Posted on 11/17/2021 8:37:54 AM PST by george76
A hearing officer at a Nevada community college has ruled against a professor who says the school is trying to fire him for standing against weakening math standards.
In a report issued November 12, Truckee Meadows Community College Special Hearing Officer Vicky Oldenburg found that math Professor Lars Jensen violated several school codes when he protested a new curriculum structure that essentially allows remedial math classes to count for college credit.
The report brings Jensen one step closer to being fired with cause.
The report will now go to a faculty panel that will vote and write up its own recommendation. College President Karin Hilgersom will issue a final decision once she receives both reports.
“We are very disappointed with the conclusions and recommendations in Special Hearing Officer Oldenburg’s report,” Jensen said in an email to The College Fix. “We feel that her report ignored longstanding state and federal precedent protecting faculty speech and academic freedom.”
Jensen, who has been a professor at Truckee Meadows Community College for 22 years, told The Fix that Oldenburg’s report ignored guidelines set for faculty speech in previous decisions handed down by the Nevada Supreme Court and federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
“This follows a dangerous pattern at TMCC,” Jensen said. “It further underlies the importance that faculty disciplinary panels be subject to outside binding arbitration, which unfortunately is not available at TMCC.”
A spokesperson for Truckee Meadows declined a request by The College Fix for comment.
Jensen has specifically accused the school of engineering poor performance reviews as an excuse to remove him from his position.
In two recent years he received a review of “excellent” from his department chair, but he nevertheless received unsatisfactory reviews from Julie Ellsworth, his dean.
In one poor performance review, Ellsworth specifically mentions a flyer Jensen had passed out at a math summit criticizing the school’s eroding math standards, charging him with “insubordination” for continuing to hand out the flyer after he was asked not to.
Oldenburg’s report rules that Jensen’s flyer violated school codes.
While she noted Jensen remained “polite and professional,” she nonetheless determined he engaged in “insubordination” by “willfully disregarding Dean Ellsworth’s directions and interrupted the Math Summit by intentionally and without authorization distributing his handout during the Summit.”
Oldenburg ruled Jensen’s academic freedom and right to free speech were “not censored in any way” because he was allowed to make his flyer available after the conference.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has submitted a letter to the college that argues Jensen’s distribution of flyers at the board meeting was protected by his First Amendment right to comment as a citizen on matters of public concern, and that the school cannot use it as grounds for termination.
In some cases, Oldenburg found that Jensen had not violated the school’s codes, as the school charged.
For instance, Jensen refused to change a syllabus in which he explained to students they were prevented from taking the final exam if it would make no difference in their passing the class.
Eventually, Jensen allowed students to take the exam, but according to Ellsworth, he changed the rules to be even “more punitive” because he wouldn’t allow them to “benefit from any potential points this might generate.”
Oldenburg found that Jensen had complied with Ellsworth’s “directives to alter his syllabus” and therefore his conduct did not support a charge of insubordination.
Nonetheless, Oldenburg’s report lists one instance justifying a charge of insubordination on his 2019-20 performance review (the math summit imbroglio) and three instances listed on his 2020-21 performance evaluation that violated his Annual Plan, and two instances that justified a charge of insubordination.
In Jensen’s 2017-18 performance review, Ellsworth had written that he is “recognized for his disciplinary knowledge, his passion for math, for being nice, and for caring about students.”
Yet on his 2020-21 evaluation, his new dean, Anne Flesher, said he “demonstrated a consistent pattern of defiance and disrespect by his refusal to apply repeated directives and not responding to the dean’s requests in a timely manner.”
I went to Temple University. The math and hard science instructors had an under the table program where they would boost an F to a D, a D to a C, and a C to a B. They found that the, er, “population” that got Cs, Ds, and Fs never came back for another course, so it was not a problem for prerequisites, etc. And it partially solved the problem of their being racist for giving blacks lower grades.
Where did YOUR doctor go to medical school?
Where did the designers of this bridge go to engineering school?
Where did the designer of this rocket/aircraft go to study aerospace science?
And ... why should we listen to any Expert Witness in a courtroom?
Feel free to add your own puzzling questions.
NY Regents math test is easier to pass – thanks to low standards ..
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3564002/posts
“How about raising standards?”
Or lowering them. Does a person who is going to work in an insurance office typing and filing need advanced mathematics? Since the government through the NEA is trying to fit the wooden pieces (students) into what they consider the correct hole telling them their shape, then why not fast track the system. If a person doesn’t want to go into government work, why force instruction in civics in high school with political science in college? If the answer is so they can vote properly, that falls under english and philosophy and can be taught in high school. Besides, they don’t have classes for common sense as it is not taught in either facility for fear of people figuring them out. So once you get past high school civics, game over. And since the government is working the tails off to get more voters in from other countries that have a third grade education, even college courses, which they will never see, are not required to mark a circle. They start brain washing in grammar school. Secondary education not required for that.
Good, another course not required. There are many courses out there just like it. If they don’t need it, don’t force them to take it. But if the courses are lowered to players only, that is going to remove a lot of funding. They know that. So what actually motivates the course content and requirements for graduation? Follow the audit trail. The football program barely covers the cost of next years equipment now. Forget test tubes from what used to be that cash cow. And they make it so easy with agencies right on campus to get government grants or loans. See the pattern?
wy69
Most of the students that have and had been coming fresh out of the K12 system were and are utter idiots anyhow, definitely need to dumb-down the rigor of math........and English, writing, etc. Yep.
Woot, 2+2=5! GG
/s
“just give the schools money, get handed a diploma and be done with it...”
Better yet just include a diploma with the birth certificate.
100%
This crap has been in-process for many years!
The best economics professor I have ever had was fired in 1977 because he “failed too many students.”
His standards weren’t all that rigorous: Undergrad students were expected to achieve 70% for a passing score.
IMHO, if a person cannot get 70%, they are in the wrong place!
Never lower standards. I was talking about standards for a college education. If a career does not require a college education, then don't go to college for that career. Too many people have the wrong idea about college. Some simply do not belong in college because they didn't study in high school or just have low-intelligence. Likewise, some do not belong in a trade school. There's a different type of intelligence required to successfully perform a trade; and a lot of high-IQ types could never be successful in a trade. They don't belong there.
There is a need for unskilled workers. Nothing is wrong with that either. People should be satisfied simply with doing a job well done.
“A hearing officer at a Nevada community college has ruled against a professor who says the school is trying to fire him for standing against weakening math standards.”
Another example of why conservatives need to elect pro-2nd amendment, constitutional sheriffs in their counties. These sheriffs have the armed and legal muscle to cancel fascists.
YES; 2+2=222
That’s two hundred and twenty two; because you have to add the two 2s “twice” so that makes three times so the answer is two hundred and twenty two!
And my Dimensional Analysis instructor told me I couldn’t do math. :)
EXPERT WITTNESS = Person who committed the same crime multiple times.
That’s just my thoughts on that matter.
Not advanced mathematics, but it would be nice if such a person knew that a disease with a 99.997% chance of survival, even if you catch it, is almost a zero chance.
Except for people who plan to get a college degree in something truly requiring advanced mathematics, understanding percentages is the most important mathematics. We rush too many students into algebra when they don’t understand that 50% of something is 1/2.
“Too many people have the wrong idea about college.”
And that is the magic of the problem. It has been driven into too many minds that without college, you’ll have to settle for fast food work. (As of late, $15 an hour is the going rate the administration is pushing for) But the appearance of $80k a year is the mirage being put out there for doing almost anything, if you’ve got that sheepskin. So, college is the oasis of the future. And that is reflected in the HR of the outside world in the phrase, 10 years experience and a degree in X. So why should graduating from high school be acceptable when the good jobs are out of reach without a college skin by the standards?
But the article started with the thought of disallowing remedial classes, this one in the math department, from being considered creditable classes. If these are not going to be credited then they are requiring their use, for nothing other than meeting a standard established the that particular institution. And that is raising the standard when you are forced to get practical learning to raise your capacity to their level, without their considerations, and not the level of the position you are looking for in the job market because you can’t get that learning they say. So doesn’t that raise the level to a higher than acceptable level by limiting the opportunity?
The students are not there to dance through the classes with a high school skin that doesn’t even guarantee literacy anymore. And the colleges are supposed to be there to provide an opportunity to create the skills of the student not to chase them out except for the few who can afford it. And adding classes not creditable, but charged for and expensive, is not the answer or the promise.
wy69
“...they don’t understand that 50% of something is 1/2.”
A little different topic here than the thread, but good point.
When you consider that way to large a chunk of those people that are expected to handle basic math come out of high school illiterate, then they may need to understand the words in between the numbers also.
Anyway, basic math is being started in early grammar school. Most schools begin teaching students the ideas of practical mathematics in the first grade and continue through the second grade. If you wish to determine too early an introduction to algebra a rush, consider that students in today’s schools are introduced to basic algebra between the 3rd and 5th grade years. The colleges are instructing, supposedly, at the 13th grade level. That’s eight years to learn the process so the students that can afford it can get that magic sheep skin to success. And the difference between $40K a year and $80K is a 100% difference. And that’s where the system has taken us. Along with the Federal Reserve estimating that in quarter two of 2021, Americans owed a startling $1.73 trillion in student loans. Just to get that other $40K a year? They don’t teach common sense in either high school or college. If they did, few of the faculties would be qualified. And they don’t get that other $40 either.
wy69
Thanks george76. Gotta be able to shovel race-normed illegals who can barely make themselves understood in English into the colleges and universities.
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