There are plenty of political bodies and organizations that end up being punching bags around Tucson, but I don’t think anything that absorbs the same amount of ire as the Tucson Unified School District, fairly and unfairly. However, TUSD is at least paying lip service to the idea of change, so like any good bureaucracy, at TUSD, that process needs to include a seemingly pointless community survey, complete with jargon-filled platitudes like “communication that produces a culture of mutual respect and trust that honors the professionalism and expertise of staff” and “clear and consistent communication with all stakeholders.”
Have at it, stakeholders.
This article appears in Apr 26 – May 2, 2012.
Only parasitic educational bureaucrats in a top-heavy school district administration can produce prose as awful as “communication that produces a culture of mutual respect and trust that honors the professionalism and expertise of staff” and “clear and consistent communication with all stakeholders.” What we DO know is that Michael Hicks couldn’t have written it, since he’s, well….oh alright, I’ll downplay it: he’s not exactly a wordsmith, now is he? Even for gassy, bloated, empty sentences like that.
I wonder if those that had to suffer education through TUSD actually have the reading comprehension to understand that smarmy gobbledegook. (directed at TUSD, not students)
The I’m more educated than you wordcrafting doesn’t impress anyone when you fail to deliver the service you were hired to provide. Anyone can figure out how to use a thesaurus to find big words, but putting those words into a cohesive sentence that makes sense requires an education.
Choose your words wisely btw, I imagine that there are a few stakeholders ready to kill the vampire.
If they stuck with teacing math, science ,effective communication and basic economics we might have an employable work force that could help grow the economy
Education can be “jumping the shark”,look at obongo,it hasn’t helped him…..
The only people who think education has jumped the shark don’t seem to have a basic one, which is apparent by Bob’s post.
Henry, it seems to me after of years of pattern observation, that big business and state govt only wants minimum wage employable types here and to drive everyone else off so that property values drop to nothing after the bankers make their profits, never mind they did well at illegal foreclosures.
And then big biz and their political cronies can just do whatever they want to do to the land for the sake of profit since there won’t be anyone left here but big business and peons to expoit, not paid well enough to get out of here if they wanted to. It’s easy to say I’m being cynical but good grief take a good look at whats going on under the mirrors and smokescreens.
It is a useless survey.
The real issue is that the Republicans mission is to get rid of all public schools, thus getting rid of the TUSD. Republicans want all private schools and they are doing that across this nation.
The real objective is to have corporations run the school, not the parents. Parents would have no voice in the education. Just review the ALEC mission, and that is one of the main missions.
Only time will tell if this and other attempts by the district to effect real change will show any lasting results. I do agree that these surveys should “get real”, and cut down on the jargon, which makes us “stakeholders” feel like we are in some kind of info-mmercial. But unless anyone out there has any positive and realistic suggestions on how to improve the district (as “dismantling it” is not likely to happen, even with Republican intervention), they need to back off and give it a chance.
Maybe if more of the community stepped up to help rather than complain, something good may develop in education in Arizona.
Unless we are all prepared to home-school, or perhaps turn our children into “product” for charter and private schools?