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Do you want education reform or legislative gridlock?
Doug Turner
My hope is that my fellow New Mexicans will join me in voting for reform and for placing the interests of children and their parents before politics.
At a time when good jobs are scarce and our economic future uncertain, lawmakers in Santa Fe have a responsibility to put aside partisan bickering and unite to enact reforms that give New Mexico a real shot at prosperity.
This year, Governor Martinez submitted two school-reform proposals that should have given our legislators the opportunity to show their ability to find a common ground for the greater good.
Her first proposal would have required literacy by 3rd grade, as a means to accurately evaluate student progress. The second would have established measures to finally evaluate educators on the actual results of their work, rather than focusing mostly on seniority and credentials as we do now.
Enacting her legislation would have not only improved our classrooms, it would have sent a strong message to the nation’s job creators that New Mexico is finally serious about improving education. By both rejecting the governor’s proposals and then curtailing the growth of charter schools, the Legislature blocked real efforts to improve quality and accountability in education.
Killing affordable and doable proposals
Early last year Governor Martinez created the Effective Teaching Task Force to develop the evaluation system detailed in her bills. Nine of the twelve members of the task force were current or former teachers. Eight represented minority or special needs communities. Seven were administrators and six were parents. Organized labor and the business community were represented as well. The process was open and transparent.
The proposals born from the work of the governor’s task force were affordable and doable. The first phased in the transition to a focus on test score results over time, providing a simple measurement for student achievement. The second recognized and honored successful teachers and it provided professional development help for those teachers who really might need and benefit from it. Both included the necessary funds to make it all a reality.
But tragically, rather than work these two proposals through the process and deliver them to the governor’s desk, the Legislature failed on both fronts and killed the bills.
Attacking charter schools
Adding insult to injury, some legislative members chose to focus their energy and attention on dimming the one bright spot on the educational landscape by attacking the public charter school funding mechanism that has provided nearly 20,000 students with school choice. Believe it or not, they actually succeeded in including this damaging policy change as part of HB2 – the state budget.
It seems beyond the pale that the Legislature would ignore real reform and instead obsess over charter schools that often offer a profound contrast to public school. Thankfully, Governor Martinez used her line-item veto to protect the future of charter schools in New Mexico. For this, the governor deserves the gratitude of those who truly care about education reform.
Until the monopoly is broken
Until the monopoly on power held by teacher’s unions and the educational system’s bureaucracy is broken, true legislative dedication to educational reform will continue to elude us. Every New Mexican will have an opportunity to help in that effort with their vote this November.
As New Mexicans eventually head to the polls, they should ask themselves if they want representatives and senators in Santa Fe who will champion education reform as Governor Martinez has, or if they instead want the legislative gridlock that continues to fail our kids and our economy.
My hope is that my fellow New Mexicans will join me in voting for reform and for placing the interests of children and their parents before politics.
Turner, a former Republican candidate for governor, is the owner and operator of the public relations firm DW Turner.
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Interestingly, nowhere is it mentioned that Turner happens to be the board President of the New Mexico Coalition for Charter Schools and a Rio Grande Foundation board member. His Rio Grande Foundation partner, Paul Gessing, just filed with the state to operate charter schools as an affiliate of Connections Academy a national operator of for-profit charter schools. I think it would have been only proper for Turner to disclose what seems to be a vested interest in charter schools. It should also be of interest to readers to know that one of Gessing’s “advisors” in the charter school business is a chap named Mickey Revenaugh, who is the vice-president and co-founder of Connections Academy AND who was formerly the co-chair of the ALEC Education Task Force.
There is a great article about Mr. Turner’s interest in privatizing education at DFNM. He stands to make a bundle. Funny how he fails to mention his big stake to get rich in this article.
” The recent actions of Paul Gessing, president of the Rio Grande Foundation, raise serious red flags. Among the concerns is if the Rio Grande Foundation is attempting to skirt the law by serving as a front to a for-profit management company in order to operate charter schools here in New Mexico ”
http://www.democracyfornewmexico.com/democracy_for_new_mexico/2012/03/is-the-conservative-rio-grande-foundation-acting-as-a-front-to-violate-new-mexico-law.html#more
In response to Mr. Turner, I can’t help but think back to an excellent letter published in Tuesday’s Albuquerque Journal, which I shall paraphrase:
Claiming that the legislature has failed to act for two years is, quite frankly, false. They have acted by soundly rejecting proposals that, far from being “reform”, have instead already been proven to have a detrimental effect on education. The legislature has shown uncharacteristic sense in realizing that a bad law would actually be worse than no law at all.
I would also personally point out, Mr. Turner, that claiming that teachers are somehow in control of our education system – a system that requires them to give tests to students that not only have zero effect on individual students’ futures but which the teachers themselves aren’t even provided the scores to, a system that has cookie-cutter programs created by non-educators like yourself or Governor Martinez or Secretary-designate Skaandara to deal with every situation regardless of the specific needs of individual students, a system that completely ignores either individual accomplishment or individual talent and instead relies on the idea that rote memorization is the same as education – is so ludicrously näive that it could only have been made by someone who has never once worked as an educator.
For that matter, how can you talk about preserving “school choice” for parents anywhere in the same article that you support a mandate taking away their choice about whether or not their child should be held back a year? Setting aside the fact that the law chooses third grade seemingly at random as the year that all students – being magically the same, apparently – should be assessed for such a penalty at the whim of non-educator and with no regard for the judgement of their teachers or decisions of their parents, the idea itself is proof that you care less about actually improving our educational system than you do about being right, since students held back at any level are actually less likely to graduate high school.
Mandatory retention violates a parent’s right to make critical education decisions. It violates not only the Indian Education Act, the Hispanic Education Act, but US Supreme Court decisions.
In New Mexico it is illegal for charter schools to be home schools (“virtual academies”) and it is illegal for for-profit companies to manage charter schools in New Mexico.
Greed is not education reform. Siphoning resources away from neighborhood schools to line private companies pockets is flat out wrong.