In the Saturday Journal, APS Superintendent, Winston Brooks laid out a number of improvement goals, and not one plan to reach any of them. I chided both the Journal and Brooks for the egregious omission.
It would be fair if someone asked, so what's your great plan?
Good question, and thanks for asking.
My plan has two steps and will raise all performance measures by 10% almost immediately.
Step 1, gather data. The APS employees more than 10,000 adults who work at the educational interface; they see students face to face every day. Among them, more than 100,000 years of first hand experience with students.
They have never been asked collectively, for their input.
The Director of APS' Research, Development, and Accountability Division, Tom Genne, freely admits that he has never surveyed teachers and EAs to ask them what they think is wrong and, what do they think needs to be done to fix things. Not only has he not conducted the survey, but he admits that he is unaware of anyone else, ever, doing such a survey either.
Step 1 then; gather data by designing and administering a comprehensive survey of educator opinions on all of the relevant issues and problems. Publish survey results to the public record so that the leadership of the APS cannot hide certain issues and answers from further discussion.
Step 2; end chronic disruptions in schools. Establish meaningful standards of conduct and competence for students, and then enforce them.
Currently there is no agreed upon Student Standards of Conduct. Although there are implied standards, the Pillars of Character Counts!, they are currently being utterly ignored by the leadership of the APS. They will not even admit to their existence, link.
The problem of chronically disruptive students has never been documented by the leadership of the APS.
The reason that no effort has been made to document student discipline issues is, administrators are ultimately responsible for addressing the issue. The negotiated agreement between teachers and administrators places the ultimate responsibility for enforcing district and school discipline policies on the administration. If the Step 1 survey were ever done, the administrative failure to adequately address chronic discipline problems would be documented.
If those who work at the educational interface are given a seat at the table where decisions are made, all markers of student achievement will rise by 10%.
Guaranteed.
Monday, September 21, 2009
A workable 2 step plan for improving the APS
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3 comments:
Winston's "Great" plan is now to lay as much of the discipline on the teacher's shoulders, calling it "classroom management" issue. The basic idea is that a kid gets disciplined (aka chided and reported to parents), and only sent to the office for very serious offenses (drugs, weapons, etc...) This is now in place in the middle schools through the accountability catd and Level I/II/III system...putting it all on the shoulders of the teachers!
Also, the truancy is being laid on teachers through each school's SAT (Student assistance teams). As with discipline, teachers have no real power to punish or to "admonish" parents, yet we now have 2 of the PRincipal's jobs.
Why would winston do that? Does he hate teachers that much? does he think we don't have enough to do? Does he want more time for admin to go to his nonsense meetings?
What the f%$^% Winston? What are you going to lay on us next?
Oh he also wants all employee's to donate $100 to united way during this ecomomic downturn, you know the same one that costs us 1.5% in pension plans and the cost of raised medical insurance, and no raises. What planet is he living on?
Some principles in aPS strong arm you and harass you until they get near-100% involvement in United Way. Why?
Because the principles and the Supe get accolades and honors when their staff participates.
Does that surprise you?
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