Editors pile on charter school in half-baked editorial

Southwest Learning Center
is a successful charter school.

By any reasonable measure,
it is very successful charter
school.

It would appear that the SLC
and its Director Scot Glasrud
are doing a superlative job.

Because of their comparative
success, the SLC and Glasrud
represent a threat to those
whose existence is threatened
by the number of students who
are abandoning APS in favor of
charter schools.


They represent quite a threat to
APS Supt Winston Brooks.

More than 10,000 students have
left the APS to attend charters
instead.

The hemorrhaging is a consequence
of APS failure to meet those students
at their need. It is a manifestation
of an administrative failure.

The success of the SLC grates
in particular on School Board
Member and enforcer Marty
Esquivel.

There is a long history of the
bad blood between Winston
Brooks, Marty Esquivel, and
the SLC and its Director Scot
Glasrud, link and link.

The Journal's manifest alliance with Brooks and Esquivel is a matter of record. Esquivel and Brooks use the Journal at will in their effort to retaliate against Glasrud and the SLC, link.

On this occasion, Brooks and Esquivel are using the Journal to create a controversy where none exists; a controversy over the number of hours it took a student to order to earn a half credit. The controversy is contrived.

If there were genuine controversy, it would be over whether the course lacked the requisite content and rigor. In the absence of any evidence at all to the contrary, it is reasonable to assume the online course has the required content and rigor. How long it took any one student to complete it is inconsequential.

Any time a number students complete a self paced activity and their completion times are compared, one finds;; most will have taken around the same time to complete the task, some will have taken forever, and some will have finished in remarkably short times; which doesn't mean those students cheated.

Why can't Brooks, Esquivel or the Journal cite any lack of rigor? Have they even looked at the course content and accountability? It would appear that they have not. If they did, clearly they found no lack of rigor cite, or they would have, and consequently, no grounds for their accusations against SLC.

Finishing in a short time, though the center of this tempest, has nothing to do with content and rigor. These online courses are "approved" courses. The time to question their "approval" was before they approved them, not after, and not just because, some kid completed their course in a time they cannot comprehend.

I find it disturbing that Journal editors point to;

"... plenty of questions surrounding the Albuquerque High School student who paid $200 to a charter school so he could retake senior English over a weekend and graduate on time"

and yet no one of them will assign a reporter to investigate and report on the questions and APS responses.

They go right ahead and insinuate that Glasrud and the SLC offer

"... escape routes where students can skirt the rigors demanded of them by their (APS) teachers.

Why are no Journal reporters ever assigned to investigate and report on anything that leads back to Esquivel or Brooks?

I would suggest it is for the same reason no reporters from KRQE, KOAT, or KOB are ever assigned to investigate and report upon anything that leads back to School Board President Paula Maes, the President and CEO of the New Mexico Broadcasters Association.




photos Mark Bralley