"No public trust should be lost", NMPED Secretary Veronica Garcia

You really can't make this stuff up. The Journal reported that the NM Public Education Department had found some accounting errors and, the correction had raised APS' graduation rate. The story, link, made it sound like NMPED owned the screw up. Their headline read; "State Botched Grad Rates".

Band leader, Marty Esquivel, according to the Journal, said;

"If the state wasn't more certain of the numbers, it should have thought twice about releasing them.

I think the most unfortunate thing is those early numbers really did a lot of damage to the confidence within APS, and I think that was unnecessary in retrospect.

How can we figure out box office numbers for a weekend movie and not figure out graduation rates?"

Again, according to the Journal, Winston Brooks said;

"The wide discrepancy also calls into question the state's ability to accurately calculate progress under No Child Left Behind.

It makes everyone a little skeptical."

He later added that in light of the improved graduation rates, "I think I should get a raise". The Journal reported that he was joking when he said that, but stranger things have happened, link.

And now we get to the good part. APS' graduation rates are going up because they decided to leave the students who were the least likely to graduate, out of their sample.

Huh?

The Journal reports that Rose-Ann McKernan, Executive Director of Instruction and Accountability at APS said,

The change in the graduation rate does not reflect a significant difference in the number of graduating students, but rather in the overall number of students tracked.
... many students should not have been counted because they were not first-time ninth-graders.

They don't think they should have to include kids who had to take the ninth grade more than once.

Perhaps they should just go ahead and drop from the sample, any students who don't have a "C" average. At that point, they should have a graduation rate of nearly 100%.

The Journal blames it all on the NMPED and is apparently OK with dropping "at risk students" out of graduation rate calculations.

Trip Jennings, NMI, link, link, has a different slant in a couple of pieces about the accounting error that has raised APS graduation rate above one student in two.

He reports that the NMPED thinks the leadership of the APS are the ones who should be held accountable for the screw up.


Jennings writes, PED Secretary Veronica Garcia said;

"I am incredulous at the implication that somehow PED is responsible for the inaccuracy of the district’s self-reporting and subsequent corrections.

As indicated by APS, their data quality was poor, and they submitted over 1700 corrections after their original submission."

This is not the first time that bad book keeping has kept some good ol' boys ass out of the fire.

When the Meyners auditors came into APS Financial Division, they found;

• inadequate policies and procedures,
• inadequate accountability, and
• inadequate record keeping.

Nobody ever goes to jail for keeping records so inadequate that they cannot be used to send anybody to jail.

The bottom line is that we don't have the slightest idea what is going on in the administration of the APS. We know;

• they keep lousy records,
• they're suppressing evidence of felony criminal misconduct involving senior APS administrators,
• they won't step up as role models of the student standards of conduct,
• they won't answer legitimate questions,
• they (Paula Maes) "will never agree to any audit that" individually identifies corrupt and incompetent administrators and board members, and
• they won't allow an independent standards and accountability audit that reports to the public record.

We're getting two very different stories here; one from the Journal and one from the New Mexico Independent.

The Journal, is covering up an ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

The only reason why "the public trust should not be lost." is because there is none left to loose.




photos Mark Bralley