From Illinois to Hawaii to New York and all across the nation, local control of school policy is being hijacked by ALEC’s “accountability” model. It’s happening in New Mexico, too!

Representatives of the Albuquerque Teachers Federation have unanimously voted “no confidence” in state Education Secretary-designate Hanna Skandera for reasons that include her planned teacher evaluation system.

Assessing the progress of a school requires quantitative and qualitative data that leads to increased support, not blame and sanctions. These proposed changes do not help foster growth or increase resources to help our schools or students; they just add more schools to failing list.

When Gov. Susana Martinez gave her first State of the State address on Jan. 1, 2011, she emphasized two priorities: improving education and keeping businesses in New Mexico. But SFR has found that, in the 15 months since Martinez took office, the New Mexico Public Education Department has paid out more than three times as much in professional service contracts to out-of-state education contractors than to those located in New Mexico. What’s more, it’s unclear whether some of them have produced tangible results.

Albuquerque Teachers Federation President Ellen Bernstein called the governor’s move a “backdoor approach” that undermines the Legislature’s decision to not pass the teacher evaluation bills.

Bernstein said the administration is overreaching.

“It is the job of the Legislature to pass laws, and it is the job of the governor to enforce laws. That means her agencies,” Bernstein said. “The rule-making process was intended to clarify existing law.”

Civil rights groups such as the NAACP and the Urban League have focused on concerns about the damage done on voting rights issues, unions have focused on concerns about attacks on labor rights and threats to economic fairness, and immigrant rights groups have raised issues important to them. And, following the Trayvon Martin shooting, ColorOfChange.org began to challenge corporations to reconsider their association with ALEC..

"There has been a shift from the belief that we as a nation benefit from higher education, to a belief that it's the people receiving the education who primarily benefit and so they should foot the bill," concludes Ronald G. Ehrenberg, a trustee of the State University system of New York and director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute.

In our view, two people are especially well positioned to help us start tackling the problem of churn: U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools. We challenge them and everyone who's working to reform our urban schools—from politicians to policymakers to scholars like ourselves—to stop treating churn, or ambient instability, as background noise and start treating it as a problem to be solved. Until we do, churn will keep undermining our best efforts.

Congressional and federal Education Department officials also argued during a March 26 panel over exactly which policy "guardrails" should be in place to guide state education reforms under a reauthorized ESEA. Maine's commissioner, Stephen Bowen, observed of Washington, "I think we saw ... why nothing gets done here."

James Guthrie, Nevada's incoming chief, also voiced the broad concern that Congress may eventually decide that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan overstepped his authority in granting ESEA waivers.

As a teacher, I rate this new evaluative process, which I know is similar to others being implemented elsewhere around the country, as "unsatisfactory." Beyond its effect on teachers' morale, it has created professional and pedagogical confusion. A special education teacher from a neighboring district whom I recently met expressed this best. "I want to do what's best for the kids," she said. "But I don't even know what that is anymore."

Most teachers do not believe standardized tests have significant value as measures of student performance, according to a new report published jointly by Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Constant testing, as in the Florida model, does not improve schools. Instead, it creates a pressure-cooker atmosphere in which test preparation becomes obsessive because the stakes are so high. Some districts in Florida suspend instruction for weeks in advance of the FCAT because the educators are so concerned about their school's letter grade. This is NOT good education. This is test mania.

The educators I represent believe that fostering shared responsibility among all stakeholders and less on making teachers solely responsible is important. It should include real help for consistently low-performing schools and move toward high-quality common standards that are aligned with a comprehensive curriculum and valid assessments

By Alyssa Agranat Commentary

Our lawmakers did not act out of spite in rejecting the governor’s education proposals, but out of the realization that this particular reform package is dangerous.In his recent submission, Doug Turner, owner of a public relations firm, writes about his support for the latest fads in education reform. He accuses our legislators of having used partisanship to prevent action when they fought these ill-conceived measures on the governor’s agenda in the 2012 session

The following is an article from Independent Source PAC. http://independentsourcepac.org/rio-grande-foundation-as-front.html
By law, for-profit companies cannot manage charter schools in New Mexico. The law clearly state, “the governing body shall not contract with a for-profit entity for the management of the charter school.” (NMSA 1978 22-8B-4R).
As ISPAC previously reported, an investigative series by the Miami Herald on Florida charter schools found that for-profit management companies receive as much as 70% of a charter school’s entire operating budget. The money that pays these for-profit companies is siphoned away from local public school budgets that might otherwise be used to pay for teacher salaries, books, and other supplies

Good-governance groups are fighting back against companies that take state subsidies and then head out of town.

One can understand why North Carolinians hold a grudge against Dell Computers. In 2009, the company shuttered its Winston-Salem plant, laid off 900 people, and made off with $6 million in state subsidies and incentives.

From the 1940s to the 1970s, organized labor helped build a middle-class democracy in the United States. The postwar period was as successful as it was because of unions, which helped enact progressive social legislation from the Civil Rights Act to Medicare. Since then, union representation of American workers has fallen, in tandem with the percentage of income going to the middle class. Broadly shared prosperity has been replaced by winner-take-all plutocracy

From the 1940s to the 1970s, organized labor helped build a middle-class democracy in the United States. The postwar period was as successful as it was because of unions, which helped enact progressive social legislation from the Civil Rights Act to Medicare. Since then, union representation of American workers has fallen, in tandem with the percentage of income going to the middle class. Broadly shared prosperity has been replaced by winner-take-all plutocracy.

By joining AFT New Mexico, you are joining a force of over 8,000 other school professionals who together, have the power to bargain for better wages and working conditions in your school district. Read more on how to join.