by P.D. Lesko Now is the Winter of Our Discontent. To hear AAPS insiders tell it, the atmosphere at the Balas Administration building is like the Court of King Richard III, the atmosphere unhealthy, the established nobles at odds with the upwardly mobile members of the AAEA teacher’s union. What the tax-paying peasants have been [...]
by P.D. Lesko The University of Michigan’s Lecturer’s union, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), entered talks for the group’s fourth contract with on November 30, 2012. LEO, as the union is known, represents some 1,500 full-time and part-time non-tenured faculty who teach on all of the college’s campuses. Headed by behavioral [...]
by P.D. Lesko Republicans, Tea Partiers and malcontents have blamed Obamacare for the rise in health insurance premiums. Republicans in Washington complain that Obamacare will result in soaring costs for health care providers. Progressive Washington DC think tank Think Progress offered a different explanation for the rising cost of health insurance premiums. In August 2012, [...]
by Rob Smith In an August 28, 2012 video interview, Michigan’s Republican governor told WaPo interviewer Nia-Malika Henderson that he and Presidential candidate Mitt Romney “have a lot of similarities.” Snyder urged Romney to “get a positive message out there.” Several times during the interview, Snyder talked about “job creation” and “a future for our [...]
by P.D. Lesko Dr. Susan Martin, Provost and Senior Chancellor at the University of Tennessee, is probably wishing right about now her parents had chosen a different name. The other Dr. Susan Martin, the President of EMU, is presently embroiled in a scandal that, EMU insiders posit, may yet force her resignation. College trustees loathe [...]
by P.D. Lesko Between 2003 and 2010, while total enrollment in Ann Arbor’s middle and high schools fell, average class sizes increased significantly, and so have actual class sizes, resulting in classrooms stuffed with 10, 12 and sometimes even 20 students more than the District’s class size targets. Class size targets for 2011 were 23-25 [...]
by Ernesto Van Dersar John Wiley & Sons, one of the world’s largest textbook publishers, is continuing its efforts to crack down on BitTorrent piracy. The company has now named several people who allegedly shared Wiley titles online, and is demanding a jury trial against them. If these actually go ahead it will be the first [...]
Governor Rick Snyder has repeatedly claimed he has no interest in starting a Right-To-Work war in Michigan. Whether he has been telling the truth may become very clear, very soon. The Michigan House quickly approved SB 0971, legislation that bans the unionization of graduate student research assistants (GSRA) at public universities. There was no debate [...]
By P.D. Lesko Last year at this time my two sons, ages 10 and 13, were advanced in reading, mathematics and science, according to their work on the MEAP tests. This year, one son is advanced in social studies and that both are Level 2 proficient in reading and mathematics. Their overall proficiency scores dropped [...]
As A2Politico revealed in a February 23, 2012 post: The amount of stimulus funding send from Washington, D.C. to Washtenaw County between 2009 and 2011 is a staggering $767,218,458 million dollars, the 4th largest amount given out within the state. That’s $2,222 dollars for every resident of the county. It’s also significantly higher, per capita, [...]
