Friday, July 10, 2015

APS Student Handbook revision premature

Above all else; the APS Student Handbook is a collection of policy statements.

The likelihood that any discipline policy will be successful, aside from enforcement, depends on its relationship to some underlying principle.  If the only reason you don't want a child to do something is because you said no, you're in store for some push back.

You must or mustn't, do this thing because we believe doing or not doing this thing this thing violates commonly held principles.
... relieves enforcers from having nothing better to tell student than;
 ... because I said so.
APS does not have a discipline philosophy upon which to base discipline policies. 

There has been no consensus established on even such fundamental issues as;
  • whether students who deliberately break rules should be punished or given another second chance, or  
  • whether student discipline records should be maintained, or
  • whether chronically disruptive students should be left in classes and disrupting other students education, or.
  • whether students who commit criminal acts should be dealt with "administratively" or by professional law enforcement. 
Writing a policy handbook without a philosophical foundation is putting the cart before the horse;
they want to decide what to do without having agreed on why to do it, or how.

Back to the drawing board!

1 comment:

ched macquigg said...

An anonymous comment was left on this post, accusing someone I do not know of doing something I really know nothing about.

In lieu of more to go on, I'm not comfortable publishing the allegation.