From now until Christmas, I will be accepting nominations for the Leaky Bucket Award. This non-prestigous award will be presented to the local entity who does the best job defending poor results while failing in their mission and wasting as many resources as possible in this pursuit.
The winner will be entitled, nay encouraged, to shamefully display the award graphic and award date on their website and on any and all correspondence. The use of window decals is strongly encouraged for all winners of this award, so that patrons can see exactly what kind of entity they are dealing with as they enter the door.
Depending on the volume and catagories that the various nominated enties fall into, it may become necessary to award to multiple receipients. In the case of a tie, both nominees will be awarded equally.
Nominations should include a short narative on the qualifications and lack of achievements of the nominees. Nominations will be accepted via reply to this post, or by email to revtallywhacker@yahoo.com.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Now Accepting Nominations
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16 comments:
Can you say: UTB/TSC?
Can you say: UTB/TSC?
I expect a lot of action on this one, but a true nomination should include the abysmal failures in excruciatingly disgusting detail. You have to remember, with so many to chose from, making the final choices will be difficult and the disgusting detail that you write may be the deciding factor in who gets the Leaky Bucket.
M.
City of Brownsville??
...include the abysmal failures in excruciatingly disgusting detail.
Remember, we will have to justify the award. The final presentation will include a list of qualification to have received it, more than likely in the format of a proclaimation, if the DOM is high enough (DOM -Degree of Mortification), the chosen organization could even receive the "Seal of Fate"; the highest possible ambition for this type of pursuit.
M.
Could an article based on research from Johns Hopkins be used as the nomination form? :)
City of Brownsville Public Works Department. Although they do some good, the Price Road project gets them the nomination. They have paved and repaved the road so many times in the past year, it is ridiculous. if you drive on the original lane they paved, it is riddled with patches. now they are repaving, for the second time, the outside lane in the opposite direction. they bought a $500,000 milling machine (which txdot uses to carefully remove asphalt on freeway overlays) under the guise that it would be used to recycle asphalt. They used the memories of the cutler repaving/recycling machine that the city contracted in the late 80's. The milling machine is far from the cutler recycler. It mills off asphalt and then they spread it out on dirt roads. it is not well graded, like caliche, and therefore becomes too rough to ride on within weeks. Instead of overlaying streets with fresh aspalt, like the state does, they now mill off all of the asphalt prior to repaving. This is okay, but if they left the original 2 inches of asphalt in place and just overlayed an inch, they woudl have a 3 inch thick mat of asphalt. Instead, they mill it all off and then place 2 inches again, which isn't any stronger than what was there in the first place. But it does cost twice as much. They already had a mixing machine that could accomplish the same thing. there was no need to purchase this $500,000 beast. Now, I have heard that the levels on the machine are broken, so it doesn't even work right anymore. If that's not waste, I don't know what is.
M,
Anony just gave you THE reason to reject the $55 Mil proposal.
Kurg
City of Brownsville Public Works Department....
Now THAT was a nomination speech!
M.
I nominate Cameron Works Inc. Research is already done by the BH.
and the sad part is that it is just the tip of the iceburg!
"and the sad part is that it is just the tip of the iceburg!"
Well, I got my icepick, and I know how to use it.
M.
M,
you want something to pick at? Ask why the ex-public works director is being paid by the city as a private consultant, with a city issued cel phone and a city furnished office at the public works complex.
Truth be told, UTB/TSC is only marginally "an institution of higher education." Much of that condition arises from the abysmal lack of preparation of the students coming to the school from the surrounding public schools. Beat your chest and tear your hair all you want, you misguided apologists for the hideous state of public education, it's not going to change that fact.
Any weight UTB/TSC carries in the world of education comes from its accreditation. Without that, it irrefutably becomes what many already see it as: Juliet Garcia's combination money factory and playground for border retards.
The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) is the organization that provides the accreditation to UTB/TSC. They accomplish this by periodically coming to each institution and looking very closely at what the institution claims its mission is, what the institution is actually doing as relates to accomplishing that proclaimed mission, what sorts of results the various schools and colleges are getting, and the levels of academic progress students are making.
They are very serious, and they don't play at it. And they're coming to you-know-where in the very near future.
Most institutions have what is generally known as an office of institutional effectiveness, or something very similar. This is the office charged with making sure that when the accrediting body comes to check stuff out, it all looks good. Most institutions have had such an office in place for years, if not decades. The office at UTB/TSC was only created in the last couple of years. And this was somewhat of a panic response to the realization that SACS was coming and they weren't really looking like a good candidate for continued accreditation. Or at the very least, not without sanctions, a probationary period or some other very obvious process that the entire rest of the educational world could not help but see as proof of failure and incompetence.
One way to make the horrendous numbers that accompany hundreds of students requiring more than the state or national average number of hours of remediation in order to even qualify to attempt college level work; degrees taking six, eight or more years to complete by students barely able to maintain a 2.0 Grade Point Average (GPA); students typically losing access to federal student aid due to failure to maintain academic standards mandated by that program; students completing enough hours to account for at least a bachelor’s degree, but their completed courses to not conform to any approved course of study for which a degree can be awarded – one way to get the low graduation numbers to look better, is to get all those struggling students out of the system.
It appears that it was decided that a Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) evaluation would be made as a means for culling some of the more embarrassing members of the student body. Finally, we’re getting close to addressing the Dual Enrollment students.
A Freedom of Information Act request will yield nothing. The institution, regardless of the fact that it disburses state and federal monies, is not a governmental body and is not required to comply. Even if it were, you can be sure that there is no appreciable paper trail in existence regarding this activity. All students, including high school students who are being duped into duel enrollment by the office of Enrollment Planning in order to artificially bolster sagging enrollment numbers, are subject to SAP standards.
(One of the university’s, and the Office of Enrollment Planning’s, paramount objectives has been to meet or exceed expected national averages for enrollment increases. This is essential in demonstrating that a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in one of the poorest regions of the nation is being managed so remarkably by a Hispanic woman, Juliet Garcia, that it is able to show such advancement, which is undoubtedly being followed with the well known benefits that accrue to the surrounding area through the increased educational level of the population.)
The additional hidden problem here is that many of these dual enrollment students are C- and D-average public school students, not those students for whom the rather demanding dual enrollment program was designed. As a result, many of the little Pedro’s y Bonita’s don’t make the grade; they might come for a few classes but their English isn’t good enough and they’d rather be “hangin with their homies” so they just quit coming. Next thing you know, little Bonita is looking to get into TSC so she can get a respiratory therapist’s certificate, but she’s already on SAP probation because she doesn’t have a 70% completion rate and a 2.0 GPA because of her long forgotten episode with dual enrollment. Another 18 year old in skin-tight mid-calf length hip-hugging designer jeans, $65 dollar blouse revealing no more cleavage than would be appropriate for an 11 pm appearance at the favorite club, set off with pink patent leather Hello Kitty seven inch stiletto heels and coin purse-sized hand bag has her dreams of future financial success stomped hard in the middle of the back by the big muddy black boot of reality.
There is a LOT of ugly crap going down there, on the border by the sea, and it’s not all coming from across the border. To all appearances, Dr. Garcia has taken what could have been a beacon of hope, painted it up as a one-size-fits-all solution for the region’s ignorance and poverty, bought red rubber noses for all parties, and transformed it into her own private legacy building empire.
Post script:
The catch 22 to all this, and you knew with this level plotting and intrigue there would be at least one, is that if they ditch the students that make their numbers look bad for SACS, then their claimed amazing enrollment accomplishment disappears.
“Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!”
~ Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, canto vi, stanza 17.
Can you say UTB-TSC:
Please run for something, and quickly. I prefer that it be TSC Trustee.
That is the best analysis of the UTB-TSC situation I've ever heard or read. What a gift it would be to the community if you'd take up the cause of reforming that system. If TSC Trustee doesn't sound challenging enough, please consider running for the BISD board.
Truly.
and the winner is?
None is so deserving as UTB/TSC. Please announce they have won soon. At least those who have been "Zapped" out will have something to feel good about.
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