Roxanne Shirazi

Best mail day!

Closeup of a black and white snapshot showing protesters with signs. One says: The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste–Pataki has lost his. Another sign shows the outline of a guillotine with the headline: Pataki This Cut For You

More guillotines, please

A spread of black and white snapshots laid out on a white table. Photos include protest signs, cops on horses, crowds of people including students and faculty outside City Hall. Faculty are wearing regalia, one has a skeleton on his shoulders, while others carry a big fake coffin with text saying “Bury Pataki’s Budget Cuts!” And someone holds up a huge skull that says CCNY 1847-1995 on its forehead. Other signs say: No Death Penalty for CUNY-SUNY Save Higher Education! We SEEK a Higher Education The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste–Pataki has lost his

Close up of a black and white snapshot of a protester holding a sign that says We SEEK a Higher Education

Close up of a black and white snapshot of a protester holding a sign that is a giant skull with CCNY 1847-1995 written on its forehead

Close up of a black and white snapshot of faculty protesting in their academic regalia, holding a sign that says Save Higher Education

Sometime last year, a CUNY alum contacted me saying they’d found some photos they took at the 1995 protest against budget cuts and would I please take them so they could clear out their attic?

They arrived today and they DID NOT DISAPPOINT

“They struggle with the contradictions in which they live. They close their doors and try their hardest. But so often their efforts leave them dispirited and often angry at a system that does not acknowledge what they know best: how to teach their students to read and to write thoughtfully…”

“But they know that most of this teaching they feel constrained to do is not what they believe in or care most about. In order not to jeopardize the futures of their students (vis a vis the tests), they short-change themselves and what they believe is effective pedagogy. +

We are in a crisis of literacy, which has been exacerbated by the explosion of genAI. Teachers and professors are, fundamentally, burnt out because their classrooms have become all assessment all the time, with no space for learning or creativity. And having to check for AI is insult upon injury

Addressing Assessment: Assessment often drives instruction. If assessments ask for certain kinds of skills, teachers feel compelled to teach these skills explicitly. As a result, increasing amounts of time are given over to "nuts and bolts" or to "bits and pieces" and soon, teachers lament, the larger picture is lost. What began as an attempt to certify that students have achieved a certain level of mastery in language development has turned into its op-posite: reducing literacy development to a series of hurdles that often have little to do with actual competence in reading and writing. Skills-based teaching, as just described, does help some students pass their assessment tests. Often it does not. LBW has tried to address this discrepancy by asking why. No responsible teacher would argue that levels of competence should not be determined or that both teachers and students should not be held accountable for what they have or have not accomplished in any given school year or academic subject. So where is the problem? LBW teachers concluded that current measures of assessment, however well-intentioned and well-informed, do not measure real literacy development. LBW teachers, similar to teachers everywhere, do not resent standards per se. But they do resent standards imposed from without that do not reflect either the realities of their classrooms or the lives and languages of their students. They resent such standards and the necessity of teaching to them when this endeavor gets in the way of what they truly want to teach: literacy instruction based on reading, writing, conversation, dialogue, debate, reflection and social action. LBW teachers (again, like many teachers elsewhere) find themselves in an uncomfortable position. Wanting to do their best for their students, not wanting to short-change them in any way whatsoever, they devise the best methods they can to help their students pass their assessment tests.

It’s Saturday night and I am editing PDFs (for reasons) and this section on assessment from a 1999 writing text jumped out at me, not least because of all the ~discourse~ on here about student writing

David Lerner, Co-Founder of Tekserve, Dies at 72 Link to: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/technology/personaltech/david-lerner-dead.html

What really sucks is that one of the founders of Tekserve has died at only 72. Tekserve was THE PLACE to get your Mac fixed forever.
@daringfireball.bsky.social has it right: daringfireball.net/linked/2025/...

Oh man. I miss Tekserve so much. I still use a giant Tekserve tote bag as my grocery tote

I expect no less from you! Me, on the other hand…

I have turned the carcass into stock.

It’s the flossing teeth of thanksgiving, it’s so easy and yet

ED Names Five New NACIQI Members The new members of the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity include some outspoken conservative voices.

If you're not paying attention to the weakening of accreditation you are missing a huge piece of the reactionary transformation of higher ed. This is how you create structural change that will last for generations.

The implementation of Project 2025 continues apace.

Why on earth did everyone decide it was necessary to give a one week warning for giving Tuesday?

A page from a how-to book with the heading: The improvised darkroom. With a schematic of a bathroom, showing a bathtub covered by a plywood board that has developing trays and a photographic enlarger

Cover of a book from 1984 called Print Your Own Pictures, part of the Kodak Library of Creative Photography

brb putting together a darkroom in my bathroom

Jimmy Cliff’s death reminds me sharply of the utter centrality of public libraries to my mind and heart: I definitely checked out The Harder They Come soundtrack from my suburban NJ library when I was still in high school because I had read about it somewhere. And off I went from there!

CUNY admins tell us they support academic freedom, but then they make us take this dystopian Title VI training designed to make us fearful in our classrooms that actually implies the exact opposite. Read the @cadhe.bsky.social statement about this two-faced position.

The better thing to do is leave Chrome. I'm begging people, leave Chrome.

is zohran president now i am a few hours behind

Jobs | City University of New York

Academic library leaders, come join us at CUNY! Application review begins 12/10. cuny.jobs/new-york-ny/...

Job Openings US Editor Verso Books is looking for an Editor to join the team in Verso’s New York office. This role will be responsible for acquiring and editing books for the Verso list, which covers a wide range ...

We're hiring an editor in our New York office!

Apply by December 1st, 2025

DC statehood now

Harlan County U.S.A. with Barbara Kopple in person – Museum of the Moving Image Barbara Kopple’s epochal, Oscar-winning documentary charting a Kentucky coal miners’ strike is among the great American films of the 1970s, a sensitive yet uncompromising look at the struggles and tri...

You guys, the Museum of the Moving Image is showing HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A on Sunday with Barbara Kopple in person

!!

movingimage.org/event/harlan...

A lot of people not in nyc don't even realize he's still the mayor. Yes he's in Israel. Why, I don't know.

The new mayor gets sworn in on New Years

The “mass production technique” here refers to mass prosecutions, an earlier iteration of mass deportation policy that has been aimed at Mexicans in Los Angeles for my entire lifetime

On Camera, Fed Agents Point Guns at Mother and Four Kids in Queens The agents came looking for a relative who no longer lived in the apartment, the shellshocked mother told THE CITY. Days later, her children are terrified to leave their parents' sides.

NEW: Federal agents busted into an Elmhurst apartment early last Thursday morning and pointed guns at a woman and her four children, according to video and an account from the family.

It me

'Antivirus for libraries': How a Texas startup is capitalizing on book bans The company Bookmarked, whose cofounder advocated for SB 13, describes itself as a neutral player in the censorship debate. Critics disagree.

The company, Bookmarked, pitches itself as an “antivirus for libraries.”

It promises to scan thousands of titles and alert schools — and even parents — to books that could cause “board liability” or “media attention.” 2/ www.expressnews.com/politics/art...

Correct

justseeds.org/product/no-t...

Who is this Olivia you speak of?

(please, don’t pierce my bubble)

He is still teaching and mentoring students. Harvard should remove him from the classroom and start a disciplinary process immediately.