New Mexico is the state with an acting superintendent who previously worked for Jeb Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Remember, they love teachers. They just don’t respect them.
This teacher writes:
“Hey, in New Mexico we’re already being told that 50% of our evaluation will be student test scores. Then at our last staff meeting, we were told that all the gifted students were going to be place in one classroom. If our test scores don’t go up, we are out of a job after a 90 day growth plan. Forget compensation (we haven’t had a raise in 5 years, and it doesn’t look like there will be one this year either), we will just be unemployed.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes, I’m in a transformation school in RI. If we don’t raise our test scores, we will lose our jobs as well. In my school district, there is one public school that takes all the highest performing students from the whole district and tests them into their school. All the other schools have the students that don’t/wouldn’t pass the test. Right from the get go, we are screwed.
Educator: there is a term for what you describe.
It’s called “Failure by Design.”
And those who will judge you and find you wanting? Are their careers and reputations subject to the same inane metrics?
You already know the answer.
My heart goes out to you.
This is total BS.
Ok, you need to organize parents to keep their kids out of school until this ends. That’s the only thing the politicians will understand.
Unbelievable!…immoral, and criminal, we need a national union..with Karen Lewis at the top, I guess.
This situation makes me sick. If we continue talking instead of acting, I can see the rest of the states joining New Mexico in this sort of hell. Thanks to the Gates brand of ignorant , self important greedy bast$#%s.
I think the quoted teacher is actually underestimating. I also teach in NM and have been working with our district on communicating the new evaluations to our teachers. As best I can tell, there is the 50% that the system mandates be tied to tests, but then there is another 15% of “other measures” hidden in the non-test-based section. Most of the choices in that section are also based on test results (1st Quartile growth, ELL student growth, etc), with a few other options that are set up to violate collective bargaining agreements (such as having punitive scores on your evaluation for absences, even when they are negotiated sick or personal leave). Needless to say, in most cases it looks like the 50% of evaluations coming from test scores is a floor, not a ceiling.
What is this…the Twilight Zone? How did we ever get to such a place as this??
Paraphrasing Lewis Black “I took LSD when I was younger to prepare myself for times like now.”
Hanna Skandera still has not been confirmed by the state legislature, but all of the correspondence now coming from her, as well as the PED website, name her as the director of education instead of acting director. And the news keeps getting worse – in one of the districts I provide support to, the principals have been told under New Mexico’s NCLB waiver, they are required to do 4 formal observations and 2 walk throughs (all with written documentation) for every single teacher on their staff, regardless of how many years they have taught. In schools with 50-100 teachers, principals are scratching their heads wondering how they will accomplish their jobs with this added ridiculous responsibility. The additional observations have been crammed down people’s throats under the guise of accountability, but from where I sit, it stems from and foments the “we can’t trust teachers” mentality…
In addition to the 50% floor that socratic_me mentions, 50% of principals’ evaluations is supposed to stem from the convoluted school grading system that Skandera cooked up that has left our legislators scratching their heads over because no one can understand it…
Wish I could post pictures from my travels on the rez – your jaws would drop at the extreme poverty and isolation that many of our NM students come from and live in. One student in particular has lived in a 1-room hogan with 6 family members without running water or electricity, and yet he will be expected to perform on a par with the student who attends a school in a large city such as Albuquerque, and if he does not, his teacher will be deemed a failure. Sickening…
Yes, sickening.
What do you hear about hiring new teachers to replace those fired – anyone hearing from the college programs that their numbers are diminishing? Who would choose teaching in NM? even as a second career with this kind of situation looming.
I live in NM. My third-grader struggles greatly with his handwriting. There is no way that a standardized test scorer would take the time to try and decipher what he writes. And, it wouldn’t surprise me if his poor motor skills would prevent him from properly filling in answer sheet bubbles. It kills me to know that his teacher could be “punished” for this when he really is an incredibly bright child and if a teacher is going to really be “held accountable” (and really know one should, his handwriting is frustrating, but no indicator of future success) it just be his first grade teacher who teaches at a different school!
Shameful. I always think about students who have to receive the test report detailing their performance. What about the low performing students who are stigmatized by it all?
Just so typical of what is going on. I’m making book that after all the gifted students are placed in one classroom and the other two teachers are fired for, or charged with, incompetence, those “gifted” students will be separated back into their former classrooms for a new benchmark. As a parent, I’m tired of my gifted children being used as weapons of tenured teacher destruction. As a lawyer, I’m tired of bogus “evidence”. As a citizen, I’m appalled at this system that caters to billionaireist destructivisionisnm.
Kind Regards,
Nick Penkovsky
Please excuse any typos or terseness, this was sent from my Sprint BlackBerry®.
I an the Executive Director of the oldest teacher organization in the State. As you would expect I too am troubled by what’s happening in my State since Ms. Skandera has come to head our PED. I get to meet with her often and have consistently expressed the concerns of educators. Ms. Skandera, and other public education administrators who share her philosophy have a simple playbook, “try and turn public opinion against educators.” To often we frame our arguments against her proposals in that they(the proposal) will have a negative impact on our wee being. This plays right into her hand. At NMACT our approach is that what she proposes will not work. We constantly challenge her, and the Governor, to provide evidence beyond one or two “cherry-picked” studies. They can’t but this not going to stop them from plowing ahead. This is a tough fight and the next two years are going to be brutal. We need to stay strong and stay together. onenewmexicoteacher
Please excuse the typos. I was on the road and using my i-phone which I am not very good at. I hope at least you get my point. onenewmexicoteacher.