how much money has been spent on the APS PD in the last tens years.
And I have asked for the truth.
Monday, June 25, 2007
I would like to know
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The terms of public service are the prerogative of the public. Fundamental among those terms; public servants are accountable to the public, and to meaningful standards of conduct and competence, at least for the eight measly hours a day that we have to "trust" them with the control over our power and our resources.
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2007
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June
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- The final report of the Council of Great City Scho...
- APS Could End Up With Certified Police Force.
- Elsy Fiero will take the heat for gradegate
- The scandal in the APS PD
- I would like to know
- on the loss of the public forum
- Beth Everitt must resist any audit of any departme...
- is Teresa Cordova still calling the shots?
- Rio Grande Grade Change needs closer look
- MacArthur Principal to retire
- an honor is worth exactly as much
- I would like to invite my readers' attention
- Teresa Cordova's "no comment" on gradegate
- if the school board has to get a subpoena,
- NM Educator Ethics Bureau Director Paul Calderon
- What is your take on the Cordova Coach debacle?
- the Journal chose not to respond
- Liar? ??
- it would cost APS somewhere between $.37 and $4.00
- George McFall, of the Modrall law firm
- CoGCS report on the APS PD released
- NMPED investigation; corrupt, incompetent, or both?
- Beth Everitt says that it is unlikely that we will...
- coulda, woulda, shoulda
- the truth on the grade change; still missing.
- Robert Lucero owes an apology
- Monica Armenta has pocketed a cool $4,000 plus ben...
- understatement of the year
- APS Police Department likened to a hot potato
- the CoGCS review, in other words
- "APS Cops and Guns Top Forum Concerns"
- Recallmarty.blogspot.com/
- communication
- either
- Darren White's retraction is in order
- APS' news release on the Community Safety Commissi...
- Ouch - from the CoGCS review of the APSPD
- NMIPRA request for APSPD review records
- Everitt pushes back the deadline for APSPD; and se...
- Jim Villanucci and Richard Eeds said;
- Disappointed, I am;
- Comment on a comment
- Principals as administrators and master educators
- Arbitration will be conducted in secret.
- "Let my public school students go"
- Learning from Charter Schools
- Social Services Plan for Schools can work
- the situation at Polk MS
- It would help if
- Journal editors confuse APS' open meetings with ac...
- Monica Armenta's grade
- APS' new roofing manager
- Something is fishy; NMIPRA request
- Dear Mr. Attorney General
- How many APS Communication Directors does it take ...
- Will Monica Armenta walk her talk?
- NMIPRA training shelved until next fall
- Research, Development, and Accountability
- George Washington
- The very first rule must be;
- communication is worthless
- CoGCS audit results
- admitting responsiblity is not the same as being h...
- We would like to schedule an appointment, please
- it will cost taxpayers $52.50 an hour
- APS' semisecret police
- Monica Armenta fills new post
- request for public records
- Cynthia West will testify for APS against Lovato
- the results of investigations of criminal misconduct
- a culture of fear of retaliation and retribution
- "unfounded allegations will emerge"
- "My goal is not to take everybody down."
- no administrator left standing
- Lovato's body map worth a cool 1/2M
- At the cost equivalent of more than three teachers
- you have to admit; do you not?
- In the weeks just before the scandal broke;
- Elsy Fierro was removed from RGHS oversight
- update for the following post; gradegate policy ch...
- gradegate policy change
- the public forum was nearly perfect
- Principal selection committees
- when Venegas and Everitt were scrambling for excuses
- show me a successful school without a synergy
- Everitt's magic cure will take 3 years!
- Attendence will be down
- Everitt's honesty questioned
- I have written about the opposition facing Marty E...
- City councilors want a raise
- Anyone who has made a public statement
- Gil Lovato is being paid almost forty thousand tax...
- It is time to call the question
- Failing Schools need Proven Leaders
- APS' Brad WInter
- the next public forum
- there is a lot of upset about the red light cameras
- Board Meeting, next Wednesday
- confusion leads to inaction
- as a matter of interest
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June
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2 comments:
FYI In the Trib today...
Nelida Venegas... hasn't she left yet?
Albuquerque
Why principal moved from Polk
An article in the June 13 Tribune ("Shuffled Polk principal not allowed to execute change") takes the position that Polk Middle School Principal Theresa Baca was reassigned from the school based on a plan she submitted as a way to improve student achievement.
I wish to clarify that the decision to move Baca, as well as other principals last month, was based on state-level competencies, in addition to the corrective-action status of schools for improving student achievement.
The competencies outline how well a principal: focuses on teaching and learning; communicates to parents, students and staff; utilizes resources and implements professional development; runs his or her school in day-to-day operations; and provides a high quality of community leadership.
It is the responsibility of Albuquerque Public Schools to be responsive to students' educational needs. Student achievement is based on criteria determined by the N.M. Public Education Department, through the Educational Plan for Student Success.
Several elementary and middle schools, including Polk Middle School, have not been able to rise out of corrective action and now face alternative governance plans. These plans can reconstitute or replace all leadership and teaching staff at a school where student performance is not reaching certain levels. The principal and teachers then move to other schools.
Schools facing this alternative have been working since the beginning of the year with an independent contractor hired by the N.M. Public Education Department to set academic goals and improve student achievement through high-quality instruction.
Baca's plan for improving student achievement singles out individual teachers based on subjective criteria, or characteristics, of perceived teacher behavior. A principal cannot arbitrarily unload teachers - otherwise known as the "march of the lemons" - if he or she is unhappy with the teaching staff without having appropriate documentation in place that addresses teacher performance.
Just as corrective-action processes exist to improve student achievement, human-resources processes exist to help teachers improve their performance. In concert with the APS Human Resources Department and teacher-union representation, principals can place teachers on improvement plans that have time lines and goals clearly stating the principal's expectations of what the teacher must do to meet the goals.
Baca provided no human resources documentation to support the removal of teachers from her school in the context of student achievement, and teachers were under no obligation to sign a letter of commitment to her plan.
Change can be difficult to accept. To assist with change directed toward improving student achievement, APS provides: support for new principals and continued professional development for all principals; mentoring for first-year teachers by teaming them with more experienced teachers; and a new partnership with the teachers union to ensure all teachers are treated equally within the system.
The underlying factor and focus for APS is that providing a high-quality education to all students across the district is our No. 1 priority.
Nelida Venegas
Associate superintendent
for the cluster system
Albuquerque Public Schools
Albuquerque
FYI Editorial in Trib today...
Editorial: What good are schools without accountability?
What should have been a simple administrative decision - confirming a warranted F grade and denying a high school senior the unearned privilege of walking with his classmates for graduation - has turned into a mountain of bad publicity for Albuquerque Public Schools.
The district has a long way to go to restore public confidence.
It should begin by stopping the finger-pointing and the buck-passing. The district needs to bypass its reflexive "we didn't have enough information" dodge and acknowledge that, once this problem got to the bureaucracy, it was bungled and bungled badly.
The sad truth is that this story - a mandated grade change for the son of Bernalillo County Commissioner Teresa Cordova and former school board member Miguel Acosta - is full of questionable actors, starting with the student and his parents.
Come on. What kind of effort does it take, really, to get a D in an English class in any public high school?
If there are heroes here, they are Rio Grande High School teacher Anita Forte and her principal, Al Sanchez. Their "heroism," if one must call it that, is that they simply did their jobs. The evidence is compelling that they were reasonable, considerate, compassionate and generous - perhaps to a fault.
But, in the end, they followed the academic book in giving and sustaining an F grade to a senior who deserved nothing more.
Unfortunately, many other protagonists did not acquit themselves nearly as well. They include:
The student's parents. Notwithstanding all of the explanations and excuses they offered in pressing school officials and the system to change their son's grade, they did no one any favors - including their son, whose diploma is hollow.
Elsy Fierro, the district administrator who overruled Forte and Sanchez and changed the grade to passing in time for the senior's graduation walk. She made a bad call and has been referred to the state Educator's Ethics Bureau for review.
The administration, led by Superintendent Beth Everitt. She and her staff may or may not have been blindsided by this controversy, but only the most insulated of administrators could have failed to suspect that this kind of problem - if handled poorly - would tarnish the district.
They should have gotten up to speed quickly and concluded exactly what the state investigators did: This student and his parents had been afforded more, much more, than the system required to turn that F into a D.
An impartial state investigation, issued this week by Education Secretary Veronica Garcia, concluded these points:
The student's parents got at least five warnings that he was failing, including two that warned he might not graduate.
Forte actually exceeded school policy requirements by allowing the student more than four weeks to turn in make-up work and an additional final exam to improve his grade.
The student had all the questions and the answers to study for that second final exam and "only needed to memorize the answers."
Fierro exerted undue influence in changing the grade.
The highest levels of the administration, including Everitt, obtained incomplete and inaccurate information in the effort to get support and confirmation for the grade change.
While this last point is mitigating, the entire scenario should have set off alarms for seasoned educators and administrators such as Everitt and associate superintendent Nelinda Venegas.
If she doesn't know it already, Everitt owns this decision. To her credit, she has said that it was made in error and will not happen again. She'll have to do that a lot in the coming weeks and months.
Why? The reason is simple. Long ago this ceased to be just about a student, his parents or a system that could be gamed.
It is about personal responsibility and accountability. If APS fails to teach and abide by that, it might as well close its school doors.
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