In my 15 years in Las Cruces, I have read many editorials on New Mexico’s poor rankings in state public education. The latest is Walt Rubel’s “Education figures drop state below Mississippi” in the 19 August Las Cruces Bulletin (p. 6). Standard topics are state rankings (fluctuating between 49th and 50th); recitation of governors’ education programs and increased expenditures; administrative arrangements like school-day schedules or school-year calendars; and praise for local teachers and administrators.
Rubel claims to have “spoken to enough local teachers, school administrators and students to know they are dedicated to spreading learning and knowledge and there are some real examples of excellence in our classrooms.” He takes their self-testimonials at face value. I, too, have spoken with local teachers and administrators, but I am not naïve. They always testify to their being “dedicated”; why would any testify otherwise?
But from LCPS leadership on down, such dedication is rare. Dr. Wendy Miller-Tomlinson, Deputy Superintendent of Teaching, Learning and Research, is not “dedicated.” She advocated eliminating advanced programs in the deceptively labeled cause of “equity” (fairness); the honest word is “equality.” She pushed equality, not fairness, in advocating returning advanced students to average classes—not good for their education. Had the law not prevented her, she would have pushed to eliminate remedial or special education classes—not good for education. She cares less about “spreading learning and knowledge” than about spreading the “equity” of mediocrity to serve her political agenda of equality. Yet such a result is impossible to achieve; students know that they are not, and cannot be made, equal. Mr. Ralph Ramos, Superintendent, supported her until pressure from parents and students made his support politically untenable. A “dedicated” educator he is not.
Rubel notes state efforts at improvement: a three-tiered salary structure with his only other mention of teachers; the identification of, and more resources for, poor-performing schools; and more charter schools. He mentions two “challenges,” poverty and language. This pedestrian account is as perspicacious as he gets.
Rubel’s column fails to explain why, under successive governors and despite more money, new programs, and “dedicated” administrators and teachers, 50 percent of all students have failed for decades to achieve proficiency on 4th- and 8th-grade tests in mathematics and reading. The differences among groups make their performance not only mediocre, but also almost racist: Whites and Asian-Americans average a bit above this average; Blacks, Hispanics, and Indians average well below it. Although most teachers know the culture and the people, they lack the “dedication,” with a sense of urgency, to improve their students’ education.
Those who know that education is the transmission of knowledge and skills from teacher to student notice the omissions in Rubel’s column. Like many who have written about New Mexico’s rock-bottom ranking, Rubel actually says nothing about education. He mentions neither curriculums nor teachers in connection with quality or competence. Doing so would mean suffering the slings and arrows of outraged mongers of mediocrity.
New Mexico’s curriculum in English Language Arts—“arts,” not a word suggesting the rigor of information and skills—disgraces PEDocrats who approved Common Core State Standards. One egregious flaw is continued reliance on performance standards. Though no longer using the word “performance,” “standards” still use verbs to direct students to do something but, unlike true standards, have no metric and no scale. Students can meet standards just by going through the motions.
This flaw has purpose: to shift responsibility for education from teachers to students. The “standards” define, not what teachers are supposed to teach students, but what students are supposed to learn. As a result, teachers do not need—thus, lack—adequate knowledge or skills in their subjects (elementary school teachers: no grammar, no math); they need only whatever they find in the teacher’s textbook guide.
One reason for shifting responsibility is an unintended result of women’s lib: the best and the brightest left or have never entered the teaching profession. The residuals, instead of working to acquire subject-matter competence, have “dedicated” themselves to social and political concerns requiring little “learning and knowledge.” Meanwhile, School Boards have done nothing to retain and attract A’s and B’s with higher salaries; instead, they have economized with C’s and D’s “dedicated” to a steady paycheck and job security. Psychic benefits, compensation before women’s lib, vanished after it.
The Las Cruces School Board and its one employee, Superintendent Ramos, do not care to improve the substance of subject-matter instruction or the quality of teachers. They want a steady-as-you-go operation which neither rocks boats nor riles the union. They do not want to hear anything contrary to prevailing policies or practices, no matter how ineffectual or expensive current ones may be. They certainly do not want to hear from the community, even, perhaps especially, from someone well informed.
Personal example. I met Ramos in my neighborhood when he was training to guide elk hunters. After a second or third meeting, I said that I was interested in education and would like to interview him. A date was set. Ramos allowed an unspecified but short period of time for the interview; it ran about 25 minutes, 10 minutes over his allotment, I think. I sent him my academic resume (7 pages) to make it unnecessary to waste time by me detailing my background in education and or by him asking about it. So that he would not think that I was going to ask “got-cha” questions, I sent two sets of questions on six topics. It turns out that he neither reviewed my resume nor read the questions. He gave me canned, clichéd answers, all evasive or defensive. As I left, I offered him hardcopies of my questions. To my astonishment, he refused to receive them; his reason: he had them on his computer. In my considerable experience with public officials, I have never had such rude treatment. I reported his insult by emailing Ramos and copying the School Board, including my representative Mr. Ray Jaramillo, but received no response. Board members approve of the Superintendent’s rudeness if it shows contempt for community members and rebuffs those well versed in public education and capable of offering credible critiques and constructive alternatives to current and ineffective policies and practices. Their “dedication” is to self-protection.
Bottom line: the press is feckless. It will continue to publish insipid columns on the state’s deplorable educational ranking. We have heard from the League of Women Voters and Walt Rubel. Someday, perhaps we shall hear from Peter Goodman and Randy Lynch. The equivalent of Trump’s Big Lie about a stolen election is the establishment’s Big Lies about LCPS “dedication” to public education. Unless educrats stop telling lies with misleading words like “equity” or “standards,” and start telling the truth about flawed curriculums and mediocre teachers, the state will remain the worst of the worst unless it bootstraps itself up to next-to-worst. Watch out, Mississippi.
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