I have lived in Las Cruces for nearly two decades. In that time, I have seen few changes and little improvement in K-12 public education as well as social services, both of which position New Mexico near or at the bottom of national rankings. In that time, I have heard no voices calling for the kind of change, not just tinkering, required to improve these government services to the citizenry. I have inferred that state and local officials and leaders prefer to support the status quo; it defines their comfort zones in government offices and civic organizations.
Case in point, a brief exchange with an officer of a local civic organization. I disagreed with his conventional positions on public education, most notably, higher salaries for teachers and poverty as an excuse for poor student performance. When I suggested that the major cause is the incompetence of elementary school teachers, he said that there are many factors involved, with poverty the main one. I agreed that many factors are involved but disagreed that poverty is a decisive factor. When I noted that teacher competence is a factor never considered, he looked distressed and excused himself to talk with someone else.
For officials and leaders, to consider the qualifications of teachers is to commit political or civic suicide. Nothing can disturb the status quo in which the purpose of public education at all levels in New Mexico is employment, with its benefits to reflexive supporters of teachers. The state has the same number of public institutions of higher education as Massachusetts, a state with a population over three times larger. By inference, New Mexico teachers constitute a share of the state population over three times larger than Massachusetts teachers do.
Moreover, these large numbers of teachers, aides, and auxiliaries are members of a state union with local chapters. As a labor organization, not a professional organization, its obligation is to its members, not to their profession, with standards of competence and ethics. As such, it uses its influence in the state legislature and with the Public Education Department to oppose educational reforms which might threaten the status quo of credentials and seniority, to control entry into and placement in the profession, and to protect members from efforts to raise the professional standards of teachers.
At the same time, New Mexico schools of education devote too much attention to worthy, but educationally derivative, concerns. I entirely favor diversity, equity, and inclusion (see my blog), but these schools should not make them the primary focus of teacher education. That focus should be on ensuring that prospective graduates have subject-matter mastery of the courses which they expect to teach. I recognize that such a focus places a special burden on prospective elementary school teachers, who must provide the foundations of all four basic subjects: English, math, history, and science. Unfortunately, too many, over 90%, choose to concentrate in English and rely on teachers’ manuals in the other subjects. Even in the English concentration, few of the courses cover the kind of materials taught in elementary grades. Not surprisingly, the result of misdirected focus and inadequate preparation is that fourth-grade proficiency scores in English and math are in the 30s- and 20s-percent ranges, respectively.
Matters are made worse by current course curriculums and associated texts books In 2010, the collective wisdom of 45 state and a few territory departments of education, most with staffs having Ph.D.’s in education, appeared in the Common Core State Standards in English and math. I read the K-12 English standards, found them fundamentally flawed, and criticized them in Sun-News columns and my blogs (no longer available on my website) in 2013. The most important of my many criticisms is that the standards are not standards at all; they are statements of performances without any metric or scale of achievement. Understandably, this anything-is-good-enough approach led to a slide in student achievement which continues to this day.
A recent study by researchers at Dartmouth, Harvard, and Stanford has found that the national decline in literacy and numeracy began, not with the Covid pandemic, but a decade earlier, about 2012, just after CCSS went into effect. The same decline in proficiency scores in New Mexico dates from that time. Its Public Education Department, like departments in many other states, adopted not only the CCSS English curriculum, but also textbooks which provided snippets of literature and smatterings of grammar and composition instruction to boost test scores. These efforts do not provide students with a solid education; instead, they aim for results placating parents, enhancing real estate values, and suggesting a workforce attractive to business.
Notwithstanding, test scores continue to decline throughout the state. And they will continue to do so because the state either does not care or dreads far-reaching remedies. Well-intentioned leaders of civic organizations might care, but they are underinformed about education. It goes without saying that elected officials are derelict in their duties. Both parties are wrong to refuse to address the sorry facts about public education and their implications. The brief exchange which I had with one officer of a civic organization is not unlike similar exchanges which I had years ago with Lt. Governor Howie Morales and Senator Bill Soules, and have had since with LCPS School Board members. My views, especially about elementary school teachers, alarm them because they imply very different policies and practices in public education. They too raise the all-purpose excuse, poverty, to explain the state’s poor performance and emphasize it as a hindrance to improved education. If they were right, if improvement in education were hindered by poverty, then they should explain why the state spends increasingly large sums on education without first having reduced or eliminated poverty.
But they were wrong in the past, and they are demonstrably wrong in the present. Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, all three about the economic equals of New Mexico and with large, poor, minority populations, have lately adopted new policies, revised curriculums, and enhanced teacher preparation, the results of which have led to dramatic, measurable improvements in student literacy. (Liberals and progressives initially slandered the results as biased or rigged, but they have since accepted their improvements as valid and, swallowing their pride, now consider following the lead of these states.) Yet I doubt that New Mexico will consider their example. The state is too insular and too lethargic, too indifferent to public service, and too controlled by interests vested in the status quo to reform the only public service which can help end the state’s reliance on its third-world economy of agriculture, mining, and tourism (film-making—are you kidding?); end its permanent status as a welfare client of the federal government; and make it attractive to young people, including professionals, and businesses and industries of the future.
I offer a few suggestions for reforms without elaborate arguments in their behalf. I invite responses to this blog on my website: https://firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com/.
· Base teacher certification, not on the completion of an education major or degree, but on passing an independently developed, administered, and scored (85% or better) subject-matter competency test in each subject to be taught (like the nursing NCLEX).
· Make teacher certification and this testing available to any applicant, regardless of education or employment history, so that non-teaching professionals, including retired military personnel or retired professionals in fields related to academic subjects, may be considered.
· Require schools of education to revise curriculums to emphasize, and ensure graduates have, subject-matter mastery in the courses which they expect to teach.
· Adopt English textbooks in literature which provide whole-work reading, and require more whole-work reading during the school year and over the breaks.
· Give teachers transferring into the state full credit for education and education-related experience.
· Eliminate seniority-based salary increases after 6 years; provide COLA increases thereafter.
· Do not give across-the-board salary increases to current teachers to attract better teachers. To attract or retain excellent teachers, establish a Master Teacher salary scale for those who pass (95% or better) on a one-try-only, rigorous competency test in their fields.
· Limit degree-based salaries and salary increases to degrees directly relevant to courses taught or to be taught. Do not fund education administration courses for teachers.
No comments:
Post a Comment