What do teachers know anyway?

The educational "experts" in Santa Fe
want to lengthen the school year by three days now,
five days sometime in the future.

(The plan has less to do with improving education,
than it has to do with a thinly disguised effort to adjust
the tension between teachers hourly and yearly salaries.)
link and link

Teachers of course, don't believe in the fix.

From the editorial in the Journal;

"Some teachers are questioning the value of a few extra class days..."
"five days is nothing ... You need weeks with these kids that are behind."

My experience leads me to believe the teachers.


The Journal editor argues that it is at least,
a step in the right direction.

S/he is wrong.

The truth is that, whatever you do,
you do instead of doing something else.
And if Veronica Garcia can get an increasingly disgruntled public off her back for a year;

while the three more days experiment is tried;
and fails;

that is one more year that she and the other experts
won't have to even acknowledge the problem of
chronically disruptive students, and of students who
no longer recognize the authority of adults over children at school.

"Albuquerque Teachers Federation president Ellen Bernstein says every extra day— well spent— counts." (emphasis added)

"Well spent"

Students days in the APS are not "well spent".

That they are not, is a secret well kept
by the leadership of the APS and the Journal.

Show me the article where,
Thomas J Lang and Kent Walz, even recognize
that there is a problem with student discipline in the public schools.

Show me where they have reported that
the leadership of the APS,
has relinquished control over schools, to a bunch of children.

Kids could go to school every day of the year;

but if when they get there
they just sit around waiting for order to be restored,

nothing at all will be gained.

Except putting off for another year,
even the discussion of honest accountability
to meaningful standards of conduct and competence,

for the leadership of the APS,

and for the leadership of each of the other 87 school districts in New Mexico.