Herding cats, or one on one?

(This post has been extensively rewritten and republished
with a necessarily inaccurate date and post time.)

It is hard to imagine a situation more ideal than a pupil/teacher
ratio of one to one.

In truth, very few students really need a full time teacher.

Some can handle two to one, four to one; thirty to one,
or as in a sociology class at the UNM, 600 to 1.

It has to do with the ability to learn independently.

Independent learning depends heavily on self discipline.

Students are not acquiring self discipline enough to learn alone.

When Character Counts! was unanimously adopted by the
board in 1994, it was with the understanding that it was to
become part of the curriculum.

It was understood that students would learn how to behave
and develop character enough to want to.

They have not acquired that knowledge and character,
because they have never had role models in the leadership of the APS.

The leadership of the APS is not, and never has been accountable to the same standards of conduct that they established and enforce upon students; not even for the few hours each day that they are enforcing them upon students.

The leadership of the APS can not enforce a discipline policy
on students, because they will not enforce one upon themselves.



There is no written discipline philosophy for the APS.
If there was, they could point to it.
There is no written set of commonly shared beliefs,
that the leadership of the APS is obligated to enforce.

There are only poorly crafted and often conflicting policies
that are unenforceable by those with control over the
least amounts of power and resources.

Consider for example the issue of sagging.

The administration banned sagging and then did nothing to stop it. There is not a secondary school in the district, where you will not see sagging;
the permission of prohibited behavior.

This is not about sagging. link

It is a teacher's responsibility to tell a child to stop misbehaving.
It is an administrative problem, when the child says no.

The leadership of the APS is completely unaccountable for
student discipline problems in schools; problems which are
a major impediment in educating children effectively and efficiently.

They cannot even be compelled to tell the truth about the problem.

If the data were gathered, it would prove that the leadership
of the APS has failed to carry their fair share of the burden
of maintaining order and an educationally efficient environment.

That is why they don't gather it.


And every year, we need more and more teachers to babysit more and more chronically disruptive students.

But we don't get more and more teachers every year,
so the net effect is that; static pupil teacher ratios
are increasingly ineffective and inefficient.

Graduation rates, drop out rates, truancy rates, discipline problems in schools, graduation rates, ... all depend on student discipline.

Yet the leadership of the APS will not name a time, a day, and a place, where they will sit and answer legitimate questions about their failure to maintain order in schools.

In fact, they will not name a time, a day, and a place, where they will sit and answer legitimate questions about anything.

This should be an issue in the upcoming school board elections; one month away.

If is is not, it is because the Journal, KRQE, KOAT, KOB, KKOB have decided that it will not be.

It is, apparently,

not newsworthy.