Brooks' actions speak louder than his words

Once a month, the Journal gives
APS Supt Winston Brooks an
opportunity to spin the truth
without fear of challenge or
contradiction.

Today's opuscule, link, is entitled
"Teachers make it possible".
To read it, you would think he
actually respects teachers.

His disingenuity is indistinguishable
from outright deceit.

If teachers actually enjoyed the respect he feigns for them,
they would have a seat at the table where decisions are made.

Between them, APS teachers have about 100,000 years of
teaching experience. It is difficult to imagine a more valuable
resource. Yet the first thing Brooks did when he took the
reins of the APS, was to put an end to site based management.

Site based management is the manifest result of true respect
for the education, experience, dedication, and expertise that
teachers bring to the table. What greater respect can be shown
than to, not only solicit the opinion of, but to actually delegate
decision making power to, the people who work everyday in
classrooms?

Instead, teachers are given scripts to follow with 30 or more
students dutifully arranged in five rows of six, and then blamed
for the ensuing failure; a failure as predictable as it is inevitable.

If you ask the Director of APS Research, Development, and
Accountability Department Tom Genne, if the district ever,
even once, hard surveyed teachers and asked them, what do
you need from the administration in order to succeed?, he
will admit that it has never happened.

Brooks will point instead to a scientifically and statistically
indefensible parent survey, link.

The leadership of the APS is loathe to qualify or quantify
their shortcomings in the eyes of those who carry the load
at the educational interface; the place where students and
"the system" interact.

Teachers have never been asked for their expert opinions on
the obstacles to their success. Teachers are not even given the
opportunity for meaningful subordinate evaluation of their
site administrators.

Brooks has not given teachers, or any other APS employee a
venue where they can file a legitimate complaint against an
administrator and where the complaint will see due process.

If the Journal investigated and reported upon the respect
teachers feel from Winston Brooks, instead of allowing Brooks
his uncontested spin, they would report on a far different
dynamic than the one Brooks would have us believe.

But then, that would require the Journal to actually investigate
and report on the incompetence and corruption in the leadership
of the APS, something they are heretofore decidedly disinclined to do.




photo Mark Bralley