I have been a supporter of Think New Mexico (TNM) for most of my time living in New Mexico. Fred Nathan and his staff are gifts to the state. Typically, their work in most fields addresses a single topic in a single report with sensible proposals. In this years-in-the-making report A Roadmap for Rethinking New Mexico’s Public Schools, their work addresses and makes legislative proposals on ten topics, some different, all listed differently on the website and in the report. (My words are “problems” and “solutions.”) Most of this work is mostly sensible, but only mostly; it would be unrealistic to expect perfection. The report has many strong points and a few weak ones.
TNM’s report includes ten problems, none new, and excludes others, some important:
1. Optimize Time for Teaching & Learning
2. Improve Teacher Training
3. Revamp the Colleges of Education
4. Enhance Principal Pay & Training
5. Upgrade School Board Quality
6. Right-Size to Smaller Districts, Schools, & Classes
7. Maximize the Benefits of Charter Schools
8. Provide a Relevant & Rigorous Curriculum
9. Depoliticize Student Assessments
10. Pay for These Reforms.
These problems, discussed with current data to support proposed solutions, are familiar ones because TNM has chosen to restate problems rather than to rethink them—the title notwithstanding. The choice is a smart one. For TNM’s intended audiences—legislators first, the public second, and policy analysts not at all—, restating rather than rethinking the familiar avoids resistance to the unfamiliar. Whether proposals bundled are more likely to succeed than proposals aggregated serially is the question. TNM’s strategy is to propose many and to hope some prosper. Past success implies that TNM knows best.
Still, the report disappoints in two ways. One, some discussions lack comprehensive or rigorous analyses. Perhaps familiarity breeds complacency. The other, they do not acknowledge that similar problems exist in other states which do not rank as low as New Mexico does in student academic performance. This fact justifies thinking less about the problems of public schools and more about the problems of public education.
Two related reasons explain this silence about public education. One, its problems involve the two essentials of education, curriculums and teachers, matters both complex and controversial. The other, as a result, TNM’s board lacks consensus on solutions. So TNM addresses problems readily susceptible to solutions and assures report readers that its proposals would improve student academic performance. Incremental improvements in student academic performance are likely but also likely to leave the state lagging.
Methodology is most peoples’ big yawn, but legislators need to consider the data—selection, diversity, abundance, reliability, etc.—used to support any proposal before accepting or rejecting it. One example of methodological infelicities is TNM’s proposal for smaller schools. TNM selectively adduces or omits, or uncritically accepts, pertinent evidence. Full disclosure: Fred and I have crossed swords on this issue and continue to maintain our positions. Fred claims that small size improves academic performance; I claim that size is a minor factor if all else is equal—which it never is. He is wrong but trendy in doubling down!
First, one size cannot and does not fit all, and thinking so reflects a parochial approach to the issue. Correlations in something as complex as education cannot be one-dimensional; even so, correlation is not causation. Some large schools have done very well, and some small schools have done very poorly. Shaker Heights High School is a large public high school which, in my day, ranked among the ten best in the country; despite enormous demographic change, it is still highly ranked. Two decades ago, its neighbor, Cleveland Heights High School, slightly larger and quite good, used Gates Foundation money to create four schools within the school; a few years later, the effort was abandoned as a failure because of management difficulties, administrative overload, and friction among schools and their students.
Second, one-dimensional comparisons cannot prove the merits of small over large schools. TNM’s lists of New Mexico schools which have done best on reading and math tests show small schools dominating both lists. However, the only measure is size. Other measures shaping student academic performance like demographic and socio-economic data are lacking. For instance, Cloudcroft has such plusses; its median income is about 30 percent higher than the state average and the percentage of its Hispanic population is less than one-third that of the state’s Hispanic population. TNM’s one-dimensional comparison is biased, unreliable support of its small-school proposal.
TNM’s report is flawed in addressing two other problems: teacher training and colleges of education. No one should expect teacher training to improve teachers or teaching, for two reasons. One, released time is for programmatic, administrative, professional, and legal matters. Two, internships or practicums focus on classroom experience in class management, administrative procedures, teaching methods, and teacher-student and teacher-parent interactions. Neither provides subject-matter help. So teacher training can facilitate classroom operations but cannot improve teacher competency in subject matter.
TNM’s proposals to “Revamp the Colleges of Education” are paperwork solutions which cannot solve their problems. These colleges will not be revamped by continuing the accreditation on the basis of curriculums consistent with best practices for teacher preparation. The accreditation process does not ascertain whether college curriculums, even if consistent with best practices, train graduates prepared to teach their subjects. Nor will they be revamped by maintaining high-quality licensure exams, which focus on instructional skills, not subject-matter knowledge.
TNM avoids the problem of colleges of education, which are state-funded failures because they do not ensure that prospective teachers are subject-matter competent. They do not offer courses themselves or require courses in other colleges to ensure that their students have subject-matter competence in the subjects which they will teach presumably in compliance with state-defined curriculums. For example, these colleges do not care that, although the state English curriculum requires instruction in grammar, elementary school teachers do not know the grammar which they are supposed to teach.
TNM’s report omits two important problems: continuing teacher incompetence in the subjects which they teach and the deficiencies of the Public Education Department (PED). Courses in educational theory, psycho-social development, or classroom skills, and commitments to equality, diversity, or multiculturalism, cannot compensate for subject-matter ignorance. The problem is most acute in the elementary grades in which teachers are expected to provide the foundations of the four major academic subjects: language (reading and writing), mathematics, social studies, and science. These teachers do not meet expectations. Thus, since only one-third of fourth graders have learned to read with proficiency, two-thirds of them in subsequent grades will be unable to read to learn with proficiency. TNM cannot say so because its board members will not say so because they would be messengers delivering an unwanted message and get beaten for doing so. But, until the problem is addressed, New Mexico public education will continue to fail students, parents, and the state’s economy.
TNM’s report commented adversely about PED but did not dedicate a section to its many problems for, I suspect, another political reason: its education expert is a recent hire from PED, and TNM did not want him to appear to be—he is not—a disgruntled and vindictive former employee. Although PED is bad in ways too numerous to enumerate, much less elaborate, here, one of its major deficiencies needs immediate attention. It is a closed shop which communicates with other closed shops or educational professionals and operates in isolation from and in contempt of the public. Thus, its revision of the social studies curriculum outraged citizens throughout the state for good reasons. This misfire alone should be sufficient to prompt a legislative review of the department. TNM should have said so and much more.
The value of this TNM report is that it brings together constructive ideas to improve New Mexico’s public schools. Most have merit—I refuse to back down on small schools—, deserve serious consideration, may require refinements, and need cost-benefit analyses. The low- or no-cost proposals deserve support although their implementation will not likely result in significant improvement in student academic performance.
Unfinished business remains. Somehow, the legislature must rethink the issues at the center of public education—curriculum and teacher quality—as well as the missions, purposes, and operations of colleges of education and the Public Education Department. The need for board consensus on proposals solving problems of this controversial nature may render TNM incapable of providing the legislature with impartial, expert assistance.
No comments:
Post a Comment