BULLETIN: The Las Cruces teachers union is demanding a raise. The timing of this demand reflects sleazy politics; it waited until the election was over so that a raise could not become an issue. It knows that its demand will be met because current or former teachers elected or re-elected to the School Board will vote for a raise. Comment below, after the blog.
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At a recent medical appointment, a young technician giving me some tests told me with a hint of pride that she was a graduate of Arrowhead Park Early College High School. I hope that she lied.
Carrying Bruce Lancaster’s The American Revolution with me to read between tests, I chose to ask her a simple question: in what century did the American Revolution occur. First answer: nineteenth century; second answer: seventeenth century; third answer: sixteenth century. (Apparently, she does not know in what year the Declaration of Independence was signed. July Fourth—whenever.)
I asked her whether she had read a complete novel in high school English. Her response: she could remember reading only one: Orwell’s 1984—had I heard of him or it?
I know that one swallow does not a summer make and that one student does not all students represent. But how does even one student graduate from any high school in the LCPS system, not to mention its flagship high school, and know so little history and have read so little fiction? Apparently, teachers teach history without dates and English with few novels. Has she heard of Austen or Dickens or Hawthorne or Twain? Not likely.
Is time being spent raising student consciousness in history and English? I know that CRT, feared by many parents, politicians, and propagandists, is not taught in the LCPS system. But if it were, they need not fear students learning much from CRT because they learn so little even at the best public high school Las Cruces has to offer.
I sent this story to the members of the current School Board, with a comment like this one but here revised and expanded for a larger audience: no reply. While they protect, praise, promote, and pay teachers, the teachers do little in return except blame everyone else for their failure. (They could blame their failure on New Mexicans’ low average IQ, 95.7, which includes them.) Their failure is defined by a decades-long record of student failure to achieve 50% proficiency in reading and math in 4th and 8th grade tests. School Board members, in the name of transparency and accountability, should explain these results. They should explain why, if everything is for the students—their favorite mantra—, the entire LCPS system is doing nothing for them. They must be satisfied with these results, for, when they ran for the School Board, they did not say anything about this record of gross educational ineffectiveness. But we know the answer: incumbents take no responsibility and newcomers do not want to assume any. Their slogan: in the League of Women Voters, The Bulletin, and The Sun-News, we trust (to ask no questions, run no stories, and feature apple-polishing blurbs).
The public should understand that those School Board members who have been teachers—they always argue that their experience qualifies them for the position—are compromised by a conflict of interest between pleasing friends and (former) colleagues, and serving the students. The results identify the winners. Since School Board members and LCPS teachers have neither desire nor plan to do better, voters in future elections, particularly parents, wanting better, should replace every incumbent and demand a teaching staff do-over. With this long record of poor student academic performance, the odds are that any teacher whom you know or meet is a bad one.
By the way, the same goes for Bill Soules, who has no constituency except teachers and is not conflicted between seeking their votes and proposing suitable legislation. His politician’s interests prevail over parents’ concerns for their children. He avoids trouble and assures re-election by voting to infuse the system with large dollops of money. I know: I suggested and he scorned some no- or low-cost ways to improve curriculums and instruction. Anyone paying attention has noticed that, in his many years as chair of the Senate Education Committee, public education in New Mexico has remained ranked as the worst in the nation. Surely, Soules deserves some credit for the state’s distinction.
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Comment: Any across-the-board raise at the local or state level would waste public funds, cannot make current teachers better, and may not attract more, much less better, teachers. Giving mediocre teachers more money to attract better teachers is an expensive way to attract talent. With only about 5% attrition and few vacancies, that approach would cost many millions each year over many years, and get little in return.
With or without more many, for the LCPS to get better teachers, it must establish higher standards for hiring them—something more than a PED certification and a 98.6oF body temperature—and protection from worse teachers.
If the School Board must spend more money on teachers, it should spend it to improve teacher quality. I suggest two ways. One is to give current tuition refunds for courses to learn what they should be teaching. Another and better way is to develop a two-track salary structure: one track for new hires and current teachers who pass a one-time-only, independently developed and administered, subject-matter tests of teacher competence, with a high passing score (95 or better); the other track for current teachers who decline to take the test. My guess: current teacher will fight any such test because it would expose their incompetence.
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