Winston Brooks blindly leading APS into the dark ages

Zsombor Peter and the Journal shine some light on
Winston Brooks plan to return to the good ol' days;
when the good ol' boys made all of the decisions.
link sub req

Zsombor Peter follows Winston Brooks lead in proclaiming
that there has been "site based management" in the APS
and that it has not worked.

That declaration is simply untrue.

If Zsombor Peter took the time to interview even one
teacher instead of dutifully regurgitating the administrative
line; he would know better.

APS teachers have never, ever, had any real say in what
goes on in the APS.

Teachers have never been in a position to do anything but
try to change an administrator's mind about what he
intends to do anyway.

The telling quote comes from good ol' by Tim Whalen, the
former principal of Manzano High School;

“What it did was place responsibility on the principal
to allocate funds appropriately as recommended by
members of the staff and the community,”
said Tim Whalen, ..." (emphasis added)

The leadership of the APS has never strayed far from, and
will never stray far from, their conviction that any problem
can be solved by the application of (more) administration.

The premise is flawed, if for no other reason than that there
is no reason at all to believe that administrators are in any
way qualified for their jobs. In a recent audit of the APS,
the Council of the Great City Schools reported that

administrative evaluations in the APS are
"... subjective and unrelated to promotion or
step placement..."

There is no effective evaluation of administrators at any
level in the APS; school staffs are not even allowed to
participate in meaningful subordinate evaluations of site
administrators.

A clue for Zsombor Peter, who once indicated to me that he
thought the Peter Principle wikilink had something to do
with "... Peter, Paul, and Mary?"

Site based management does not mean
"managed by a site administrator".

It means that all of the stakeholders at a site, have a seat
at the table where decisions are made; not just the principal.

Zsombor Peter reports that

"Winston Brooks notes with some exasperation that
schools are using different curricula to teach reading.
The trouble with that, he said, is that students who
move from school to school have to switch learning
methods."

and that "..., those students lose momentum."

It does not occur to Brooks or Peter that;
if students really cannot transfer their learning from
one setting to another; that the problem is far greater
than different paths to the same goal.

The most telling quote of all; comes from Winston Brooks;

"Some teachers may object that a uniform curriculum
will limit classroom creativity, but Brooks disagrees."

and if Winston Brooks disagrees, who gives a rat's ass what
a bunch of "dumb ass" teachers think?

Winston Brooks has not taught in a public school classroom

since 1977.