jobs with good salaries.
The destruction the CC system has undergone has just made me sick at heart.
I haven't read the report at your link, but will bookmark it for later. Thanks.
Hekate
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)The CA CC system is really special and it makes me sick to see this happen to the largest one. I feel like it is a threat to the rest of us too.
Hekate
(90,848 posts)The local story is so tangled that I can't even begin to tell it on a public board, but the bottom line is that after we the community managed to elect a new Board of Trustees and they managed to get rid of a really bad president (if that's the right title -- I can never remember; the university has a chancellor, but not the cc) -- anyway, ultimately the accreditation committee came down like a ton of bricks to punish the Board by threatening to take away the college's accreditation, and as a consequence the Board was well-nigh silenced. It was stunning. And that's only the surface. And public.
My friend told me about the lawsuit, and I told him I hoped our cc would join, because something is Just. Not. Right.
roody
(10,849 posts)KamaAina
(78,249 posts)The Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges is expected to install a state-appointed special trustee as head of the community college. The trustee, Robert Agrella, has been advising City College during its yearlong struggle to remain accredited and in business....
Thousands of people depend on City College for a leg up into the middle class. The school produces hundreds of paramedics, phlebotomists, restaurant workers, nurses, firefighters, police and more each year that keep the Bay Area's economy humming.
Hundreds of other students earn credits for transfer to university, often the only way they can afford to attend college. The college is also a essential location for immigrants to learn English and for senior citizens to find intellectual stimulation through music and art, memoir-writing and useful classes like nutrition education.
"a essential location for immigrants to learn English"?
Robert Agrella : CCSF :: Kevyn Orr : Detroit.
Psephos
(8,032 posts)Your brush is too broad by several hundred miles.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)notably Flint and Benton Harbor.
Of course, we all know that those were just trial runs for the big coup in Detroit.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)How dare CCSF ignore Step #3? How dare they let mere faculty govern an institution instead of just reading to students from scripts?!
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)ForgoTheConsequence
(4,869 posts)But diploma mills like University of Phoenix and Kaplan get to keep their accreditation while ripping off the government.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)The complaints the ACCJC had were almost totally unrelated to academics too. This is pretty outrageous.
The chancellor of my own college released a statement this morning he was sure that CCSF had earned probation after the work they put in this year. This is like getting whacked by the mob.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)KamaAina
(78,249 posts)community colleges in CA are sometimes called part of "K-14" ed --and CCSF is the largest of them.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)Trust me, I'm no fan of the current administration's education policies, but they don't seem to meddle much with community college.
Student Learning Outcomes were one of the bones of contention in the whole discussion. It is part of the whole culture of "accountability" that has grown up in the dash to make academia more like business.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)i.e. not part of the state CC system. The obvious example is CUNY in NYC. And with that, it could even go four-year.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)Mayor Lee hasn't been much of an ally, from what I recall. They'd still have to deal with accreditation though.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)different accrediting agency without an axe to grind.
And since when has Mr. Ed been much of an ally on anything?
Hekate
(90,848 posts)The computer lab alone costs a ton in equipment that must be kept current. And you still have to have accreditation.
The pot of money that community colleges get their funding from via the State legislature is called the K-14 system for a reason: after grade 12, community colleges are saddled with all the remedial education students, not just the college transfer and vocational certificate students.
I was shocked to discover that our local continuing education program -- literally one of the crown jewels in this town -- was under the aegis of the community college. That only turned out to be a problem when the hammer came down and just shattered adult ed to pieces. I'm bitter about it, and so are a lot of other people in the community.
Hekate
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), which doesn't seem to be in the tank for the ed deformers the way ACCJC is.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)ACCJC has several other colleges under the gun right now too. I think CFT has taken the correct tactic right now of everyone going in together for a fight against the agency.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)"It was like trying to make a move at chess when you were already mated." -George Orwell, 1984
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)One at the main campus, another at the Mission and Bayview campuses, and a third for everything else (Chinatown to Hayes Valley). That makes it more like the Peralta district in the East Bay or the various districts down here in SJ (would you believe four districts in this one county??)
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)Whose numbers have been skyrocketing because Ahh-nuld gutted the K-12 system. That's why all community colleges, not just CCSF, are at the breaking point.
Igel
(35,362 posts)Numbers were rising before. They'll continue to rise after.
Schwarzenegger's actions are a small uptick on the long-term trend.
When UC schools dropped remedial courses or required additional payment, CCs saw an uptick in remedial students.
As tuitions have increased, more remedial students have properly gone to CC instead of trying CSU and UC.
As class size increased, it became harder to teach low-performing classes. It made them lower-performing.
As requirements have become more explicit and it's become less and less important for the level student to actually learn how to orient him/herself in new material, self-assess, and learn it, remediation's become more important at the college level. Or standards have dropped.
At some point I'm sure we'll lament how society has failed suicides by permitting them to have access to unsupervised use of toxins (prescription and otherwise), non-ventilated garages, and sharp objects. Just label them "victims" and immediately all responsibility falls away from them and goes off in search of another host.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)The worse students perform in high school, the more remedial students come into CCs.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)The answer may surprise you.
http://www.sfbg.com/2013/07/09/who-killed-city-college
PRESSURE FROM THE TOP
When the president trumpeted education in his 2012 State of the Union speech, he sounded an understandable sentiment. "States also need to do their part, by making higher education a higher priority in their budgets," Obama told the nation. "And colleges and universities have to do their part by working to keep costs down."...
The emphasis is ours, but the translation is very simple: College accreditation agencies can either enforce the administration's numbers-based plan or be replaced. The president's college reform is widely known and hotly debated in education circles. Commonly known as the "completion agenda," with an emphasis on measurable outcomes in job placement, it had its start under President George W. Bush, but Obama carried the torch.
The idea is that colleges divest from community-based programs not directly related to job creation or university degrees, and use a data measurement approach to ensure two-year schools transfer and graduate students in greater numbers. "Community colleges" would quickly become "junior colleges," accelerating a slow transition that began many years ago.
melm00se
(4,996 posts)about this time last year?