Skandera's failure to launch

The inability or unwillingness to confirm Public Education Secretary Hanna Skandera is illustrative of a fundamental problem and consequent failure of public education in New Mexico; it is a power struggle.  Powerful people are fighting over decision making control of public education and it the problem is, it doesn't make any difference who wins.  It makes no difference, because nobody has a solution that is very much better than anyone else's solution; doing the same thing more.

Because they think that they and handful of others are the only ones who can see the light, they would like to consolidate decision making in their hands; a few important people; governors, secretaries of education, superintendents and school boards.

Each of them feels like they are, or have access to individuals who through their solitary influence can fix public schools.  Their premise; there really are only a handful of people capable making the decisions.

Their premise;

There are those of us, smarter than all of us.

None of these people are teachers.

Skandera has at least had classroom teaching experience at the college level.  None of the rest of them teaches.  APS Supt Winston Brooks lead a classroom for three years thirty years ago!

There is no magic.  There are no magicians to hire or elect who can fix what's wrong with public education.  If public education can be fixed at all, it will be fixed by the people who work in classrooms and schools all day; thousands and thousands of them with hundreds of thousands of  hours of experience between them.

The real truth is, there is no one of us as smart as all of us; especially in education.  There is no governor, no cabinet secretary, no superintendent and no school board member who knows more than teachers.

Yet teachers have no power; no seat at the table where decisions are made.  (Please do not substitute teachers unions, federations or any other "representative" group name for the word "teachers").  And, by "teachers" I mean all of the other adults who spend their days working with students in classrooms and schools.

Empowering all teachers is not as difficult as it may sound.  It begins with counting their voices.

It may be already underway.  The Tell New Mexico Survey, link, of teachers represents a singular opportunity for teachers to say what's on their mind, and have their voices counts.

Granted, an anonymous survey is not the necessarily the best way to count teacher input, but it's a whole lot better than not collecting their voice at all.  The anonymity is in fact quite necessary in school districts like the APS, where the fear of retaliation (against whistleblowers) is part of the culture.

Barring unethical manipulation of the data, about the only thing that could go wrong with the survey probably will.  The number of teachers who will respond will be too few to matter, link.

It's hard to imagine a better way to defend freedom and liberty than to exercise them at every opportunity.  It could be argued it borders on sacred obligation.

There is no legitimate agenda for public education
that does not move forward on the day we start counting
the education, training and experience of teachers.

Every teacher needs to tell every other teacher about the survey, and encourage their participation.

Every teacher in New Mexico must invest 20-30 minutes in completing the survey in order to provide validity to the results - else they be ignored.

Teachers are being asked, what should be done?

If their collective answer is no answer at all, they shouldn't be too surprised when a governor, cabinet secretary or superintendent steps up and tells them what to do regardless of what they think. 




photo Mark Bralley