WHY MORE TESTING FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION IN NEW MEXICO?

Everywhere everyone is talking about testing in public education: testing to evaluate students, testing to evaluate teachers, testing to evaluate schools.  Tests, tests, and more tests.  Why?  That basic question no one asks or answers.  So I start with fundamentals.

The purpose of testing is to collect data.  The purpose of that data, often combined with data from other sources and methods, is to generate information to guide action.  Yet the advocates of more testing have neither asked nor answered three fundamental questions.  One, what data or information do we not have but need?  Two, for what purposes do we need more data or information?  Three, what action will we take when we have it?  By not asking or answering these questions, advocates may be suspected of serving other than educational purposes.

New Mexico has collected data and information on student academic performance for two traditional purposes.  The first purpose, at the classroom and school level, is to evaluate student performance, both individual and collective, to improve instruction to individual students or entire classes.  When tests have been used to collect data and information (along with the results of class quizzes and tests, and graded work) for this purpose, the now heated issue of “teaching to the test” has rarely arisen.

The second purpose, at the school and state level, in the aggregate and over time, is to identify and evaluate strengths and weaknesses of educational programs and help educational officials and legislators manage resources and develop programs to improve the quality of education.  When test results have been used for these purposes (and not teacher and school evaluation), controversies have largely resulted from different opinions about effectiveness and cost.

To serve these two traditional purposes, New Mexico has been collecting data from tests and other sources for decades.  It has enormous amounts of annual data on proficiency tests, grade point averages, SAT scores, dropout and graduation rates, college matriculation rates, and college remediation rates.  If the state needs more data or information to serve these purposes, it must be different data or information, and it must identify what that different data or information is.  What is certain is that more testing of essentially the same kind cannot provide it.  What is equally certain is that the state has refused to justify its need for more testing by identifying different data and information which can lead to constructive action to improve public education.

From all sources of data and information, New Mexico has had remarkably consistent results for decades.  State standardized proficiency testing in reading and math in the fourth and eighth grades have hovered around 50 percent.  State graduation rates have recently risen from about 50 about 65 percent; Las Cruces graduates rates have risen to about 70 percent.  Graduate remediation rates have hovered around 50 percent.  The national ranking of New Mexico’s K-12 public education system has long been in the bottom 10 percent of the states; it has recently dropped to 50^th, or last place.  UNM and NMSU, the two largest state universities, rank in the lower tiers of state universities.  Their graduation rates range between 40 and 50 percent, depending on the number of years to degree; at other state universities, they are much lower.  At state community colleges, the average graduation rate is about 15 percent; at DACC, it is about 7 percent.

These results lead to one finding about the quality of public education at all levels in New Mexico.  If percentages from just above to well below 50 percent mean anything, by these measures, the quality of education in the state is mediocre at best.

These results clearly indicate the need for legislative, administrative, and educational action to change them.  However, the sorry fact is that New Mexico has made no use of already existing available data and information, at least not to any evident beneficial educational effect.  The sorry inference is that the state would make no use of additional data and information for beneficial educational effect.

The question is why the state collects data and information which it does not use to improve public education, and squanders state resources in the process.  The answer is that, despite a decades-long record of persistent mediocrity in public education, citizens, their elected representatives, and appointed officials are tolerant of, even satisfied with, the benefits of public education as it actually operates.  In a state mired in poverty, its effects of poor education and poor health, and their effects on employment, public education is oriented to support immediate, though non-educational, purposes: employment and revenues from enrollments to sustain employment.

New Mexico supports these purposes and gets results.  The state has more post-secondary schools per capita than any other state in the union because they provide large numbers of administrative and teaching positions.  To sustain and increase such employment, New Mexico markets higher education to generate ever more enrollments to increase revenues to pay for this swollen and swelling staff.  To meet growth targets, 2- and 4-year colleges have low or no admissions standards and accept from 60 to 100 percent of applicants, regardless of whether they are likely capable of doing college-level work, completing an educational program, and graduating—a point elaborated below.  New Mexico prefers these short-term purposes of public education to the longer-term purpose of an education of quality serving the needs of the state and its citizens.

The unstated fear is that changes which would improve public education at all levels would probably reduce enrollments and thereby reduce employment and revenues.  So no one wants changes.  Yet the costs of doing nothing are very great.

The most egregious example of the unwillingness to make changes despite clear evidence of the deficiencies of public education at all levels is the indifference to the high rates of remediation.  As noted above, 50 percent of New Mexico public high-school graduates who enroll in New Mexico 2- or 4-year colleges or universities require remediation.  This fact alone indicates deficiencies of K-12 education in the public schools.  This implication is ignored because, the primary purposes of education being employment and revenues, remediation is a two-fer.  Remedial classes require instructors and charge students tuition and fees; the numbers of additional employees and the amount of additional revenues are significant.  In addition, the more remediation which these students require, the less likely they are to graduate.  This fact suggests that many remediation courses fail to remediate.

The results are grotesque.  Parents of college-bound students requiring remediation, or the students themselves, should be outraged.  After providing a shoddy education, New Mexico requires them to pay for often shoddy repairs.  Indeed, the more time and effort students devote to remediation, and the more money they spend on tuition, fees, and books, the more likely students are to fail.  By tolerating high remediation rates, New Mexico not only disregards data indicating widespread educational deficiencies, but also sanctions a swindle: two payments (taxes and tuition) for one education.

Taxpayers should be angry.  Their taxes pay for a mediocre education of students.  The diminished prospects of dropouts and graduates for career employment, college education, and quality of life create a need for greater “safety-net” programs from state and federal governments.  Poorly educated people constitute a less productive workforce and a less constructive citizenry.  The inadequate or misdirected investment of public revenues in public education ensures a diminished future return.  In short, New Mexico is educating itself for continued third-world status across the board.

For taxpayers, their taxes also pay for the more immediate financial consequences which result from the ill-prepared who try but fail to get a college education.  Like many other students, they incur debt in the form of education loans; when they withdraw, they often default on those loans.  The higher the withdrawal rate, the higher the default rate.  With a graduation rate of only 7 percent, Dona Ana Community College leads its peers in student debt forfeiture.  Taxpayers pay for those defaults, so they, too, pay twice for poor education.

If data and information in so egregious a case as remediation can prompt no change, data and information in other cases will more than likely prompt no change.  Since the quality of education matters little, the problems which cause academic mediocrity also matter little.  In any event, testing solves none of the problems, and adds little to what teachers know about students, principals know (or can know) about teachers, and the public knows about the schools.

The case against more testing rests on four conclusions.  One, given the abundance of existing or easily obtained data and information, New Mexico already knows everything which it needs to know about the systemic failures of public education in the state.  Two, since New Mexico knows everything which it needs to know to make changes but does not make them, the state is not going to makes changes in response to yet more, even different, data and information.  Three, more testing will not identify new problems or new solutions or, in themselves, lead to improvements in public education.  And four, New Mexico should not squander resources to test students even more frequently to collect superfluous data adding nothing to what is already known and available for use.

So why more testing?  Because advocates of more testing are advancing an agenda based on a business-oriented ideology committed to undermining, if not destroying, public education.  The record of mediocrity of public education in New Mexico is clear enough; more testing merely gives more publicity to this mediocrity.  The purpose of this publicity is to diminish confidence in, and support of, public education.  In addition, more testing has other adverse effects on public education which will further diminish public confidence and support.  More testing weakens education by stressing students, harassing teachers, and badgering principals and superintendents.  More testing of students to evaluate teachers, and grade schools dilutes and degrades the quality of education because it inevitably leads to constricting the curriculums and teaching to the test (as well as manipulation of the testing and the data).  Increased attention to student test scores and school grades distracts from analyses of problems and proposals of solutions.  Notably, advocates of more testing have offered no proposal to improve the existing K-12 and college public school system.

Instead, advocates are playing a duplicitous game.  They pretend to want more testing to improve public education, but they really intend more mediocre test results to transfer support—in particular, to scare and stampede parents—from  public schools to non-public alternatives.  The sequences is clear: first, publicly funded, independently operated charter schools; then, vouchers for any, including religious, schools; and, finally, privatization.  In the end, the state would collect and transfer taxpayer dollars to companies which cannot otherwise create for-profit schools, and would thereby preclude any public voice or role in state-funded education.  Privatization would make public education a case of taxation without representation.

More testing is testing public education in a free society.  The alternative, company schools, is a detestable alternative to this fundamental democratic institution.

CAN YOU BELIEVE--THINK TANKS IN NEW MEXICO

In all likelihood, most New Mexicans are unaware of think tanks or imagine them to be far away, inside-the-beltway, outfits which conduct arcane research on domestic and foreign topics and publish academic tomes for keeping dust off shelves.  A few know some of the work of those well known and respected, including American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, Cato Institute, and Urban Institute.  (Heritage Foundation remains well known but has become too partisan to be well respected.)  They offer informed, intelligent advocacy of their views, often with smart criticism of opposing views.  However strong their convictions, their work meets high standards of publication and of engagement with both friends and foes.  Collectively, they are a national asset.

New Mexico has two organizations which are or purport to be think tanks, Think New Mexico (TNM) and Rio Grande Foundation (RGF).  On the basis of my experience with both them and their leadership, I offer a comparison to others less familiar with them.  TNM and RGF differ greatly in just about every respect: orientation and operation, mission and purpose, goals and principles, and membership of boards and staff.  They also different greatly in the contribution which they make to the discussion of state issues.

TNM’s website statement is, all things considered, relatively detailed on these points:

Think New Mexico is a results-oriented think tank whose mission is to improve the quality of life for all New Mexicans, especially those who lack a strong voice in the political process.  We fulfill this mission by educating the public, the media, and policymakers about some of the most serious problems facing New Mexico and by developing and advocating for effective, comprehensive, sustainable solutions to those problems.

Our approach is to perform and publish sound, nonpartisan, independent research.  Unlike many think tanks, Think New Mexico does not subscribe to any particular ideology.  Instead, because New Mexico is at or near the bottom of so many national rankings, our focus is on promoting workable solutions.

Consistent with our nonpartisan approach, Think New Mexico's board is composed of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans.  They are statesmen and stateswomen, who have no agenda other than to see New Mexico succeed.  They are also the brain trust of this think tank.

TNM’s statement emphasizes that it is “results-oriented,” committed to “the quality of life for all,” focused on “problems” and “solutions,” and “nonpartisan” in approach and board membership.  Most of its board members are former government officials or civic leaders.  I like its specificity, agree with TNM’s economic and environmental positions, but disagree with its one position thus far on education, a subject on which no board member has expertise.  I strongly criticized its report advocating small, including charter, schools and sternly condemned its biased presentation, which did not present all sides of the argument or alternative solutions.  The response of TNM’s Executive Director, Fred Nathan, response was professional.  He replied by repeating the report’s points, not attacking me, misquoting my words, or misrepresenting my views.  He also wrote me a personal note expressing his disappointment that we disagree and his hope that we would agree on other issues—a response speaking well of TNM and Nathan.

More recently, TNM published a report on employment in New Mexico, “Addressing New Mexico’s Jobs Crisis.”  It makes several entirely sensible, feasible suggestions for improving the business climate in the state.  Its specific suggestions fall into three major categories: “attracting entrepreneurs,” “enhancing efficiency,” and “accelerating growth,” with a final section on changes to “pay for reform” without gouging the taxpayer.  Only special interests can oppose its suggestions.

However, the section on entrepreneurs makes sad reading.  TNM’s suggestion is to attract international students to New Mexico’s universities because they are far more likely to start up businesses than state residents graduating.  Its suggestion tacitly admits that New Mexico cannot, or does not know how to, overcome its cultural lethargy and its educational deficiencies to inspire and develop similarly competent and enterprising residents.  Worse, in the longer run, the success of this suggestion would leave many New Mexicans relegated to the lower-level, lower-salary jobs which do nothing to change the culture or improve the education in the state.  I wish that TNM had discussed this topic because it would have indicated that this short-term solution does not address a long-term problem.  But, in fairness, TNM might have regarded this consideration as out of scope.

RGF’s statements—its website statements and the editorial description of its President, Paul Gessing—are rather spare on the same points.  According to RGF’s website,

The Rio Grande Foundation is a research institute dedicated to increasing liberty and prosperity for all of New Mexico's citizens.  We do this by informing New Mexicans of the importance of individual freedom, limited government, and economic opportunity.

According to the President’s description,

The Rio Grande Foundation is an independent, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility.

Its website statement of policies details its non-participation in political activities: candidate support, campaign contributions, and fundraising—not its non-partisanship.  Its website provides little identifying information about its directors, most of whom seem to have business connections, but much about its staff, most of whom have academic economic or business backgrounds.  The one-sided economic and political inclinations of RGF directors and staff make partisanship and polemics almost unavoidable.

Without a range of perspectives, RGF does not respond well to criticism.  For instance, in responding to an RGF column on budget cuts, I agreed with two, and disagreed with one, of its recommendations.  Gessing responded unprofessionally: he misquoted my words, misrepresented my views, and accused me of attacking RGF and its “vision.”  He then cut me from RGF’s mailing list and ignored my invitation to meet to discuss current issues—not the usual response from think tanks or their staffs.  Although he restored me to the mailing list, he has since responded to my criticisms of some of RGF’s economic and educational positions in the same manner as previous responses.

RGF’s two statements of mission are neither consistent nor precise.  The only principle shared by both statements is “limited government.”  The website’s “individual freedom” and “economic opportunity” differ from Gessing’s “economic freedom” and “individual responsibility.”  None of these phrases is equivalent to any of the others.  These mismatches hardly matter, for the phrases are slogans to rally the already persuaded or rouse the easily persuadable.

The website’s and Gessing’s statements of goals also differ between “increasing liberty and prosperity” and “promoting prosperity,” respectively.  I am not going to quibble about differences between the results-orientation of “increasing” prosperity and the intention-orientation of “promoting” prosperity.  But I question the mention of “liberty” in one of the statements because it seems unnecessary.  Everyone has read Patrick Henry’s famous cry in 1775, “Give me liberty or give me death.”  Nearly 250 years later, when Americans say the Pledge of Allegiance, they pledge allegiance to “liberty…for all.”  If everyone favors liberty, no organization, much less a think tank, needs to make it a goal of research and education—or so it would seem.  But appearances are deceiving; when used by a “think tank” like RGF, “liberty” is code-word talk by those more or less extreme who are fearful of and hostile to the federal government.  So this verbal oddity indicates a powerful political bias which undermines its claim to be “non-partisan.”

“Liberty” is not the only partisan term to raise questions about the “non-partisan” nature of RGF “research” and “education.”  So, too, is “limited government.”  All Americans have always believed in “limited government.”  Members of the Tea Bag Party and the American Civil Liberties Union share a general belief in “limited government,” but they disagree on the specifics about which limits or where they are.  Like “liberty,” “limited government” is either a needless-to-say subject or, since it is said, more code language for an ideological cluster of associated economic and political objectives: small (that is, weak) government, free markets, less regulation, and low taxes.  I do not object to some of these objectives—indeed, my allegiance to “free markets” is better balanced and truer than RGF’s—but I do have doubts about “research,” the results of which resolutely, not always reasonably, promote this ideology.

Among others, I have two major criticisms of RGF’s ideology.  One is that its “vision of limited government” is one-eyed.  In advocating “free markets,” RGF sees government intervention only in terms of regulations and taxes on business; it is does not see it in terms of grants, subsidies, tax credits or waivers, and tax reductions to business.  At the federal level, for example, the end of such annual wealth transfers from citizens to corporations would just about equal the annual trillion-dollar deficits of the past three years.  In New Mexico, the end of such transfers would, I think, approximate its projected budget deficit.  But RGF’s “vision of government” turns a blind eye to these market-distorting giveaways and a deaf ear to its hypocrisy about free markets.

My other major criticism is that RGF’s goals and principles do not constitute a social philosophy.  Because of its one-dimensional, pro-business perspective, it has none.  It does not understand that business is just one of many institutionalized functions—among others, religion, education, medical and social services—in society.  Worse, it assumes that the purpose of government is to support corporations and disparities in wealth.  RGF cannot conceive that government is necessary to mediate between conflicting economic interests, and between business and other interests; and to keep capitalism from destroying itself, the economy, and the country with it.

What RGF means by “research” and “education” is not what most people understand by those terms.  Its purposes—entirely legitimate ones, I hasten to add—are the narrow ones promoting the business interests or ideologies of its corporate sponsors.  However, its biased work and its inappropriate behavior toward critics are those less of a think tank—it does very little thinking—than of a ministry of propaganda.  If they do not already do so, people should view its publications and pronouncements in that light.

ANOTHER DATE WHICH WILL LIVE IN INFAMY

I reminisce and reflect on my experience from exactly 50 years ago today.

On that infamous Friday, I was working at my desk at home, writing my master’s thesis on teaching Shakespeare, and listening to the radio.  Without the usual fanfare which even then attended interruptions to report trivia, the music suddenly stopped, and the announcer’s voice intoned, as I recall his words, “We interrupt this program with a bulletin from Dallas: the President has been shot.”

To this day, these words—simple, stark, and direct—still evoke powerful responses.

My parents’ housecleaner, a young black woman who had a charming baby boy, came up the stairs to my room.  Sobbing uncontrollably, Henrietta was barely able to see through her tears.  She embraced me and wailed, “Oh, what is to become of us now?”  I gave her what comfort I could, but no one could but dread what the near-term future would be.  Her concerns were not about world war; they were about race relations.  “Us” meant “blacks.” Had Kennedy been assassinated outside Dixie, perhaps the sense of threat to blacks and their feelings of despair would have been less.  But he was assassinated in Dixie—in Texas; in Dallas, Texas—and his death threatened blacks with the loss of a president who had spoken and acted on their behalf and given them hope.  The wonderful irony is that Kennedy’s successor was a Texan, and he acted with a vengeance and a determination and an authority in the use of presidential power to right grievous wrongs.  He accomplished what Kennedy could only imagine.

Like many others, no one was prepared for such an atrocious act.  America was torn then as it now and perhaps always has been.  Kennedy was well intentioned in the area of civil rights; Johnson was effective.  America today suffers the same well intentioned but ineffectual leadership on civil rights (and so much more) which it suffered then.  The question which I ask myself today is, in matters of civil rights and social caring for the least among us, who is the new Lyndon Baines Johnson?

IF YOU WANT TO BE EQUAL, WORK HARDER

As an occasional, peripatetic teacher for about 45 years in nine states and the District of Columbia in high schools, community colleges, four-year colleges, I have been around.  As a long-time civic activist in public education, I know most of the issues; as the parent of two extremely intelligent children, one of each flavor, I know the elaborate arguments and strong feelings on the issues of ability grouping and tracking.  Parents of the gifted want the best for their children; most, but not all, parents of the non-gifted also want the best for theirs and resent what they perceive as the stigmatizing of their children and, by association, of themselves.

Minorities—more Blacks and Hispanics than Asians and Jews—protest such sorting as a structural principle of inequality.  To them, course, program, and classroom separation is like school segregation, and thus contrary to the law of the land since the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Topeka in 1954.

Even in virtually all-white school districts, ability grouping—with state or school course curriculums shaped to, and teacher expectations matched to, same-ability groups—has been not only stigmatizing, but also stultifying to the average and below-average students.  Increasing the distress of these students, administrators and teachers have failed to recognize or accommodate hybrid students, the ones good in some subjects, bad in others.  The effects have been educationally and socially corrosive.

The greater ease of teaching students of similar capabilities is a benefit to most teachers and some students, but a dilution of the curriculum, a lowering of expectations and standards, a reduction of instructional effort, and the stigmatizing of students penalize some teachers and affected students for no fault of theirs.  School systems should not dilute the curriculum to match grade-point averages or intelligence test scores.  Instead, they should ensure that all students have educational opportunities, without discrimination in subject matter or indulgence in academic standards, matched to their demonstrated competencies.  Schools should assign students to courses and programs on the basis of those competencies, not a global assessment of their grades or intelligence.  For example, students good in math and bad in English might take advanced math classes and remedial English classes.

The motivation of teachers and students in remedial classes is usually a problem.  I have enjoyed teaching such classes—I like the challenge—and have found students very responsive to someone trying to help them—I challenge them right back—, but I am not sure how to find motivated teachers for those most needing them.  I do not believe that more money gets teachers who have better attitudes and higher expectations, and who will make greater demands of students.  Far too many teachers want the good, the easy-to-teach students; dislike the extra work of teaching to the needs of “poor” students; and, in many cases, have contempt for them.  In many American public schools, many of those students are Blacks and Hispanics.  For all the special programs designed to help them, they have made virtually no educational progress, either relatively or absolutely, for decades.  The persistent nationwide gap in test scores across the spectrum of socio-economic environments suggests the differential effects of cultural influences among different ethnic and racial groups.  Although I discount, not entirely dismiss, the view, widespread among administrators and teachers that the problem is the parents—you teach the students whom you have, not preach to or blame their parents—I acknowledge that some Black and Hispanic parents and their children are indifferent to education or fear failure and so make little effort; assume that schools are solely responsible for education; or believe that schools must ensure not only equal opportunities, but also equal outcomes.  Despite the gap, the same may be said of some white parents with socio-economic and educational backgrounds similar to those of Blacks and Hispanics.

Thanks to more readily available media coverage in urban areas, we witness many Black and Hispanic parents complaining that schools operate in a discriminatory fashion.  If honors or AP classes have disproportionately fewer of their children in them, the ready-at-hand charge is discrimination.  Yet many teachers, even the best-intentioned, report that Black and Hispanic students are less likely to have the requisite educational competencies to succeed in such courses.  Why?  Part of the answer is poor teachers; part is poor attendance, poor work habits, poor classroom behavior, and poor effort.  Whatever the reason or excuse, many have not learned their subjects well enough to succeed without special arrangements.  To avoid such inflammatory charges and visible differentials in grades and graduation rates, school administrators find ways to enlarge the franchise, say, by lowering standards for admission or performance or inflating grades (I recall the “Black B” given by teachers to avoid complaints).  Such devices do nothing for the education of Blacks, Hispanics, or anyone else.

The result: too many deadbeat and dropouts, too many worthless diplomas, and a lifetime of self-justifying resentment that the “system” has been against them.  Too often, some minorities—students, parents, and minority leaders—blame everyone and everything but themselves.  Rarely, do they admit that students did not do the work, and parents did not demand their children, to get the education which the schools tried, sometimes hard, sometimes not, to provide them.  In the end, people born in adverse circumstances have rarely overcome them except by investing their energies in earning an education by their hard work; and, unless they invest in themselves and work hard, they will never be equal to their capabilities.