NEW MEXICO TEACHERS UNDERMINING THE ECONOMY, EDUCATION, AND DEMOCRACY

In A History of the English People (1985), Paul Johnson describes the relationship between England’s economy and its education:

The educational revolution in sixteenth-century England set in motion the chain of events which produced the modern world; and, conversely, England’s educational failures lie at the very root of her decline as a dynamic society.

This melancholy truth leads us to a related, and still more dismal, aspect of the English problem.  A high rate of economic growth cannot be sustained unless there is a corresponding high rate of investment in the education of the people—not merely in technical skills but in social responsibility through the liberal arts. The English ruling establishment ... have fobbed off the working class with a minimum education; and the country has in consequence received a minimum growth-rate. (p. 403)

This correlation between economic vigor and educational quality is also evident in New Mexico, with one of the weakest economies (c. 40^th) and one of the weakest educational systems (c. 50^th) in America.  To improve its economy, the state must first improve education by focusing on the essentials: quality curriculums and quality teachers.  New Mexico has neither.

Instead, New Mexico gives most students an education suitable for low-skill jobs in mining, farming, ranching, construction, retail business, and tourism.  For decades, 4^th- and 8^th-grade proficiency in mathematics and English has averaged about 50 percent.  One-third of high-school graduates require remedial courses if they go on to college, and most college graduates are no better than modestly competent in their field and on the job.  Lofty talk about STEMH—science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and health—is enough hot air to make the Spaceport viable for balloon rallies.  The students who get an education suitable for high-skill careers are too few to constitute a workforce attractive to high-tech companies.  In short, K-12 teachers crank out graduates—I omit dropouts—semi-literate and semi-numerate, and foist them on employers and colleges.

No change for the better is foreseeable because political and educational leaders fail to take education seriously.  Governors disdain higher education by appointing hacks to serve as regents.  Legislators disregard educational qualifications for the Secretary of Education.  Neither The University of New Mexico nor New Mexico State University has enhanced its academic programs or developed research parks worthy of the name.  Arrowsmith Park satirizes the concept.  Despite experience as governor, NMSU College of Business dean, and NMSU president, Garry Carruthers did nothing to better education at NMSU or make it an engine of economic development.

Such leaders deny, or refuse to identify, the biggest problem: poorly prepared and poorly motivated teachers.  In 1963, James D. Koerner’s The Miseducation of American Teachers compared professionals by academics, aptitudes, and attitudes.  Teachers scored lowest then and would score lower now, since women’s liberation has freed the best and the brightest to pursue other professions.  The residue is teachers who, before-grade-inflation, were C students.  No one has accused these would-be teachers of respect, not to mention a passion, for learning, only a desire for higher salaries and job security.

Their champion since 2013 has been Bill Soules, high-school teacher and state senator.  After 8 years on the Senate Education Committee, as a member, vice chair, and, more recently, chair, New Mexico’s educational system remains mired in mediocrity.  He is not single-handedly responsible for the state’s failure in public education.  But he is responsible for doing nothing more than more of the same, which means raising teacher compensation (without assured subject-matter mastery) and funding more programs (with more teachers and without proof of long-term academic benefits).  He has backed bigger education budgets without requiring better educational results.  He has never sought accountability: get better results or face program termination or staff reductions.  But Soules is no fool.  Such expenditures are necessities to secure teachers’ votes and thereby indirect means to fund re-election campaigns with taxpayer dollars.

Soules sponsors the status quo.  He knows that PED-specified teacher qualifications make the state’s public education system a closed shop, de facto, if not de jure.  He knows that school of education programs stress ancillary matters related to diversity and identity, not focus on the basics of academic subjects in both technical fields for careers and humanities for citizenship in a democracy.  What makes his irresponsibility the greater is his indifference or opposition to improvements at little or no cost.  Otherwise, he would sponsor legislation to:

• Define specific educational qualifications for all appointments to educational offices, including the Secretary of Education and university regents
• Direct the state’s Public Education Department (PED) to:
• Set criteria for academic performance to initiate, continue, or terminate educational programs, including early childhood education
• Develop subject-matter curriculums inclusive in coverage, sequenced in delivery, and systematic in treatment, and require curriculum reviews by independent educational evaluators.
• Require schools of education to focus their programs on preparing teachers to teach curriculums as defined or implied by state curriculums
• Require prospective teachers to pass independently developed, delivered, and graded subject-matter examinations with high marks
• Accept accreditation of teachers relocating from other states
• Encourage hiring former military veterans with the expertise to teach higher-grade-level courses
• Give retirees credit for education and experience qualifying them for teaching.

Such alternatives are anathema to Soules and his base for one reason: they demand more of teachers, especially elementary school teachers, than they can deliver.  He knows that advocating these reforms would jeopardize his re-election.  Teachers would be infuriated by efforts to establish higher standards of academic preparation, ensure subject-matter mastery, and give huge compensation increases to only those teachers, old and new alike, achieving high scores on subject-matter tests.  They would decry such reforms as insulting or unfair.  They would oppose legislators, Soules included, who did not continue to support increased numbers and compensation of all teachers, and thereby enlarge a special-interest constituency and swell union political power.

Soules and his base, with PED support, keep New Mexico in a deplorable economic and educational state.  In effect, this anti-education triad mounts an insurrection against the state, not one assaulting government buildings, but one eroding public education by mollycoddling mediocrities.