Teaching Task Force light on teachers

Governor Susana Martinez has created the “New Mexico Effective Teaching Task Force”. The Task Force has fifteen members; only one is a teacher. "The rest are politicians, superintendents, principals, administrators and a union president" according to Ken Whiton in his letter to the editor, link.

The press release, link, from the Governor's Office indicates
that nine are "current or former" teachers. In fact, only one
appears to be actually teaching currently. There is a difference
of course, between former and current teachers; putting former
teachers (now representing the perspective of educational
administration as opposed to actual education) on the Task Force
is not equivalent to currently teaching teachers on the Task Force.

For example; those who are currently teaching and those who
used to, but are now administrators, will likely have far different
views on who is responsible for dealing with chronically disruptive
students. I wouldn't be surprised to find they have different
feelings as well, on the subordinate evaluation of administrators
by the classroom teachers they supervise.

Whiton was right on, writing;

There is no substitute for giving teachers a meaningful
and respected voice in every discussion and the power
to have an effect on all decisions.

I could not agree more.

In the APS, teachers share nearly 100,000 years of teaching
experience and have no seat at the table where decisions are
made. The Director of APS' Research, Deployment, and
Accountability Department, Tom Genne, admitted to me that
APS has never, not once, surveyed teachers and asked them
what they need to be successful.

The likelihood of successful reform in education is inversely
proportional to the number of qualified teachers who have a
meaningful voice in the reform. No teachers, no (successful)
reform.

One teacher out of 15 members is about 7% of the Task Force,
making the likelihood of their eventual failure to come up with
useful reform, about 93%.

New Mexico Public Education Secretary
Designate Hanna Skandera made a
mistake when she went out of state
to hire eight "consultants".


Apparently, she learned nothing from
that mistake and will continue to treat
New Mexico teachers as if they have
nothing to add.




photo Mark Bralley