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Who Should Steer the Politics of Education in New Mexico?

  Commentary: The renewed debate over how to structure New Mexico's education department hinges on a complicated question: what role should democratic politics play?

 

New Mexico eliminated its elected state board in 2003, replacing it with an appointed Secretary and an elected Public Education Commission. This granted authority over the state's top education official to the Governor, with an elected body playing an advisory role.

 

The second Secretary under this system, Hanna Skandera, was controversial from the moment Governor-elect Susana Martinez nominated her in 2010. Although the Constitution states the Secretary must be a "qualified, experienced educator," Skandera had no degree or certification in education, and her classroom experience (as reported in the Albuquerque Journal) was limited to teaching abstinence to kids on behalf of Catholic Charities. Skandera was a specialist in policy and management, an alumna of the conservative Hoover Institution, who worked on education policy in California and Washington, D.C. before moving to Florida where she worked on Governor Jeb Bush's education reforms. Together, Martinez and Skandera promised to import the "Florida model," a suite of policies that instituted hours of high-stakes standardized testing, grading of schools and teachers based on a mysterious and inconsistent formula, expanding charter schools and aggressively transferring public funds to privately managed organizations.

 

We have not prospered under the Florida model. New Mexico remains at or near the bottom of the states in educational outcomes, in part because we are also the worst state in the nation for child poverty and in part because public education is being colonized by profit-seeking corporations, consultants, and foundations headed by businessmen that push for more emphasis on STEM and de-emphasis on humane arts, civics, and critical thinking, along with more testing, the deskilling of the teaching profession, and weakening of teachers' unions.

 

Senator Michael Padilla of Albuquerque is proposing Senate Joint Resolution 2 for the coming legislative session, which would eliminate the appointed cabinet position and phase in a 10-member elected state board with the ability to hire and fire a state superintendent. In an email, Padilla indicated he would like the elections to be non-partisan and frequent enough to "engage significantly more participation than in the past." Desert Sage asked Padilla whether he considered other models, such as an elected Superintendent which 13 states have, and he wrote, "I considered many items, but was most concerned with finding a solution that took politics out of education, and placed control closer to our communities."

 

Public education is inherently political.  Politics is about the distribution of power; it is widely viewed as a dirty business because it is frequently conducted that way. How do we bring meaningful power to local communities and governing legitimately? The Sun News editorial board, in opposition to Padilla's proposal, reflected our historic ambivalence about democracy when it argued that an elected board would be "beholden to a fickle electorate." An appointed official doesn't have to worry about re-election, it is true; on the other hand, they are also insulated from democratic control.

 

Watching politics over the years, one frequently notices that changing the personnel doesn't necessarily alter the ship's course. Neoliberalism is a long-term project of privatization that asserts market solutions for every public need, busting regulations and labor unions to bring workers to heel and "liberate" capital. This project dominates policy and co-opts democratic politics while concentrating power between lawmakers and lobbyists.

The problem is not "politics" in the abstract. The problem is how to fund truly public education and deliver power to parents, teachers, and our youth.

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Algernon D'Ammassa writes the Desert Sage column for the Deming Headlight and Sun News papers. Write to him at DesertSageMail@gmail.com