Most of our dedicated public-school teachers must deal with a myriad of social challenges that are often rooted away from the classroom and not directly related to actually teaching students. Yet somehow, they too often must shoulder the blame for not solving the ills of society and the many things that are simply beyond their control.
Teachers in our public schools are tasked with teaching all of our children, regardless of the student’s environment outside the classroom. The challenges educators face are enormous, and they need our support, and not the criticism and punishment prescribed by Governor Susana Martinez and Public Education Secretary Designate Hanna Skandera under the guise of a ‘reform’ mantra that in reality aims for education privatization.
And in pushing this hidden agenda, they are using a well-funded dark campaign that vilifies the teachers’ unions, the teachers themselves, schools, administrators, parents or anyone else who disagrees with them.
The growing list of situations teachers are forced to deal with beyond the classroom is unfortunately becoming the norm of the profession. But what has not been the norm are the adversarial conditions being forced upon them by a tyrannical Governor Susana Martinez administration that has proven itself oblivious to their concerns, their situations and -- most of all -- their dignity. Our teachers have become trapped between an unscrupulous, education-privatization movement that veils itself behind a “reform” mantra, and a rapidly expanding population of poor-performing students who are not getting the support at home, or society, to succeed.
The Martinez administration’s and state Pubic Education Department’s consistent resistance to the Legislature’s efforts to limit classroom sizes and expand funding for early childhood education and intervention programs at all ages are particularly troubling. All of the administration’s effort has been put into retaining third graders who are not reading at proficiency without parental input.
Then, at this late date, Governor Martinez suddenly wants to get parents involved through online programs and feigned concern that their input is vitally needed for their children to succeed. All of her and PED’s actions for the last three legislative sessions have resisted efforts to establish and expand upon programs to involve parents, provide intervention when a student at any level starts falling behind, and funding the support teachers need in the classroom, where it’s needed the most.
Instead, they’ve shown that they want to arbitrarily grade the schools and the teachers, penalizing them for factors that too often are beyond their control. It’s not too hard to figure out where this sudden concern for parents is coming from.
It’s been demonstrated that the models on which PED and Martinez are basing their “reforms” are rooted in Florida, where the state’s PED secretary-designate served in then Governor Jeb Bush’s education department, and that the so-called reforms have proven to be unsuccessful. Many of the backers of those reforms have interests in the for-profit privatization of education, including channeling public money into private online schools.
It’s no secret now that there is an ulterior motive to all this ‘reform’ movement. We don’t have to look too far to find people who disagree with them, and they are in the majority. Many of them are actual educators. The people behind this ‘reform’ movement are not educators, but private, for-profit corporations seeking government education contracts.
From the Hanna Skandera Senate confirmation hearings to the recent teacher protests in Albuquerque, New Mexico’s largest public school system, to grumblings heard statewide in the hallways of New Mexico’s schools, there is plenty of evidence that people are not happy with this administration’s refusal to hear their collective voice. The Martinez reformists are unnecessarily souring the morale of New Mexico’s educators, and if it persists, many will leave New Mexico or the profession altogether, further weakening our state’s educational system.
And the people who will take the brunt of this disingenuous ‘reform’ movement? Our children!
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