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Denish and Martinez debate education: Both fail
Michael L. Hays
I made the round trip between Las Cruces to Albuquerque for the debate on education between Diane Denish and Susana Martinez, New Mexico’s two female gubernatorial candidates. I arrived to learn that I needed a ticket for admittance; a sympathetic policemen, whose commander has now received a letter commending his efforts, helped me get a ticket – unfortunately. For, when it was over, I called my wife to tell her that I would get home that evening. She asked, “was it terrible?” I answered, “not that good.”
To judge from their debate performance, I have doubts whether either candidate is worthy of the office to which they aspire. Two things most impressed – or depressed – me.
One, when we talk education and think of the number of public education employees, the size of the education budget, and the number of people – children and parents particularly – affected, we are talking about the state’s single largest activity. By that standard, we might expect the candidates to be well informed, even expert. We would be disappointed.
Neither candidate presented a clear, coherent, cogent statement of position on a single topic for two minutes without drifting, repeatedly, to one or more of their talking points, whether germane or not to the question, or resorting, repeatedly, to one or more of their thrust-and-parry jabs. (At one point, when Diane launched into one of them, the audience snorted derisively.)
With eight years on the job as lieutenant governor, Diane seems to have learned little about the issues affecting public education; with months, perhaps years, to prepare as a challenger, Susana Martinez has not done her homework to learn anything about them (programs which may work in Florida are not likely to translate well to New Mexico). As a result, neither had anything new, interesting or insightful to say on any educational topic.
Both candidates rehearsed their campaign positions on the educational planks that lie strewn about the educational landscape. Their old and rotten timbers cannot build a platform, much less one more likely than earlier ones to improve the quality of public education and student academic performance. So we heard yet again the same-old, same-old stale stuff about money (not less in bad times, always more in good times), vouchers, and auditing; accountability and testing; school choice and charter, magnet, private, and religious schools; proficiency scores and graduation rates; and programs – all without traceable logic to realistic reforms and improved education.
Money in the classroom
A word about money. Both candidates talked about putting more money in the classroom. Is this the punch line to a joke which I just do not get? I thought money got put into banks. The fact is that if you increase teachers’ salaries, you increase only one thing: teachers’ salaries. Whether you get an increase in anything else from better textbooks or more equipment still depends on the teacher’s competence, confidence and commitment – and money buys none of them.
Denish made one good point: student testing is – or should be – only a small part of teacher evaluation. Martinez wants more; she reminds me of the homeowner who plants a bush in the morning and digs it up in the afternoon to see if it is taking root.
But Denish had no good reply to the charge that education has not improved much during her tenure – a lost opportunity to offer a sketch of the problems and some suitable solutions, if she knew what they were.
Martinez made one howler when she declared that all children should be able to meet the ever-rising to 100 percent AYP standards – a flat impossibility. New Mexico is not Lake Wobegon. However, she did let slip the word “curriculum;” I wondered what she had in mind, but she failed to offer any elaboration.
Lack of public decorum and personal dignity
Two, between their lack of proficiency in education and their mutual dislike, both candidates showed an astonishing lack of public decorum and personal dignity. Repeated charges of deception, dishonesty, lying and lord knows what all else were demeaning to them, the audience present, and the audience remote. What was labeled a debate was really more a dishing of dirt, and it made me feel dirty. (I was not alone; the male civic activist on my right and the female elementary school principal on my left indicated to me by word, gesture and body language the same response.)
When I ended my earlier column based on my interviews of the two candidates – I enjoyed meeting and talking with each of them, and found them both agreeable people – I expressed a hope that they would address the issue and not engage in a cat fight. Fond hope.
So, on the basis of their public performance, I have two concerns about these candidates. One, since neither candidate seems to understand the problems and to have good ideas about solutions in an enormously consequential area of state involvement, one which needs, but is unlikely to receive, a lot of the governor’s attention, time and energy, I expect that the election of either means more misdirection and squandered resources, to the detriment of all public school students. Neither makes the grade.
Two, since neither candidate shows much respect for each other or herself in public, or for the public itself, I wonder whether either can effectively work with those who disagree with them and lead the state in this important area of endeavor. Neither has the class.
Michael L. Hays (Ph.D., English) is a retired consultant in defense, energy and environment; former high school and college teacher; and continuing civic activist. His bi-monthly Saturday column appears in the Las Cruces Sun-News; his bi-monthly blog, First Impressions & Second Thoughts, appears on the intervening Saturdays at firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com.
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The secret to making half as much as a teacher in Illinois is that the cost of living, except for food, is cheaper in rural NM. I would rather make less money and live in NM.
I elaborate on Hemingway’s comment.
Susana Martinez wants vouchers as a means to provide for school choice—that is, an alternative to public schools. (I have no way of knowing, as some claim, that she also wants them as a means to weaken public schools by reducing their per-capita revenues.)
Vouchers cannot work because they cannot provide school choice to most students. First, the size of the voucher rarely covers most or all of the cost of tuition at non-public schools. So many parents having vouchers would have to assume higher expenses than they can afford. Net result: some, but not much, “choice” for middle- and low-income families.
Second, even so, non-public schools often raise tuition by some or all of the amount of the voucher. Families willing to pay tuition of, say, $10,000 per year, will, if they receive a $5,000 voucher, be willing to pay tuition of $15,000 per year. But the middle- and lower-income families would still face a $10,000 gap which they could not overcome in the first place. A tuition increase less than the value of the voucher reduces the costs to upper-income families without necessarily attracting many more middle- or lower-income families.
So non-public schools can “game” the system to raise money without serving the professed intent of providing choice. The end result is simply a net transfer of revenues out of the public school system without evident benefit except some possible modest savings to upper-income families and a miniscule increase in enrollments of students from middle-income, but not likely lower-income, families. In short, not much choice.
Finally, because many small towns have no non-public schools and are not near towns or cities which do have them, vouchers can work only in the larger cities in the state, if they have non-public schools.
I leave it to others to talk about the use of public money to support religious schools without public accountability for who is taught or what demands are placed on students attending.
Ms. Martinez is unequivocally for School Choice. Matthew Ladner is the Vice President of Research at the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. Ladner focuses on various School Choice issues including school vouchers, charter schools, race and special education issues at the Goldwater Institute. The New Mexico Turn Around and its candidate Susana Martinez espouse the views of Dr. Ladner. Go to New Mexico Turn Around website – School Choice is the operative word. He supports charter schools, vouchers, tax credits, and online education to provide students and families with greater choice.
Unfortunately the adoption of this school choice program has hurt the budget of Arizona.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/10/14/20091014sto-cost1013.html
The more you read about School Choice the more you realize that it eliminates equal opportunity for disadvantaged families. In the end, it gives them a poorer education because they still cannot afford private schools despite scholarships, etc. , and it drains money from public schools – the only real option for our poorer residents. The biggest problem with School Choice is that it ends up creating a two-tiered system – the one for the rich and one for the poor. The theory of school choice is to create competition between schools, and therefore better them. This is untrue. Public education will be the loser. There should be no losers in education.
New Mexican should be wary of Ms. Martinez’s program disguised and dressed up as education improvement! She is not telling “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” about school vouchers. She has taken the Pinocchio stance!
Suzanne Prescott makes my column the occasion for recruitment for “Change.org” by telling a delightful tongue-in-cheek story. It is her right, and I do not mind that she has exercised it. But I checked out her link to this organization, and I was amused that the big idea animating “change” in New Mexico public education is the perpetuation of the status quo, but with more money. Now there is a transformational idea—not.
Ms. Prescott will argue that raising teachers’ salaries will attract better teachers to public education. I doubt it; people with the ability and the desire to make money go into other fields—which is exactly what many talented women have done since the advent of women’s liberation, namely, fled education mainly at the elementary school level.
More importantly, it is financially reckless to raise the salaries of all current teachers to attract a handful of better prospects each year. That strategy amounts to throwing good money after bad. But, if Ms. Prescott dared to urge a two-tier salary structure, higher for the better teachers whom she claims to want to attract to public education, then I would listen.
Until then, “Change.org” wants no small change, just big bucks, to support a failing system.
I wanted to move to NM even before I retired. When I saw that teachers were making less than half of what I made in Illinois, I said, “Let me have a slice of that!” Of course there weren’t many teaching jobs available — not enough money to hire. Knowing that NM continually battles it out with other states like Louisiana and Kentucky for the title ‘worst education system in the Union’ says to me we need education cuts not more investment in education so we can win the “race to the bottom” once and for all. Don’t sign the petition at http://bit.ly/bDcQsL unless, of course, you want a better education for your children.