Wiki Law School

Professor Benjamin Bishin of the political science department received the 2011 Bailey Prize from the American Political Science Association at their Seattle conference this summer. The prize is named after author Robert Bailey, who pioneered the study of gay and lesbian politics, and is awarded annually for the best LGBT related paper presented at the previous year’s meeting.

Professor Bishin co-authored his award winning paper, “Gay Rights and Legislative Wrongs: The Representation of Gays and Lesbians”, with UC Irvine political science professor, Tony Smith. Professor Bishin describes the inspiration for his work as having come from an interest in how small groups gain power in the United States political system. The paper explores the conditions under which legislators veer from majority opinion when they conflict with the democratic values of liberty and equality; an action which may either aid or hinder minority groups. In his own words, “we have a form of government that is justified in large part because of its ability to protect the rights of various minority groups, but in practice our system only seems to work well for some small groups.” The concern is that other small groups, which may be less popular, have trouble gaining enough leverage to receive adequate representation in our political system. In his work, Bishin, “seeks to better understand the nature and limits of how these groups gain and exercise power.”

Anne Marie Murphy, PhD, the executive director of the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force developed by Rush University Medical Center,  is one of 14 individuals selected as a White House, “Champion of Change in the fight against breast cancer.

Champions of Change is  part of President Obama’s Winning the Future Initiative. 

Every week the White House recognizes ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things on their “Champions of Change” blog.  These champions are considered some of the biggest innovators, educators and builders in the country.

Every woman should have an equal chance at survival from breast cancer,” said Murphy.  “Too many African-American and other women of color are dying unnecessarily from breast cancer today in Chicago and it does not have to be this way.”

Read Murphys entry on the White Houses Champions of Change blog when it posts on Saturday, Oct. 1.

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Art students from Colgate University and from Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts will be showcasing their work at galleries on each other’s campuses.

For the exhibition SU @ CU; CU @ SU, VPA art students will show their work Oct. 14 – Nov. 6 at the Clifford Gallery in Colgate’s Little Hall. A gallery talk with the student artists and faculty will be held 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 2, at 105 Little Hall.

Colgate art students will exhibit their work Oct. 19 – Nov. 6 at VPA’s XL Projects, 307-313 S. Clinton St., Syracuse. A panel discussion and reception will be held from 6-8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 20, in conjunction with the Third Thursday (Th3), Syracuse’s city-wide art open.

VPA student work in SU @ CU; CU @ SU will be shown at XL Projects Nov. 9 – 27.

The exhibition at both locations is free and open to the public. Clifford Gallery hours are Monday – Friday, 10:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., and Saturday – Sunday, 1 – 5 p.m. For more information, call (315) 228-7633 or visit the gallery website.

XL Projects hours are Wednesday – Sunday, noon – 6 p.m. For more information, contact Andrew Havenhand at ahavenhand@yahoo.com or visit .

Dear Deborah, A year ago, the Los Angeles Times created a media sensation when it obtained the names and test scores of thousands of teachers, then commissioned a researcher to rate them in relation to their “effectiveness” in raising test scores. The Times then published online the names and ratings of those thousands of teachers. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan saluted the Times for rating teachers and naming names, but the overwhelming majority of testing and evaluation experts thought it was a terrible idea. The experts understand that evaluating teachers by their students’ test scores is fraught with problems. The ratings are inaccurate (there is a large margin of error) and unstable (a teacher who is effective one year may be ineffective the next year, depending on the composition of his or her classes since students are not randomly assigned). They are plagued with missing data, they ignore the effects of non-school factors. Nor do they acknowledge that students are influenced by multiple teachers, not just one. Critics point out that teachers should be judged by multiple measures, not just by test scores. Even the Los Angeles Times issued the customary warning about using multiple measures, but then proceeded to rate teachers by one measure only: test scores.

Recently, a panel of judges in New York ruled that New York City’s department of education could make public its ratings of teachers based on test scores. This, despite the fact that New York University economist Sean Corcoran produced a study showing that the New York City teacher data reports have a wide margin of error, and that a teacher ranked at the 43rd percentile might actually be at the 15th percentile or the 71st percentile. This ruling was eagerly sought by Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post and other media outlets, eager to name and shame teachers who didn’t produce higher test scores. The United Federation of Teachers of New York City opposed the release of the ratings. Unless this ruling is overturned, the names and ratings of thousands of New York City teachers will be released to the media. Many other districts are likely to follow in the path of Los Angeles and New York City. (Now that New York City has decided to adopt the state’s not-yet-developed evaluation system, it is unclear whether the city’s department of education will release the names and ratings derived from its own system.) What’s wrong with “naming names”? Even researchers who support the use of value-added assessment for teacher evaluation have warned that it is wrong to name names. William Sanders, one of the pioneers of value-added assessment, told an interviewer that the method could identify those at the extremes—the best and the worst—but “can you distinguish within the middle? No, you can’t, not even with the most distinguished, value-added process that you can bring to the problem.” Dan Goldhaber, an economist who has written extensively on value-added methodology, wrote an opinion piece in which he strongly opposed the naming of individual teachers. Aside from technical objections, he argued, “I cannot think of a profession in either the public or private sector where individual employee performance estimates are made public in a newspaper.” I recently had an email exchange with Thomas Kane, the Harvard economist who advises the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on these issues, and he told me he opposes the public release of names linked to evaluations. I asked if I might quote him, and he authorized me to say exactly what he told me. He wrote:

“My reason for opposing public release of teacher-level value-added data is to preserve some minimal level of privacy in the supervisor-employee relationship, to maintain some space for teachers to brainstorm with their peers and their supervisors about ways to improve. I’m sure many Americans would not want their performance appraisals published in the newspapers or to have their supervisors write a letter to the editor about their latest annual review. Without some privacy, people will not have the ‘space’ to have an honest conversation about strengths and weaknesses, areas where they are working to improve. I treat the feedback I get from peer reviewers (on journal articles, for instance) and from employees (in the form of confidential employee surveys) very seriously, and use them as a chance to improve. I’m not sure I could do that if they were published in the newspaper. I’m also not sure referees, supervisors, and employees would be as honest if they knew their comments would be made public.”

One other view comes from an experienced high school principal in Long Island, New York. In an email, Carol Burris wrote that she can already envision the parade of parents who will come to her office to demand that their child be placed only in the class of a “highly effective teacher” and to reject assignment to anyone with a lesser rating. She can already hear the parent who says “My child’s IEP (individualized education plan) says she should have only a highly effective teacher.” Then there will be the attorney who wants to sue the district because his client’s son didn’t get into Harvard; the district is at fault, he will say, because the student didn’t have three “highly effective” teachers in a row. If we listen to the experts and to experienced educators, we would reject this effort to humiliate and shame teachers. If we listened to those who know, the current national “reform” movement would wither and disappear. Diane

Catherine Allgor

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Catherine Allgor, professor of history and Presidential Chair at the University of California, Riverside, has been nominated by President Barack Obama to the board of trustees of the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation.

The White House announced Allgor’s nomination on Sept. 6. Her appointment requires confirmation by the U.S. Senate before she begins serving a six-year term on the foundation.

The James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation, established by Congress in 1986, promotes the teaching of the Constitution by giving fellowships to secondary school educators, enabling them to get master’s degrees in American history, American government, and social studies. The fellowships honor the legacy of James Madison, the nation’s fourth president and the primary author of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

“The idea is to teach teachers so they can create an informed citizenry,” Allgor explained. “It is such an honor to be appointed by President Obama to this mission. What could be more important than giving a hand to teachers? I hope my presence on the board will encourage California secondary school teachers to enter this national competition.”

Thomas Cogswell, chair of the UCR Department of History, said Allgor’s nomination is “easily equal to an appointment to a national academy” and recognizes the excellence of UC Riverside and its humanities faculty.

“It will be a major coup for the nation’s high school teachers, and their students, to have a scholar of Catherine Allgor’s caliber on the James Madison Foundation,” he said. “The president could not have made a finer choice.”

Allgor, who is nationally known as an expert on Dolley Madison, joined the UC Riverside faculty in 2001. Her research focuses on the role of women in early American history, the effect of gender in electoral politics, the issue of coverture and female disenfranchisement in the founding era, and the historical influence of first ladies. Her first book, “Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government,” won the James H. Broussard First Book Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. “A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation” was a finalist for the George Washington Prize and the 2007-2008 selection for the UCRF1RST Book.

She earned an A.A. from Bucks County Community College, a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, and an M.A., M. Phil, and Ph.D. from Yale University.

The James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation is funded privately and through a Treasury trust fund. It is governed by a 13-member board of trustees, of which 12 members are appointed to six-year terms by the president. By law, the composition of the board must include: two U.S. senators, two members of the House of Representatives, two federal judges, one governor, two members of the general public, and three members from the academic community. The secretary of education serves as an ex-officio member. With the exception of the federal judges and the secretary of education, the board must be evenly divided between political parties.