New Mexico Mercury

In response to my colleagues’ recent op-ed column, “Stop the Cycle of Failure,” let me first say that I think our New Mexico public schools are good, our teachers are great and our students are performing well. I know, that’s not what you’ve read, but please hear me out.

We can argue about test results; let’s look at test design. All standardized-based tests spread children out on a continuum, a bell curve, by design. In every state, children from poverty, with rare exception, score at the bottom, by design. Children learning English as a second language tend to score at the bottom, by design. Does this mean they can’t learn or teachers aren’t working hard enough?

Not even close. Fact: Bilingual adults are often smarter than monolingual speakers, with increased neural brain connections.

But not at 8 years old, before learning two languages. Spanish-speaking children can take the test in Spanish and score extremely well. Example: Anthony Elementary in Gadsen. Federal laws prohibit the Spanish test after 3 years of schooling, many years before these children are bilingual. There’s little help for our children speaking Navajo, Apache, Keres, Tiwa, Towa, native languages prized as essential to our multi-cultures.

New Mexico has the highest rate of child poverty and English learning as a second language. We get a double whammy when our students take these tests. Children from poverty can become good students but need more intensive instruction than they’re receiving. What’s key to educating children from poverty? Fact: more time in school through K-3+, pre-K, early interventions, reading coaches, summer school, credit-recovery, small class sizes and social interventions with parents.

So why aren’t we doing more of that? We are fighting over funding.

Facts: The Legislature and governor have cut public school funding 11 percent since the Great Recession in 2008. We have crammed more students into classrooms, have lost 3,000 educators, failed to give salary increases in 5 years, required educators to contribute more than 10 percent of their salary into retirement (more than other state employees, including judges), and slashed funding for reading, science and math books.

And all the governor and acting education secretary want to talk about is third-grade retention? Where are the accountability measures for them and for all of us who are culpable?

Fifty years of research shows retention can be harmful to students; retained students are more likely to drop out, unless paired with intense intervention. In Florida, retained students had required summer school and 90 minutes extra a day in reading. Florida citizens passed a constitutional amendment mandating small class sizes and $22 billion over 10 years for early intervention. Is our New Mexico governor proposing this level of funding?

New Mexico already has a good retention law. Education specialists – teachers, principals, counselors, social workers – all work with students and parents to decide retention. We tend to retain very early if we do, but only as a last resort. Parents are part of the decision.

Questions remain: Who decides what is third-grade reading proficiency? The SBA that penalizes our students for who they are? The reading program without enough textbooks? The Spanish test or the English test?

Who decides the cut scores? Scoring tests are a matter of human judgment, not science. Test scores in D.C. went up because they chose to score the tests differently, not because students scored better.

My colleagues accuse us of being “status quo,” but Democratic legislators have passed high-quality proposals for teacher evaluation, early interventions and school improvements – all vetoed by Martinez. They say Arne Duncan supports the governor’s reforms, but Duncan doesn’t require 50 percent of teacher evaluation from student test scores; New York was approved with just 20 percent.

For New Mexico teachers, their students rank number one! We love our students and teaching. Let’s try to compromise, listen to those working with students and hold everyone accountable.