If you google "student misbehavior", you'll get 127,000 hits

"Student misconduct" will get 301,000.
"Student discipline" will net 845,000.

If the subject is not important, it is at least interesting
to a number of people.

What do you know about APS student discipline?

I would bet nothing, unless you have worked in an APS school.

The reason nobody knows about student discipline in APS schools, is because it is bad. It is very, very bad. It is so bad that the leadership of the APS will not answer legitimate questions about how bad it is.


As an indication of how bad it really is, I submit the following fact;

Nowhere in the leadership of the APS, is there a written district wide discipline philosophy. Nowhere has anyone written down the most basic and fundamental commonly shared assumptions about student behavior in classrooms.

Philosophy is the foundation for policy. Policies that are not built upon a shared philosophy are ineffective and often contradictory. They are unenforceable.

Nowhere is anything written about the depth and breadth of
the problem, or its causes and its effects, or of
any plan for making things any better.

If you ask a teacher or educational assistant;

How big of a problem are students who misbehave?

you would find that they believe it is a huge problem.

If you ask the same question of the leadership of the APS
they just won't answer.

Because the responsibility for the problem is theirs, and
they are hiding from accountability.

When a student is disrupting class,
it is the teacher's responsibility to tell them to stop.

When the student says; no,
the problem becomes the responsibility of an administrator.

It is preposterous to leave the responsibility for chronically disruptive students on the shoulders of those who have the least amount of power and resources to deal with the problem.

Not to mention that it is a blatant violation of the negotiated agreement between teachers and the district, which clearly states that it is the responsibility of the administration, to enforce school and district discipline policies.

A problem cannot be solved in secret.
A problem cannot be solved by those who refuse to admit
that a problem exists.

The leadership of the APS is failing the community on the issue of student discipline, and they are hiding the problem from everyone.

With the aide and abet of the media, chiefly the Journal.