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It’s time to embrace education reforms
Hanna Skandera
According to one report, New Mexico loses 71 students every school day. We cannot maintain the status quo – it’s not working.
The passion for truly educating our children in New Mexico goes without question. I know this is true, despite our current ranking (48th in the nation).
So it’s now time to take notice of our failing school system, examine the opportunities for positive change and give our public education system the chance to live up to its potential. And it’s time for our parents, our communities and our legislators to embrace the reforms necessary to make it so.
In the past year I have visited nearly 50 of our 89 school districts. I have heard the resounding voices of adults and children – all eager to see our schools and students succeed. With each visit to every school, and in every classroom, I have witnessed the optimism, desire and hope on the faces of every student across the state. Our students, educators and parents deserve to be recognized for their continued trust in our public school system and deserve to realize true progress as a result of their faith.
There is no magic solution to our current status, but there are a few key initiatives that will have a lasting impact on our students’ futures. Two bills before the Legislature right now will, when passed, dramatically and positively impact our students.
Two important initiatives
Bills to assess and advance reading proficiency (House Bill 69 and Senate Bill 96) are being considered by our legislators. The news media calls this initiative the “No Social Promotion” bill and while, yes, 3rd grade retention is part of it, that label demeans the bill’s true purpose and character. This initiative would, for the first time, gauge the reading skills of our children from Kindergarten through the 3rd grade, something many schools don’t do now. This provides us – parents, teachers, administrators – the opportunity to help our children with progressive reading interventions years before they reach the 3rd grade.
We have proposed $17 million for this program. While this may seem like a large sum, the cost is insignificant in comparison to the cost to our children and their future if we fail to intervene on their behalves now. Only if they learn to read will our children have the chance to excel in subjects like math, science and social studies, and be empowered in all aspects of their lives. We know if a child can’t read by the end of 3rd grade, they are four times more likely to drop out of school.
The second initiative now before the Legislature would re-design the system for evaluating our teachers and principals. We need to identify our greatest teachers, celebrate them and, yes, pay them more. New Mexico’s current teacher evaluation system places nearly zero weight on student performance, which means that those teachers working miracles in our classrooms receive no credit for their heroic efforts.
New Mexico teachers can reach the ceiling for pay in just seven years based only on years of experience and number of college degrees – not how successful they are in teaching our kids. Our teachers deserve the satisfaction of being rewarded for their efforts. If a teacher continues to demonstrate excellence through improved student achievement, then she or he deserves a system that continues to reward those strides.
We all should expect, and our children deserve, an evaluation that ensures our students are learning and excelling.
We cannot maintain the status quo
According to the 2011 Diplomas Count report, New Mexico loses 71 students every school day. When we say “lost,” we mean these students will fail to graduate with a diploma. These children are our loved ones, our neighbors, our future, and ultimately our responsibility. We cannot maintain the status quo – it’s not working. If we’re going to push education forward in New Mexico, we’re going to need to speak up for these reforms.
If these ideas sound like the kind of reform you want for our children, I urge you to join us. Please e-mail us at school.success@state.nm.us and we’ll keep you updated on opportunities to support these initiatives. And please don’t hesitate to call your legislator!
I love this Land of Enchantment because of its rich culture, history and passionate people. These three factors play an enormous role in our education system. Let’s make sure we continue to honor the diversity of our state, learn from our history and move forward with real change for our children.
Skandera is the secretary-designate for the N.M. Public Education Department.
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Ms. Hanna Skandera ‘s thoughts and ideas regarding education should get a nomination for a Bunkum Award issued annually by the National Education Policy Center to acknowledge reports on education issues from think tanks and other sources that represent the worst of the worst when it comes to research quality. Flunking third graders would qualify!
http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2011/02/us-department-education-big-winner-2010-bunkum-awards
Here is a Bunkum Award to the Heritage Foundation for a poor report on Florida when Ms. Skandera served as Florida’s Deputy Commissioner of Education. It show exaggerated results and poor statistics.
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/learning-from-florida
@MikeC without regard to Independent Source’s report, their name is deceptive and I believe intentionally so. They aren’t independent and habitually linkers like Hemingway trot our their products as if it has some objective credibilty. No doubtr they can assemble facts and associations to make a case. No surprise there, thats what people who contribute to them expect.
Let’s be honest, people (like Independent Source) who oppose Skandera are just working from the answer backwards.
There is nothing status quo about what the Democrats are doing. That is just messaging that falls flat in the face of actual facts.
The difference between Skandera’s scam reform and real reform is that she wants to treat all kids as statistics and dictate their future from Santa Fe. Forget about input from those that work with the kids on a daily basis. She also says that Santa Fe knows better for kids than do their parents. Funny how that is now the Republican mantra– eliminate family involvement in decisions and eliminate local control. Republicans used to believe the opposite.
To Steve R- maybe read the report on Skandera it contains supporting documents. Everything is factually accurate. That is why over 2300 people have read the report. You probably consider the Rio Grande Foundation and Fox News to be independent. News with a view, the difference is we document everything.
Skandera doesn’t care about New Mexico’s multi-cultural education challenges. She can’t even get the waiver from DC she is seeking because she thinks of New Mexico’s minority population as Asians and doesn’t understand the impact of poverty on education or that English learners’ needs are different. She has yet to properly engage with the Indian Education groups or the Spanish language education groups. That is fact.
What she has done is personally enrich her friends and businesses that siphon new Mexico public education dollars and ship them off to Virginia, New York and Texas.
“Here is a report on Hanna Skandera by the Independent Source PAC”
Not independent, they mislead, you think we’re stupid
Why do we insist upon cemetery seating, five rows of six kids, moving at exactly the same speed in exactly the same direction as our educational model? Except to prepare them for tests? We have lost sight of the individual needs of students completely just so they can all take the same test together.
The level of this discourse would be raised by, more talk about the message, and less about the messenger.
Hemingway, thank you for all the info on this cabinet nominee. Now after a year of people like you bashing her, and other people saying she is the best thing since sliced bread, don’t you think it is about time for hearings on her as secretary and an up or down vote? All this rhetoric ignores the very serious job of the Senate to do this for us as citizens, and I have to say Ms. Lopez is not doing her job, nor is Mr. Sanchez, where are the hearings and the vote Senators? Why will you not do you jobs? And to think some people actually want our legislators to be paid money.
I am sorry Ms. Skandera was active in politics. She served as vice president of a local Republican Women Federated organization!
Surprisingly Ms. Hanna Skandera’s educational background is non-existent. Skandera received her Master’s of Public Policy, specializing in American Politics and International Relations from Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Business from Sonoma State University. Maybe she should be in politics not education.
http://www.ped.state.nm.us/resources/NMPED%20Secretary%20Hanna%20Skandera%20Biography.pdf
http://www.edweek.org/ew/qc/2012/16src.h31.html?intc=EW-QC12-LFTNAV
This is the report card that Gov sites on her website stating that NM has an F. We have an F in only one category. We are middle of the road overall.
http://www.governor.state.nm.us/Educating_Our_Children_1.aspx
This is the gov’s actual statement and use of Quality Counts report.
Please stop lying to us and spinning the facts to promote your agenda.
Here is a report on Hanna Skandera by the Independent Source PAC
http://www.scribd.com/doc/78175188/PAC-report-on-Hanna-Skandera
Pac’s are everywhere!
Ms. Hanna Skandera has never been a classroom teacher or administered a school. Yet she wants to evaluate teachers in the classroom. The answer to Ms. Skandera is test crazy for evaluation. Test scores would decide all the decisions about students, teachers, principals and even the schools themselves.This is the wrong approach.
However, Ms. Skandera is good at writing job descriptions especially the one that guaranteed a $67,000 job for Ms. Stephanie Gardner. Guess what? She is the wife of Keith Gardner, chief of staff for Martinez. It sounds like cronyism to me and is not education reform.
Governor Martinez’s political agenda to flunk third graders instead of providing remedial services deserves a failing grade of “F”. Our children’s education should not be left up to politicians and their political hirelings.
In its 2003 “Position Statement on Student Grade Retention,” the National Association of School Psychologists have shown conclusively that flunking third graders would have a permanent detrimental effect on the children. Some of the highlights of this report are as follows:
* The students retained are poorer than that of peers promoted;
* Achievement gains associated with grade retention disappears with two years after the grade repeated;
* Children who are identified as most behind are the the ones ” most likely harmed by retention;
* Retention often is associated with increased behavior problems;
* Retained students are more likely to have poorer educational and employment outcomes during late adolescence and early adulthood.
Here is the report that should be read by all state legislators:
http://www.nasponline.org/about_nasp/pospaper_graderetent.aspx
Let’s not waste taxpayers’ money on a program that will fail our children and will have no educational advantage for the state. There is only one point of agreement with Ms. Skandera – the status quo is not working, but her plan is a waste of $17,000,000. You don’t spend your way to success.