The UW System is facing legal action after denying the National Council on Teacher Quality’s open records requests to review syllabi from courses within UW System schools of education.
Arthur McKee, the council’s managing director for teacher preparation studies, said the group is compiling information to rate teacher preparation programs nationwide.
UW System spokesperson David Giroux said the system denied the open records request for the syllabi because the documents are the protected by state copyright laws because they are the intellectual property of the professors who draft them.
McKee said the documents would be used for research, not commercial, purposes and that copyrighted material can still generally be used for research.
Giroux said the NCTQ requested hundreds of other documents which the system provided them.
McKee said the public has a right to view the documents. They would help students who aspire to become teachers select the best programs to attend while helping school districts know which prospective teachers received the best education, he said.
“These are public institutions, they’re preparing teachers in the state of Wisconsin for the state of Wisconsin for public schools using public dollars,” McKee said. “These documents should be available to anyone.”
No matter how much releasing the documents would help the state, though, Giroux said the law remains that syllabi are copyrighted material.
“The syllabi are the intellectual property of our faculty members, so it’s not our decision whether to give it to someone else for whatever purpose,” Giroux said.
Giroux said students who are educated in the UW System are typically highly regarded in the workforce and the system provides citizens with information proving the quality of its programs.
“We are committed to providing Wisconsin citizens with ample information about the quality of our universities and the qualities of our graduates in every discipline,” Giroux said. “I honestly don’t see a lot of concerns with the quality of UW graduates.”
