I hold in my hands, two documents

There is no convenient way to post them. If you want to see
them, you will have to ask APS Custodian of Public Records,
Rigo Chavez to send them to you. It could take months.
Even after months, Chavez still has not surrendered an
original, clean copy, of one of the two surveys.

We are playing the, "here is a xerox copy, of a copy, of a copy", game.

One is called the APS/UNM Teacher Survey. It has only been
administered twice, the last time in 2002.

The other is called, the Evaluation of Supervisor by Staff,
a survey that is taken yearly. Teachers and others on school
staffs are supposedly enabled to evaluate their principals.

"Enabled to evaluate" needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

For example; one of the biggest problems in schools, is the
student discipline out of control.

The biggest gripe among teachers and among those who work
face to face with students, is that
they are not being "backed up" by administrators
when they are dealing with chronically disruptive, and even
dangerous students.

Yet neither survey instrument gathers any data on these issues.

The closest either survey comes is, in the APS/UNM survey,
respondents are allowed varying levels of agreement with three
statements;

• Most students are well mannered or respectful to the school staff,
• Most students are helpful and cooperative with teachers, and
• Students in this school are well behaved.

The Evaluation of Supervisor by Staff,
does not ask a single question that allows input on student
behavior issues, or upon a principals efforts to support teachers
who are dealing with those problems on a daily basis.

When I asked Thomas Genne, APS' Director of
Research, Development and Accountability,

if his department had ever asked teachers
for input on the problems that they confront
on a daily basis;

he admitted that for as long as he had been there,
the RDA had never surveyed teachers for their opinions
about what they need to succeed.

More than 70,000 years of teaching experience in the APS,
and the leadership of the APS has never asked them for their
opinions about what is wrong, or about how to fix it.

They have not been asked, as part of a deliberate effort
to cover up problems instead of laying them on the table
for people to see,

even as the first step in actually fixing them.