© 2013 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. School grades for New Mexico public schools are out. Here is the problem: the mania for testing has no real value for the students. Further, teachers must stop teaching more of their time and prepare for tests to evaluate the school. This has no educational basis. It supports a bloated school administration and nothing else.What is the purpose of education in New Mexico? To create citizens who have the skills, abilities and knowledge to thrive in our society. This is the one goal, the only goal. There is no other legitimate purpose for public school education. Know this: education should not be primarily a jobs program for adults.
For students their purpose is not to get high scores, attend college or to win academic awards. Again, their purpose is to become productive members of our society. Scores, college and awards may help but they are not the purpose. Graduation rates and college attendance are interim goals, not the purpose.
Sadly, the purpose of the accountability testing in New Mexico is to label public schools B or D as if it makes any difference for students becoming productive members of their society. Show me the study saying going to a D school keeps students from becoming a productive member of the community. There are none.
The dirty little secret is that the avalanche of testing is harmful to students and teachers alike. Students will never get a job taking tests and have no lasting need for test-taking skills. Students spend an inordinate amount of time on tasks of no long-term value for themselves.
For teachers the testing mania is a never ending nightmare. Administrators demand results because their jobs are on the line. Adults are trying to protect their jobs. Whole school staffs have been fired when a school does poorly on the tests.
But if you swap the entire staff of a low-performing school with the staff of a high-performing school the next year will look essentially the same, it is not the teachers that make the biggest effect. Yes, good teaching is great, but schools have a long history tied to the parents.
I have a theory to test: the percentage of employed parents is a great predictor of academic success for a school. In the Las Cruces Public Schools one of the top schools is located on White Sands Missile Range. Every parent living on the Army base is employed.
Now this is a theory for testing. Look at the data from the free and reduced price lunch program to see if there is a correlation with employment of parents being the tested factor. It might lead us to focus on the major change agent for students, their parents. Our focus might be helping students by getting their parents a good job.
However, there is joker in the testing deck. As has been documented in several high profile cases the pressures of getting students to improve has lead to a culture of cheating in some school systems such as Atlanta and Chicago. This much I know: you will never discover cheating if you do not look for it.
Instead of charting whole schools, the individual students should be charted year to year to graduation. Unusual growth that is not sustained could be explained by cheating. Again, are there any statistical programs looking at New Mexico public school data for unusual results? I suspect no one is prepared to deal with this.
One of my former students was pleased with the 4th graders one August but discovered they had lost two years of academic growth over the summer. At testing time one student asked, “Aren’t you going to give us the answers like our teacher did last year?”
My former student indicated everyone was aware of the cheating but getting a teaching job was difficult and whistleblowers are always fired. Further, the unions stick with the districts so the teachers have to go it alone and certainly will lose.
Yes, they should blow the whistle. But, give up their careers when no one cares if the schools cheat? Why would any thinking person do that? We have lost touch with the real purpose of education in New Mexico.
Dr. Michael Swickard hosts the syndicated radio talk show News New Mexico on six to nine a.m. Monday - Friday on a number of New Mexico radio stations and through streaming. Email: michael@swickard.com
