Accjc gone wild
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ACCJC and AdvocatesCarl Friedlander in his Perspective column of March 2013 addressed the role of ACCJC as follows: “ACCJC's singular focus should be ensuring that standards are met. Yet President Beno, along with other ACCJC staff, serves on the Advisory Board for the Campaign for College Opportunity (CCO). The work of CCO is controversial within the system. There should be a firewall between ACCJC staff and the boards of community college advocacy organizations. It is similarly inappropriate for ACCJC to take positions on legislation affecting the community colleges, as the Commission has recently done. Returning to Lumina its $450,000 grant for "exploring use of the Degree Qualifications Profile and Tuning at community colleges in California" would be another way ACCJC could clarify that the Commission is about ensuring standards, not spearheading a reshaping of community college education.” A group calling itself “California Competes” filed a Petition for Writ of Mandate in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco in 2013 whose object was to reduce community college academic senate participation in the development of academic and professional matters. The Writ was denied by the judge in the case and his decision has been appealed. Among the financial backers of California Competes is the Lumina Foundation for Education. California Competes used as evidence of the dysfunction caused by the California Board of Governors’ 23 year regulations was that “nearly a quarter of California's community colleges currently are under sanction by the ACCJC, and most of the 27 colleges under sanction were cited for problems with leadership, decision-making and clarity of roles.” The intersection of the work of the ACCJC and California Competes to narrow the scope of community college education and decrease faculty influence is notable. Methods Used in Gone WildThis document has been prepared by reading the non-secret portions of visiting team reports, publications of the ACCJC, sanction letters to colleges, and confidential discussions with persons on the college campuses and on visiting teams with direct knowledge concerning the behaviors of the ACCJC and its President Barbara Beno. It also includes exchanges of correspondence between President Beno on behalf of the ACCJC and interested parties such as the California Federation of Teachers and the Community College Association of the California Teachers Association. The study by the RP Group was also important to the discovery of abuse. In going through the Visiting Team Reports and the Commission letters to the colleges it becomes clear that the judgments are not made on a consistent basis. This is a violation of 34 CFR 602.18. The inconsistency is a result of vaguely stated requirements for the different levels of sanctions, the often inadequate training of Visiting Team members, the lack of adequate faculty membership on Visiting Teams, and bias on the part of the Commission itself. These issues are pointed out in the sections that follow regarding the individual colleges under review. This document is intended to expose how the ACCJC actually operates. It is sad that the ACCJC has added to college woes. The colleges have enough to worry about without also being required to exist under the yoke of the ACCJC and its micro-managing sanctions. Beno claims that the accreditation by the ACCJC is voluntary. This is not true for California’s community colleges. The colleges are by California law required to join the ACCJC. The fact that membership is not voluntary is a violation of federal requirements. Something must be done concerning the ACCJC and its abusive posturing - and sooner rather than later. Marty Hittelman Retired Community College Faculty member |