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| Susana Martinez (R) Diane Denish (D) |
I listened carefully to the governor candidates debate about education Thursday and was left with no idea what either candidate would really do to improve the educational outcomes in New Mexico schools. Both spoke in clichés and generalizations other than to metaphorically slap each other around and posture trying to get a good sound clip for the ten p.m. news.
What was apparent is that this format did not favor understanding really anything about the candidates. Yes, we know now that Susana Martinez did not vote in the special education election in September 2003 and Diane Denish is still using the state jet to visit rural schools. They kept hammering at their talking points and little else. Yawn!
Whoever prepared Susana Martinez should be dropped down an empty elevator shaft for arming her with the notion that “Short Cycle Assessment” was lacking in New Mexico. Hello! Every day in every school they are already doing that as part of the No Child Left Behind, Response To Intervention procedures. RTI is core to every school every day. Martinez brought it up as if she just now thought of it. Sad.
Not to be outdone, whoever prepared Diane Denish gave her the talking points that the way to make schools better is to fully fund them. Are you kidding me? The state budget goes up 54% in the last seven years and the issue is fully funding the schools? Sad. Neither could hit water from a boat about education. Both could have hit homeruns if better prepared. First, Diane Denish has actually pushed for more involvement with children before they enter Kindergarten. She could point out that the core problem in New Mexico schools is that the population of Kindergarten students is spread in ability from that of students with the literate skills of a three year old to a child with literate skills of a seven year old. Those students who on their first day in public school are two years of reading level behind certainly needed an intervention so they could start school reading on grade level. Otherwise, those students will need to make one year of regular progress in reading while they also make two years of catch up progress, rather an impossibility unless it becomes the goal of the schools for students to read on grade level.
That said, Susana Martinez could rightly point out that throughout the course of the Richardson/Denish administration students continued to not read on grade level while every textbook students use is designed for their intended grade reading level. What the heck is wrong with those leaders who continue to spend so much money on textbooks that half of the students cannot read because they are not on that reading level? Simplifying the goals of the schools to just two points would have seemed very good: first, all students must read on grade level and all students must have the math skills of their grade level. And, then let the school do that task. Focus not on comparing schools but get students reading and doing math equal to their grade level. All in all, what the debate showed is that neither has been near any classrooms in decades. Sad.
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2 comments:
NLCB was and is illegal and unconstitutional. Throughout the history of this Union, the federal government stayed out of education because education is under the authority of the states. Anyone who has bothered to read constitutional writings from the earlier decades of the Union knows this.
Why is it that it took until 1976 before there was a department of education? Maybe because the feds have no business in education but by then the feds just decided to do whatever they wanted.
So any governor worth his/er salt would tell the federal government to get out of state business, would stop accepting ANY federal funds, and would get our schools back under our control. Anyone who wants to be our governor needs to get with it. Honor and integrity first and foremost!
I am with an educators association so I am not a neophyte when it comes to educational issues.
Currently there are 13 studies as to what is wrong with education.
First you must break down the size of the high school into catagories. Next you must break up English, Social Studies, Math & Science and all other.
To most peoples surprise you can actually teach English to the test. I attended two conference this past summer with 21 chairs responsible for determining the problem.
Math is a horse of a different color. Test scores mean virtually nothing. Also the larger the high school, the better the student does in college. People talk about classroom size. In an honors program you can have up to 50 students per class, however where students struggle with math 17 students is about what a teacher can handle.
There are different rating systems that are used. Northwetern University uses the county wide statistics and hardly ever recruit a student based on academics from Bernalillo or Dona Ana county. They have recruited students from Los Alamos and San Juan counties on several occasions.
At the same time Vanderbilt looks at each high school seperately where Rice and Stanford look at the student. Therfore if you are an outstanding student in Dona Ana County, forget Northwestern.
Starting in 2016 the NCAA will be grading students by the past performance of the high school. If you place 10 students in ten different universities and all the students graduate from college in 5.5 years, they will not have to take a test! If only one graduates from a university, you may not get a scholarship. They are constructing a building at this minute for this purpose.
One thing is for certain, the tougher the principal, the better the high school does!
The study at the Military Academy proved the very point above.
The other problem is that a very easy university to get through (we will not mention names) is looked at in the same way as our best higher level of education institutions by the U.S. government. Why go to Stanford or Rice when you can go to Idiot Tech and get the same job when you graduate.
The five best scientists in my opinion that I have work with received their undergrad from Maine, Nevada (Reno), NMSU, West Virginia and Wyoming. They were better than the students that were hired from MIT. Please note, these five universities may not be Harvards, but they also are not Idiot Tech's.
The last thing that must be mentioned is that almost every city has ai least one excellent high school. New York, Chicage, Los Angeles, Houston, Albuquerque. Every one of these cities does something to destroy the best program. In Albuquerque everyone pushes La Cueva, but both Eldorado and Manzano have a better record. Rio Rancho is moving up the ladder quickly. When you politick for a certain school or destroy the reputation of the best school for whatever reason all you do is hurt every student in that city. More than anything this must STOP!
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