Email
I hold issue with the recent Journal article linking teachers’ pay with student performance. Nothing about the three-tier system has anything to do with increasing student performance.
The three-tier system was to bring parity of remuneration for teachers with the rest of the nation. Unbeknownst to people in Albuquerque, the rest of this state’s school districts go understaffed all year because of the lack of adequate pay to draw teachers to this rural state.
But let’s talk about student performance, or the lack thereof.
It is government intrusion in public education that has taught, yes taught, our children not to perform. Did you know that a child does not have to be able to read until they reach ninth grade? It’s called social promotion, and we have been doing this for 30 years. Ninth grade is when an “F” finally means fail.
This experiment needs to end. The data is there: It does not work.
Did you know that in Albuquerque, elementary children do not get letter grades? We don’t want to hurt their feelings. Let’s give them a trophy for losing. Kumbayah.
Now, do teachers have anything to do with these decisions? No. And since we have been doing this for 30 years, we now have parents who have no intrinsic motivation.
As a mental health professional, it is my theory that this is a major reason we are seeing more mass shootings. We are seeing young adults who do not know how to deal with reality. They have been trained by our public system that they are not responsible for their own actions and future. … And kids don’t get the ethical and academic direction at home.
Do teachers mandate all the tests that are required by the government? We are in the middle of March, and most classroom instruction is done for the semester at the high school level. The next 2.5 months will be dominated with testing. The week after spring break will be the SBA, and then the following two weeks will be make-up tests for all those who don’t take the SBA the first week. Then there is the DBA, which may be waived. Then there is the EOC, which no one’s seen yet. Then there are three weeks of AP testing.
And somewhere in all of this, the teachers have their own finals to give. Instructional time has been skyjacked for data collection.
If you want to complain about wasted money spent, how many millions do you think it cost New Mexico to create and implement the above mentioned tests? And these don’t even include the tests that are administered in the fall.
