Brooks shading the truth on 20% higher graduation rate

APS Supt Winston Brooks appeared on the Bob Clark Show Friday.  KKOB is currently running a snippet as "news".

Brooks claimed the district's graduation rate when he arrived was around 50% and is now around 70%.  He, by extension, claims credit for the districts success.

When most people hear, "the graduation rate" has gone up, they assume wrongly that the district is doing a better job of educating the nearly 90,000 of our sons and daughters in APS schools.

In fact, graduation rates are up significantly for two reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of education in the APS.  The first, was the decision to calculate the rate on 5 years of high school rather than 4.  Whether that is appropriate is a separate issue; it raised the graduation rate without delivering any more education.  The second, a decision to take 9th graders who fail the 9th grade, out of the calculus.

Frankly, I can't imagine how you can get away with discounting those students at the highest risk, from the calculation of graduation rates, but they did, and it raised the graduation rate, link.

These and likely other reasons that have nothing to do with doing their job any better, have the effect of raising graduation rates.

I mention all of this because Winston Brooks is the senior-most administrative role model in the APS, of the Pillars of Character Counts!.  I mention that because the Pillars are the standards Brooks enforces upon students.

According to the Pillar of Trustworthiness, Brooks was required to be more candid, more forthright, and more honest with stakeholders.  His Responsibility was to make certain that stakeholders understood the truth in exactly the way he understands the truth.

Another case in point; Brooks' failure to produce a candid, forthright and honest accounting of spending at 6400 Uptown Blvd.

The castle keep at 6400 Uptown Blvd - at what cost?

Another case in point, Brooks failure to describe candidly, forthrightly and honestly, what became of the several investigations of felony criminal misconduct in the leadership of the APS and their publicly funded private police force.

I can understand why men like Brooks don't want to be held honestly accountable to the Pillars of Character Counts!; a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethics.  It requires inordinate character and courage.  It requires truth telling.

What I can't understand is, how he can simply abdicate his duties and obligations as a role model and nobody seems to care.

If the Pillars of Character Counts! are too high a standard for men like Brooks and School Board President, and senior-most role model in the entire APS Marty Esquivel, then the standards are too high for students.

Do as I say, not as I do
never worked and never will.

If we really want students to grow into adults who embrace character and courage and honor, someone has to show them what it looks like.




photos Mark Bralley