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The NEA, The Biggest Union In the Nation Takes On New Mexico Public Education Department

Simon Thompson

The New Mexico NEA is filing another lawsuit against the state Public Education Department, this time with  support from the national NEA teacher union.

Las Cruces NEA officials say the department is infringing on local school district authority to have a say in how their teachers are evaluated.

Child poverty, special needs kids and a large percentage of English language learners. National Education Association Las Cruces president Patrick Sanchez says these are some of the challenges that define teaching in Las Cruces public schools.

But Sanchez says the public education department’s top down implementation of a statewide uniform evaluation policy is making it hard to address these local concerns effectively.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vek436HAv8o&feature=youtu.be

In particular, he’s concerned about the Public Education Department’s preoccupation with student test performance to evaluate teachers. Sanchez says the system unfairly penalizes teacher and is even driving them out of the profession.

“If you are teacher of English language learners or you are teaching special needs students, guess what is going to happen to those test scores, they are not going to be as high" he says "So how do you attract the best teachers to teach our students most in need? It is craziness.” he says.

Sanchez says the state is infringing on local school district authority over how teachers are evaluated.  We asked education secretary designate Hannah Skandera if the state is indeed overstepping its bounds.

"No, I think we are asking the wrong question. The question is are we making sure our kids are getting the very best  education possible? And how do we know that they are?  And then we start looking at are we graduating  more students and I talked about earlier we are number one in the nation  today for improvement in our graduation rate, you don't get to number one overall until you are number one in improvement" she says.

NEA New Mexico maintain local authority is being violated and they’ve filed a lawsuit against the Public Education Department.

The case follows NEA supported legislation to minimize the weight of student test scores in teacher evaluations, ultimately vetoed by Governor Martinez, and earlier attempts to work collaboratively with the Governor.

“The Governor and the Secretary designate were not interested in hearing any of our input, from administrators, superintendents or the teachers represented by the National  Education Association. It became a farce, it became a rubber stamp they wouldn’t listen to any of our ideas.” he says.

Sanchez acknowledges that the lawsuit filed in Santa Fe district court is likely to be long and drawn out and may be appealed to the State Supreme Court.

He says the coming election and gubernatorial candidate Gary King might produce a more immediate solution. 

King has said his first act as Governor would be to remove the current teacher evaluation system along with Hanna Skandera from the Public Education Department.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lB2Oh4RTow&feature=youtu.be

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