By any metric, Dr. Duran has failed APS students. Under his watch, children are barely even learning anything and the test scores reflect that. Teacher compensation has stagnated while administrative positions keep being added at Syphax with in sight. Our kids cannot go another school year with him at the helm. He is steering APS into a death spiral which it may not recover from. |
Dr. Duran has done just fine dealing with this extreme global crisis. Hopefully he ignores the whiny, entitled parents.
I've been impressed with communication and transparency. A huge step up from the gym teacher. |
Most of what you are saying either was an issue before he arrived, some of which he is already working to change, or pandemic related which really, can’t be all his fault. I appreciate that he has begun to identify issues and solve problems that were created long before he came to APS. |
Dr. Duran's lowest priority is education. He has shown that over and over again. Both he and Loft should be sacked. |
Another fan of Dr. Duran's, here. This has not been easy and I don't think he's made all the right calls, but I don't think anyone would. He's doing a good job. |
The disaster called VLP was 100% under his watch. That alone should be enough to show he must go. |
+1 OP, you posted about this yesterday. You never answered if there were any other heads of school systems in the DMV that you feel did something better/difference given the circumstances. I'm truly interested in what you would have wanted him to do differently given the circumstances. |
I do agree that VLP was a colossal waste of tax payer dollars. Other than that, he's been dealing with the hand he was dealt. I'm happy that no leader in the DMV operated like we live in Alabama or Mississippi. Having many family members there, you wouldn't want those school systems even before COVID. Complete failures. |
Go to the FCPS and MCPS forums and you will see people saying the same hung about their superintendents. When I talk to my friends in other parts of the country, they are saying to same kind of thing. There are no good options for superintendents right now because these are shitty circumstances. |
+1 |
They've actually been open. What a joke. Under Duran, APS' first priority is providing paychecks to adults, not educating children. |
FCPS, MCPS and APS were some of the most closed schools in the country last year! Of course everyone's saying the same thing about such horrible performance. They've also ran the past 2 years for the teachers unions, not the students. So have most big blue state urban school districts. |
Duran has engendered zero teacher trust that he's taking appropriate safety or HR measures. Every transition has left teachers panicked and frustrated.
As a few examples, the teacher vaccine roll out was a mess. APS review of teacher exemptions from in person teaching for health reasons was a huge mess. The roll out out virtual learning was a huge technical disaster. APS bought crappy filters for the classrooms and didn't tell teachers how to use them. APS has left every school set their own covid policies so whether a school is "safe" depends on the reasonability of that principal and advocacy by teachers and parents. Duran doesn't get credible scientific input and set evidence based standards. They're all over the place. Oh, and don't forget the summer school debacle. That was a mess. Plus VLP. He's also done absolutely nothing to try to catch kids up after failing test scores. Lexia and Dreambox don't cut it. |
The fact that Dr. Durán has retained his composure throughout this pandemic no matter what kind of &*% parents and others have thrown at him shows what a quality person he is. This thread shows we don't deserve him. What a shame that would be if he figures that out. |
External agitator. |