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Sunday, June 28, 2009

The Fine Sport of Teacher Bashing

By Ellen Bernstein
President, Albuquerque Teachers Federation
          Wow! The buzz created by the Legislative Finance Committee (LFC) "research" report on the teacher licensure system has been incredible. This opinion paper, branded as legislative research, ignores the most glaring problem in public education: state legislators' continued choice to underfund it.
        Here's what the public should know about our teacher licensure system. In 2003, New Mexico enacted major education reform by shifting to a professional educator licensing and salary system in order to recruit and retain the highest quality teachers in our state. It worked. No longer are we bleeding teachers to neighboring states. For 2008, 94% of core classes were taught by highly qualified teachers. New Mexico ranks 17th in the nation for its efforts to improve teaching. Thousands of New Mexico teachers have experienced an increase in professional standards and expectations as a result of the licensure system. If the LFC had bothered to ask them, those teachers would have told the LFC that the process was rigorous, authentic, and added to their teaching ability. Now that's something to write about.
        Of all governmental entities, the LFC has been the least supportive of public schools in their funding and support recommendations. It is quite apparent that the motivation for this report was to support their philosophy of merit pay by trying to discredit the current Three-tiered Licensure System.
        Perhaps the LFC was looking to distract the public's attention away from the issue at hand – the chronic underfunding of public education in New Mexico. In 1974, state legislators took sole responsibility and accountability for providing sufficient funding for New Mexico's schools so that our children would have a chance to succeed. For over two decades, legislators have slowly but surely reduced the amount of the state budget that is devoted to educating our children. By their own admission, state lawmakers are underfunding our schools at least $350 million a year with a broken funding formula and violating their own constitutional obligations to parents and children.
        I know that the public supports teachers, even if the LFC does not. While the report chooses to lay blame on the Three-tiered Licensure System and the teachers who work within it, I prefer to read the report as an unnecessary attack on a system that is successfully accomplishing what it was designed to do.