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Critical thinking about public education
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Well-meaning New Mexico educators focus on an array of bad proposals to fix public education, while Gov. Susana Martinez intends to debilitate or dismantle the system
Critical thinking about public education in New Mexico is not really necessary. In New Mexico, as elsewhere, everyone is an expert on education and, in particular, public education. Everyone has the experience of attending school, though some have more, some less, experience because of the number of years in attendance.
Of course, everyone has a right to an opinion, but everyone is wrong to believe that a right to an opinion makes any opinion right.
Since moving to New Mexico nearly four years ago, I have continued as a civic activist and columnist, with a paramount interest reflecting my background in public education. I have read articles and reports on New Mexico public education, discussed education issues with elected and appointed local and state officials, attended school board meetings, and served on two ad-hoc school-board committees.
I have found everyone to appear well meaning; I have found no one to have a “signature” achievement or a significant commitment to a goal likely to make a difference in the education of public school students.
Worse, as in other places, I have found no one with official responsibility in the field of public education who gives evidence of independent and insightful thinking about the issues. I have not found one who qualifies as an educator or an educational manager.
Instead, invariably, each addresses currently fashionable topics in currently fashionable terms. The topics range from accountability, test scores, higher standards, qualified teachers, merit or performance-based pay, dropouts or dropout rates, graduation rates, smaller or charter schools – the list goes on.
Michael L. Hays
An array of bad proposals
This conventional wisdom, or received opinion, offers an array of proposals that can do little or nothing at great expense, have failed elsewhere and cannot succeed here, and deflect critical thinking from approaches which are less costly but more likely to improve public education. (Of these, I shall write in another column.)
For example, merit pay or performance-based pay is a recurrent proposal which, despite various incarnations, determined advocates, and dedicated millions and millions, seems to recommend itself as a promise of success with every failed performance elsewhere.
Many who know that public education is in trouble also believe either that they know who the culprits are or that they know what the problem is and what the solution to it is. Usually, they believe both: Identify the culprit, specify the one problem above all others, and stipulate the corrective action.
For example, many believe that teachers are the culprit; ergo, they blame them for everything and seek to make them follow detailed and inflexible lesson plans, to freeze their pay, to eliminate job security, or to weaken their unions. Despite this daily dose of abuse and degradation, many also profess to want to attract the best and the brightest to the teaching profession. The contradiction is a sure sign of the absence of critical thinking.
The new administration’s political ideology
For some – and now we come to the new administration – all of the problems have solutions according to an approach defined by political ideology, not educational sense. Thus, Governor Martinez, who demonstrated a total lack of understanding of education in her campaign, indicated her attraction to a politically inspired approach, which, since her election, she is adopting.
This approach, which in its application in Florida is creating havoc there, will create the same havoc in New Mexico. But that result is the point: The purpose of this approach is to debilitate, if not dismantle, public education.
The implementation in New Mexico begins with Martinez’s appointment of Hanna Skandera as state secretary of education. Skandera, a tropical import from Florida, has no professional experience in or with schools as an educator, but she has strong political connections to the Bush brothers, George and Jeb, and No Child Left Behind legislation and the “Florida Plan,” respectively.
The “Florida Plan” focuses its efforts on privatizing public schools by building small schools, developing a charter school system, and using vouchers to enable state tax dollars to follow students into religious or private schools.
Here, Skandera’s first effort to advance these objectives is to stigmatize public schools by letter grades, regardless of effects on students, parents, or teachers – not to mention the education provided. Who, with decency or sense, thinks that putting a pejorative label on an individual, a group, or an institution serves any constructive purpose?
But advocates argue that grading schools enables parents to choose to send their children to better schools. Assuming that parents would, only the half living in larger cities would have a feasible opportunity to do so; the other half would have to send their children on one- or two-hour bus rides each way. Even so, since most schools operate at full capacity, they have no room for more than a very few transfers.
The proposal is a sham. The concomitant dedication of more money to the better schools means that the better off get better off and the rest get left farther behind. This proposal redistributes economic benefits to those who need them less and increases educational inequity.
No stake in the state
In anticipation of her needs to transform public education, Skandera is contracting for the services, perhaps short-term, of eight, out-of-state advisors, mostly Floridians, who share her ideology and are committed to her agenda. Many New Mexicans have already noted that none of these eight people has professional experience as educators, that none has experience in New Mexico, and that Skandera’s uniform choice of outsiders insults presumably qualified personnel in New Mexico.
These criticisms are true, but they miss the point. Only outsiders have no stake in the state, can act with reckless disregard of the consequences of their actions, and will depart as quickly as they arrive, when their advice on enervating or vandalizing public education has greased the skids.
As an aside, a consultant’s defense of this influx of consultants is, of course, self-serving, and it is lame. She says that public education in New Mexico needs a “fresh look.” However, the one thing ideologues cannot do is give any situation a “fresh look.” In their eyes, one size fits all. Moreover, although non-ideologues can take “a fresh look,” they often can see without understanding what they see.
It is worth noting, also, that such ideologues are also focusing their attention, not only on Florida, but also on Washington, D. C. – both jurisdictions like New Mexico, in which many residents are poor and minorities. By contrast, ideologues are not trying to inveigle their plans into states like Massachusetts that are economically and educationally better off, and largely white.
I wonder whether the discrepancy does not reflect a desire to experiment on the disadvantaged, use them to advance a political agenda which does not benefit them, and perhaps even keep them disadvantaged.
Except for resorting to data manipulated to prove unprecedented success in raising test scores and closing the achievement gap between whites and minorities, nothing else about the “Florida Plan” suggests its transferability to New Mexico. Hispanics in Florida have been traditionally Cuban and predominantly urban and middle-class; those in New Mexico are predominantly Mexican, rural and lower-class. So cultural, geographical, and economic differences suggest obstacles to easy adaptation of a plan developed for one population, not another.
Nevertheless, imported ideologues claim that the “Florida Plan” rapidly and dramatically improved minority achievement in elementary grades and can do so in New Mexico. I take reports and promises of such success with a grain of salt. Our state legislators should do likewise but seem gulled by glibness and graphs.
The author and presumed authority on the “Florida Plan” and the perpetrator of its manipulated data is Rio Grande Foundation sponsored scholar Dr. Matthew Ladner. He has recently received one of the 2010 Bunkum Awards given by the National Education Policy Center for “his spurious claim that a series of Florida reforms, including tax vouchers and grade retention, “caused” racial achievement gaps to narrow in the Sunshine State.”
An exit to a national stage?
How are New Mexicans to explain the governor’s commitment to an ideological program and ideologues to implement it? My guess – only a guess – is that Martinez is anticipating her exit to a national stage.
By aligning herself with “the Florida Plan,” advocating it, and appointing or contracting with associates of Jeb Bush, she is currying favor with a nationally powerful political figure in the Republican Party and sacrificing a state in need of a truly reformed public school system to a soon-to-be-ruined one.
Worse, New Mexicans who identify themselves as Democrats, progressives, or staffers of “independent think tanks,” who know no better and who are eager to give the new governor and her nominee for secretary of education the benefit of the doubt, are enabling ideologues by giving them time to discredit and dismantle public education in New Mexico.
Perhaps they should consider the nomination more closely than they have.
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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OK Michael, it’s all my fault and you can write no wrong. NCLB is not about standardized testing where every kid is supposed to be in the same place on the same day; that is a fact I made up.
Have a nice life.
Ched,
One other point. When you claim that your reference to “what is supposed to happen on day 23 of year 4″ is, not to my views, but to No Child Left Behind, not to me, you completely misrepresent that legislation. NCLB is bad for many reasons, but one of them is not that it imposes a curriculum and a schedule of instruction across the nation. So i have to question how anyone can debate an issue with you when you make up your own facts.
Ched,
You were addressing me in four paragraphs (18 Jan-4:25). The last three paragraphs do not distinguish different points. Your second paragraph has to do with pacing; your fourth paragraph has to do with pacing. Nowhere do you mention NCLB. Ergo, I interpreted your comment as “strawman” and dismissed it as not serious. The fault, if there is one, is yours in not saying then what you now say now. I am not the mind-reader which you take me, or want me, to be.
So why not stick to the issues and not render judgment on its thinness of my skin.
Michael
18 Jan-4:25
Michael – The fact that discussion about individual paths and the decline in education are simultaneous does not make one causal. Any model used wrongly will fail.
Iif you cannot concede every child their own best curriculum, can you not at least concede to them, education at their own pace? Why should a student who is out of school for a week (for any reason, legitimate or no) be a week “behind” which implies not only staying up, but catching up? Why not just plug back in where ever they left off?
Maybe you can lead a make a horse to certain water and make it drink, but why would you want to? If more interesting water is conveniently available, why insist that they horse drink out of your bucket only? I’m sure I could find empirical support for the transiency of disengaged learning.
I will concede a core of knowledge that a high school diploma implies. I would suggest that it is a surprisingly small subset of everything worth knowing. Compel overall attention to the core, worry less about what is supposed to happen on day 23 of year 4.
18 Jan-10:38
I am not sure how you can take my day 23, year 4 illustration of the rigidity of NCLB, and morph it into a mis-characterization of anything you have said or implied. The paragraph from which you plucked it, was not even about you. I think perhaps your skin is a little too thin.
While we apparently cannot agree on what is really important for students to learn during their K-12, I fail to see the benefit of pejorative characterizations of other people’s points. To suggest that I am not “being serious” is just more of the crap that passes for critical discussion on this and other threads, and serves only to prevent it.
I have examined data provided by the Florida Department of Education to learn of the “Florida Model” that Governor Martinez is advocating. I am a longstanding educator in a rural public school that serves predominantly American Indian students and therefore vitally interested in the direction NMPED is taking.
In 2009-2010 Florida tested an American Indian student population in grades 3-10 that was 0.003 of the total student population (5,559/1,564,147). Few American Indian students passed their test. New Mexico tested 17,054 American Indian students in grades 3-8;11 which is 11.1% of the total tested (153,329-NMPED data). The 11.1% represents students who are members of tribes or pueblos that are mostly in the central and northern rural half of New Mexico. Very few attend the public schools of Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Las Cruces. The majority of the American Indian students attend rural schools that have high percentages of like students (Zuni, Cuba, Dulce, Central Consolidated, Magdalena, etc). An examination of recent NMSBA data, reveals that those districts would have had several of their schools receiving a grade of D or F-if they were graded. Why? Because only an average of 36% “proficiency” in grades 3-8;11, was earned by American Indian students. These 17,000 students have the greatest need.
I have yet to read of an explanation by Governor Martinez on how the “Grading” of these schools would result in a something positive (More funds? Transfer to another school ? Pressure from parents?). I haven’t read the research that holding back all failing 3rd graders has a positive effect in the subsequent year. I appreciate the philosophical or rather political commentary, but I prefer to look at facts and the reality of what I face as an educator of students who are predominantly American Indian. Yes, I am dissatisfied with the current state efforts to address the needs of American Indian students for many reasons. However, advocates of the Florida remedies…enlighten me how those parts that Governor Martinez recommends, would achieve better results for the American Indian students I have mentioned.
Michael,
I am not sure how you can take my day 23, year 4 illustration of the rigidity of NCLB, and morph it into a mis-characterization of anything you have said or implied. The paragraph from which you plucked it, was not even about you. I think perhaps your skin is a little too thin.
While we apparently cannot agree on what is really important for students to learn during their K-12, I fail to see the benefit of pejorative characterizations of other people’s points. To suggest that I am not “being serious” is just more of the crap that passes for critical discussion on this and other threads, and serves only to prevent it.
Ched,
You are right: simultaneity does not necessarily reflect causality. But it does not not necessarily reflect causality either.
As for the content or pacing of instruction, I concede nothing. Why should I? First, your strawmaning–”what is supposed to happen on day 23 of year 4–is a silly rhetorical ploy to mischaracterize anything which I have said or implied. If you want to be taken seriously, be serious. Second, one aim of education is helping students grow up, which includes learning to meet demands imposed by the world independent of one’s desires. In my experience, students learn best when instruction in the curriculum is structured by a competent, confident, and committed teacher; students appreciate a teacher who knows the subject, knows what he or she is doing, and conveys the conviction that what goes on in the classroom is, in many ways, for the benefit of the student.
gofdisks – that the problem “is being remedied” is not the same as remedying the problem. Unless every child has access to individualized education, the problem is not remedied.
Crowed classrooms and fewer resources affect any model; they effect individual learners least. For the most part, all they need is a connection to a sanitized TBD internet. Laboratories would be less crowed by virtue of the fact students who didn’t want to be there, wouldn’t be in the way.
IP – I have not broached the subject of costs. Since it is on the table, I would point out that individual learners, who are learning individually are doing so at a lower cost than an equivalent student in a teacher/”some other” centered learning experience.
Michael – The fact that discussion about individual paths and the decline in education are simultaneous does not make one causal. Any model used wrongly will fail.
Iif you cannot concede every child their own best curriculum, can you not at least concede to them, education at their own pace? Why should a student who is out of school for a week (for any reason, legitimate or no) be a week “behind” which implies not only staying up, but catching up? Why not just plug back in where ever they left off?
Maybe you can lead a make a horse to certain water and make it drink, but why would you want to? If more interesting water is conveniently available, why insist that they horse drink out of your bucket only? I’m sure I could find empirical support for the transiency of disengaged learning.
I will concede a core of knowledge that a high school diploma implies. I would suggest that it is a surprisingly small subset of everything worth knowing. Compel overall attention to the core, worry less about what is supposed to happen on day 23 of year 4.
Big generalization: ever since we embarked on that it’s-all-about-the-individual thing, with unique learning styles and individual education plans, education has gone downhill. Maybe it is time to suggest that catering to individuals instead of centering on instruction and the curriculum involved is not the way to go. What other country kow-tows to the learner instead of what is to be learned?
qofdisks:
In Mr. MacQuigg’s defense, I’m fairly certain that he’s not proposing budget cuts, nor is he in favor of larger class sizes; in fact, my read of him is that he is very much in opposition to them. That being said, while he and I disagree (usually vehemently) over the specifics of our educational system, I can understand his frustration and (more importantly) his impatience with regards to the lackadaisical speed of reforms.
ched macquigg, I have been trying to tell you that this problem is being remedied. Modern educational methods being taught at NMTECH address this very issue and does advance individual learning styles, rates and interests.
The more crowded the classrooms with fewer resources will not make this task easier.
It has been asked that a paradigm shift be place on the table.
Learning is an individual experience. Public education is all about standardization. The model for public education requires the standardization of individual performance; every kid (of the same chronological age) must be on the same page, in the same book, on the same day, or they have “failed”.
Let’s replace the current model with a model that recognizes that every student is an individual and each has their own best path to follow in their effort to become educated. Let’s commit to developing individual independent learners at the earliest opportunity. If creating independent lifelong learners are the goal of education, why is it not the primary objective?
Let’s end social promotion in lieu of mastery learning; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_learning
Let’s insist upon mastery before movement but only discreetly; a topic at a time, not globally, a grade level at a time. Let’s let students move individually and at their own best speed.
A model that is suitable for mass producing widgets is manifestly unsuited for producing independent learners. It is time we re-examine the fundamental model instead of trying to manipulate the outcomes.
Thomas,
You invite me to avow or disavow IP. I do not do so with respect to him or you any anyone else. I address issues, not individuals; I do not take sides. I have agreed and disagreed with you, agreed less than disagreed. Do you think of me as on or against your side? BTW, I have no allergies and like all kinds of nuts.
Oh dear. Mr. Molitor and I seem to have gotten into a competition of metaphors…
That being said: I know, you think people who can do basic mathematics are crazy. After all, anyone who has a grasp of facts would, logically, disagree with you. Since anyone who disagrees with you is apparently crazy, it follows that any person with a grasp of reality is thus crazy. Q.E.D.
Incidentally, I’m allergic to pecans.
Michael,
I appreciate the time you put into your columns. I just want to get clear on one relationship: are you in accordance with IP? Because I find your contributions thought-provoking, but, I find IP nuttier than a pecan orchard. Something is just misfiring in his circuitry. Are you on-board with everything IP says?
abqresident said, “Maybe in Las Cruces most Hispanics are Mexican, but you get much past TorC, and the percentage that are of Spaniard descent and have been here for 500+ years dramatically increases.”
Your are quite wrong about that. I am a descendent of one of the ancient families of the SOUTH.
The educational failure you are witnessing now is a result of policy from 10 years ago. NCLB applied to the unique cultural population of NM is the problem. Letting the crazy Bush policies be further entrenched in our state will set our kids back another decade or more.
There is a long delay of results for every policy implemented. Things are changing drastically in modern educational methods these days. They need time to produce results. Keep track of our fourth graders and younger to see how education is evolving. The changes HAVE BEEN IMPLEMENTED. They will not show up until 8 years from now. We may see improvements in the older grades, but the damage is done. The education of a child is a long term endeavor.
abqresident, you are correct. My southern NM bias is showing. But, even so, I suspect that most New Mexican Hispanics of any and all kinds do not place as a high value on education as, say, the middle-class Cuban Hispanics did (or do). There are, however, many individual exceptions.
One minor point of contention…. Maybe in Las Cruces most Hispanics are Mexican, but you get much past TorC, and the percentage that are of Spaniard descent and have been here for 500+ years dramatically increases. Beyond that, I, for one am all in favor of bringing in outsiders without a stake in it to evaluate our system. The fact that they don’t have a stake in it means that they can be brutally honest and tell us what we need to hear, not just what we’d like to hear. The people here have brought us very little but increasing failure year after year. The great thing about our country is that if we don’t like the results, we can always change it back at the polls in 2014 or sooner…
Mr. Molitor:
I’m going to say this as politely as humanly possible:
Grow up.
I assure you, that is quite literally as nice as I can be about your currently childish, whiny, instant-gratification attitude, and it is far kinder than your deserve at the moment. Just because Mr. Hays has a different opinion than yours doesn’t mean that his answers over the past several months are invalid and must be replaced by something that is more to your liking. Not only has he presented several ideas, you have actually debated him on them – and yet, you now have the audacity to pretend it never happened? What really bothers me is that you apparently actually believe it, which indicates that, as usual, ideas that don’t fit your remarkably narrow (and thankfully fictional) world-view never really find purchase in your mind.
Meanwhile, you’re hounding someone else to repeat ideas that you clearly didn’t understand the first dozen times. For that matter, you’re apparently demanding instant gratification from a man who actually thinks things through, and for him to start spouting half-formed ideas that would likely thus come out as half-baked as your own. It’s like watching a five year-old in a toy store tugging at their parents’ sleeve.
Please, learn some patience and maturity, and maybe, just maybe, you can contribute something to actual discussions of realistic policy – rather than contribute further to the Rio Grande Foundation’s continuing descent into the realms of cocktail party joke.
Thomas,
You are turning into a nag. Did I not just that i was preparing a column with “answers”? Can you wait? We are not there yet.
Yes, I ran for elective office, but I lost (for the majority, I was “controversial”). It may interest you to know that I challenged the incumbent chair of the School Board who was also a wheeler-dealer in leader, if not the leader of, the county Democratic Party. For someone in town only 18 months, I did no worse than other losing candidates, and I knew what I was talking about. Indeed, she ended up parroting me–and furious at me that she had to, to sound sensible.
Your defense of Martinez is lame, lame, lame. She has been in office for a few months only, but she has had a long time as a resident to learn about education issues, especially those in New Mexico, and to seek education advice. She need not have consulted with me, but she needed to consult with others, indeed, a wide array of others. She demonstrated astonishing ignorance to me when I interviewed her and when I attended the “debate” in Albuquerque. In short, she has had and squandered her chances to learn about and think through educational issues long before she took office. Her choices in education reflect purely political considerations.
Guess what, Michael, I assume you have never run for elective office (please correct me if you have). But Susan Martinez did, and has had to be the “instant expert” on all manner of issues. I’m not apotheosizing politicians, but they do have to come out with their views publicly and put a stake in the ground. Again, your polices please.
Thomas, there is something to be said for burning calories. Only the living can do it.
Seriously, why do you keep pretending that I have never offered answers.
I have promised iP that I shall have a fuller statement of “if-I-were-king” proposals. It is gestating.
Michael,
Incidentally, I agree with Paul Gessing and his assessment that you burn a lot of calories articulating the problems but no calories seeking solutions. Let’s pretend you have been appointed the Secretary of Education for New Mexico.Your policies please.
Sen. Tim Keller (D-Albuquerque) was the only one to vote against it.
http://www.capitolreportnewmexico.com/?p=3303
Here are the members of the Senate Education Committee———–
http://www.nmlegis.gov/lcs/committeedisplay.aspx?CommitteeCode=SEC
Hemingway, I have to rush, but noted your report on the vote. Please identify those voting for and against.
pgessing and Thomas Molitor,
I believe in full discussion of any and all educational issues, but you keep asking the same questions, to which which I have given the same answer repeatedly, directly to you or previously in my columns and blog. So what is the point of asking yet again? Why are you pretending that I have not criticized the Florida Plan and in some detail? Why are you pretending that I have not offered many suggestions for reforming public education? The pretense that I have not done so is a lame way of trying to criticize me for omitting to do something which, in fact, you know full well that I have done.
I also note your repeated litany that public education is a failure and an irretrievable failure at that. Ideological bologna. The American public school has been over its long history an astonishing success. True, it has faltered in the past 40 years or so, and for good reason which no one has taken into account; the explanation is not politically correct. But one of the unforeseen consequences of equal opportunity for women is that many of the best and brightest who had been confined to teaching (and nursing, etc.) were liberated and could and did choose to go into law, medicine, engineering, etc. So the overall quality of teachers declined, especially in the elementary grades, but society did nothing to better train those who went into elementary education or more effectively recruit higher-quality teachers. That and other shortcomings can be corrected if they are understood and accepted and addressed, though the analysis may be politically difficult and the remedial costs greater than they would have been if we had addressed the problem as it emerged.
The Senate Education Committee voted 7-1 for the A-through-F grading system today.
Michael,
I couldn’t disagree with you more. I think a “fresh look” is exactly what is in order. Given the increased spending on education these past ten years in New Mexico and the increasingly poor outputs – I think now is the perfect time to put everything on the table: no sacred cows, no precepts, no normalcy bias.
What is it about today’s school system that so many find unsatisfactory? Why have so many generations of reformers failed to improve the educational system, and, indeed, caused it to degenerate further and further into an ever declining level of mediocrity?
You’ve already covered all of the moving parts in our educational system in New Mexico that dooms it to fail: at every level, from financing to attendance to parents to teachers, so I’d like to paint a broad stroke and suggest a systemic root cause: the system relies on compulsion instead of voluntary consent.
Certain consequences follow. The curriculum is politicized to reflect the ideological priorities of the regime in power. Standards are continually dumbed down to accommodate the least common denominator. The brightest children are not permitted to achieve their potential, the special-needs of individual children are neglected, and the mid-level learners become little more than cogs in a machine. The teachers themselves are hamstrung by a political apparatus that watches their every move.
We know from the history of compulsory schooling that none of this is by accident. The state has long used compulsory schooling, backed by egalitarian ideology, as a means of citizen control. In contrast, a market-based system of schools would adhere to a purely voluntary ethic, financed with private funds, and administered entirely by private enterprise.
Personally speaking, if education reform is ever to bring about fundamental change, it will have to begin with a complete rethinking of public schooling. Yes, Michael, a “fresh look” is indeed in order.
So, Michael, what specific critiques do you have of what Florida has done? You attempt to tear it down, but you don’t even explain what Florida has done or why they are doing the wrong things and it can’t work here.
And on a separate note, what would YOU do? Spending more money has not helped.
The ground is always shifting beneath the teacher’s feet piling up endless paperwork and qualifications on them. All this is a distraction from teaching.
There are new innovative data based, brain research driven teaching methods working its way through the grade levels as we speak. You have to realize that any outcome of change will have a delayed result of a minimum of 6 years and most likely up to 12 years.
Reshuffling the system abruptly as the idealogical fanatic right propose will cause another generation or more to be lost. They mean to disrupt the evolution of our educational system at a critical time.
The ignorant are easily manipulated to vote and believe against their own interests. This may very well be the goal of corporate interests seeking to pay ever lower wages sans social benefits and worker’s civil rights. Authoritarianism always persecutes the intelligentsia.
gm, I appreciate the barbs of your comment. But be responsible; I made no claim to “unmatched expertise,” only to have done some homework and to make my report on the basis of education and experience in education and as an activist.
Instances of the absence of critical thinking abound. Take one from Las Cruces. Steven Fischmann, a Democratic state senator and member of the board of the Progressive Voters Alliance, remarked in yesterday’s Sun-News, that “It’s dead wrong to teach to a test, but we have to have some metric,” he said. “I don’t hear any suggestions for an alternative.”
A moment’s reflection makes it clear that Fischmann is offering up the usual double talk—“It’s dead wrong…BUT…. This formulation reflects moral priorities which prefer doing something even if it is “dead wrong,” even if, as in this case, it is detrimental to education. It establishes that measuring education is more important than providing one. Clearly, Fischmann cannot come to a reasoned position which would avoid doing something “dead wrong” like “teach to a test.”
Fischmann’s excuse is that “I don’t hear any suggestions for an alternative.” False. As a public official, he has read or heard many others’ views. He has read or heard my views, including a two-page list of actionable legislative items. He does not have to agree with or adopt others’ views, but to claim that he has not had “any suggestions for an alternative” is a lie. Why? An “I-had-no-alternative” position enables him to dodge explaining decisions which he may not be able to defend.
As a retired businessman from California, Fischmann uses Democratic affiliation and progressive labels but supports Republican, conservative educational positions. Thus, he supports labeling and thereby stigmatizing schools and everyone in them without supporting any meaningful way to avoid damage to people, public education, and real estate values. Thus, on the basis of those grades, he supports giving additional funds to better schools so that, if more money makes a difference, those doing well can do better, but those not doing well cannot get better and will get comparatively worse—another way to help the few at the expense of the many.
If such ideas—grading public schools and redistributing educational funds upward—are his ideas reflecting critical thinking and comprehensive knowledge about education, then Fischmann should out himself as a Republican and change parties. For him to continue pretending that he is a Democrat and a progressive would be “dead wrong.”
After nearly 4 yr in NM providing unmatched expertise, we are still in the same condition? Not only are we ignorant, we don’t even know how to listen. Everyone “appears” to be well-meaning but not committed to a goal that can improve our situation. Sad….Even those with official responsibility are not capable of providing meaningful insight and none qualify as educators. Compounds the problem….I’m giving up….Moving to liberal California…..
OK, here’s a few thoughts.
(1) Public education must begin in the home. The government, whether Federal, state, or local, is not responsible for raising children. That is the parents’ job. None of the proposals mention holding the parents accountable for their children’s preparedness and motivation. None of these proposals, including HB 100, which proposes to hold back (for no more than two years) third grade students who cannot pass the reading proficiency test, holds the parents accountable in any way. This is wrong.
(And, yes I have an idea or two about how to hold parents accountable, if anyone ever gets around to deciding that they actually are a factor in the equation.)
(2) The NCLB structure allows the individual states to game the system by setting up their catagories so that their schools can pass the AYP. New Mexico, one of the first states to set standards, was too naive to do that. (So let’s get rid of NCLB and establish national standardized tests, with some TBD exceptions.)
(3) Let’s stop dumping everything on the teachers. As the Israelites complained, you cannot make bricks without straw (EX 5: 6-18). Rarely can a teacher make up for a lack of home support for some, let alone all, of her/his underperforming students.
“Focus on the Family.”
The grading of schools is basically non-productive and has a political agenda. It is proper funding of our public schools that is the key. As the following study says: “How we fund our public schools is, therefore, fundamental to the national effort to ensure all students have access to high quality educational opportunities that prepare them to assume the
responsibilities of citizenship and to succeed in the economy. Sufficient school funding, fairly distributed
to districts to address concentrated poverty, is an essential precondition for the delivery
of a high-quality education in the 50 states.” This detailed and comprehensive study gives Florida a “D”.
http://www.schoolfundingfairness.org/National_Report_Card.pdf