Is APS Supt Winston Brooks a "leader" in public education?

APS Supt Winston Brooks will join others this weekend to
right what is wrong in public education, link.

This is not the first time that the most powerful and privileged
superintendents, business leaders, national media and "others"
will have gotten together, at no personal expense, to identify
and solve the problems with public education.

Nor, will it be the last.

It's great work if you can get it; taxpayers pay tens of thousands of dollars in dues to the Council of the Great City Schools, and then the Council of the Great City Schools underwrites the forums "at no expense to taxpayers".

There is no objective or empirical data that proves Brooks is even a run of the mill superintendent, much less the world class superintendent created by the APS Communications Department and corrupt influences at the Journal, KRQE, KOAT, KOB, and KKOB.

The grumblings I am hearing are that he is pretty much loathed by his subordinates. Notice that subordinate evaluation of administrators is no longer part of APS' administrative evaluations; "evaluations that are subjective and unrelated to promotion and step placement", according to recent audit findings.

Teachers, who between them have 100,000 years of teaching experience, don't even get to evaluate their principals.

Brooks will not only attend the forum, but will take part in a panel discussion on “What are public education’s greatest challenges and how do we address these key issues?”

If Brooks has even the slightest clue
about the greatest challenges and
their solutions, why doesn't he
identify and solve his own?

Brooks actually said;

“The students of APS benefit from
our participation in these types of
forums because they are, after all,
the reason we’re working to make
public education better.”

Or, students benefit from forums because they are the reason we are working to make public education better.

Huh?

The only people who benefit from these forums are the
privileged class in education, business and the establishment
media, who will stand around patting each other on the back,
or slapping each other on the ass, depending, and reinforcing
each others political importance.

Executive Director of the Council of the Great City Schools Michael Casserly is expected to recognize APS during his address for the district’s "academic progress".

What academic progress?

The increase in APS' graduation rate is mathematical smoke
and mirrors. Brooks removed from the calculations, students
who are demonstrably least likely to graduate; students who
have previously failed their 9th grade year.

Then Brooks added another year to high school, which raised
the graduation rate, but had no effect on dropouts.

The Council of the Great City Schools will endorse Brooks
because that's what $40K in annual dues gets you.
$40K that would otherwise be spent in classrooms.

None of them have a real clue. If they did, teachers would
be on their list of resources. They would be asking teachers
what is wrong and how best to fix it.

Brooks and the rest of the experts will also chat about;

"* Title I;
* Achievement and professional development,
* Governance, leadership, management, and school finance;
* English Language Learners and bilingual education;
* School improvement grants;
* The newly enacted Child Nutrition Act legislation;
* Reauthorization of No Child Left Behind;
* Federal funding for public education; and
* School improvement grants."

Conspicuously absent from their list of "important challenges";
chronically disruptive students.

If anyone ever did ask teachers to list a few of the problems
they need help with, chronically disruptive students would
make their top ten.

Teachers are not asked, because chronically disruptive
students are an unmet administrative responsibility, and
those, we don't talk about.




photo Mark Bralley