OPINION: APS teachers deserve a real voice, not an echo chamber

Public education is complex, demanding work. Teachers shoulder enormous responsibility, and any serious leader must care about their working conditions. But caring about educators doesn’t require accepting flawed analysis, agenda-driven surveys or conclusions that put adult convenience above student outcomes. The Albuquerque Teachers Federation’s recent “Is Your Stress Turning into Distress?” report does exactly that.

Albuquerque Public Schools employs more than 6,000 teachers. Fewer than 30% responded to this survey — a participation rate that should have prompted humility, not sweeping claims about the entire workforce. The report instead presents selective findings as representative of all APS educators. They aren’t.

The survey itself is deeply flawed. Its questions are leading, negatively framed and designed to surface dissatisfaction rather than understand the full range of teacher experience. In several cases, the report highlights “distress” even when most respondents offered neutral or positive answers. This isn’t research. It’s confirmation bias.

Just as telling is what the union chose not to ask: what supports help teachers succeed, where improvements are happening or what system-level tools make instruction more manageable. Those omissions reflect intent, not accident.

The report also ignores a key structural problem. Under the current collective bargaining agreement, the union has exclusive access to district communication channels for its surveys. APS leadership is barred from sending teachers an alternative, balanced or independently designed instrument.

That means APS cannot directly ask teachers what’s working, what’s improving classroom practice or what supports actually help them focus on students. This is not transparency. It is a closed feedback loop controlled by one party. The resulting survey cannot credibly claim to represent “educator voice.” It represents the voice the union chooses to amplify.

Most striking is the near-total absence of students in the union’s analysis. There is little consideration of how current practices affect learning consistency, family navigation of multiple grading systems, school-to-school transitions, or equity for students who rely on clarity and structure. Public education exists to serve students. A conversation that sidelines them is fundamentally incomplete.

Union president Dr. Ellen Bernstein has been in her leadership role since 1999 — more than two decades, compared to roughly 1.5 years under the current superintendent. If improving instruction and student outcomes were truly the union’s priority, why haven’t 20-plus years of continuous leadership produced the coherent, districtwide improvements students deserve?

Instead, the union has consistently resisted tools that promote clarity and reduce workload: curriculum that minimizes planning burden, common grading expectations and communication structures that help families. The pattern isn’t support — it’s obstruction.

Most APS teachers want to do what’s best for students. The problem is not them. It’s a system that allows adult-centered priorities to override student needs. The union’s contractual provisions even allow teachers to opt out of district curriculum, grading frameworks and communication protocols. The result is fragmentation for students at every turn.

If APS truly wants to understand teaching conditions in a way that improves both educator well-being and student success, it should use independent, research-based surveys administered outside any single interest group. Many states and districts — Kentucky, Colorado, Oregon, Austin Independent School District — already do this through neutral platforms like Panorama Education. APS already relies on Panorama for student climate surveys; extending that tool to educators would produce far more credible, actionable data than a union-constructed instrument with built-in bias and limited reach.

Educators deserve honesty. Students deserve systems built around their needs, not adult agendas. APS will improve by building coherence, strengthening instructional tools and grounding decisions in independent data — not in selective narratives crafted to score political points.

Students deserve nothing less.

Danielle Gonzales is a parent to three public school students, former APS Board president and senior fellow for education at The One Generation Fund.