Rightwing Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico has praised president-elect Donald Trump’s choice of the Michigan billionaire Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education. In an op-ed for Investor’s Business Daily, Martinez called DeVos a “brave reformer” and proclaimed that students need “tools” to succeed. What are these tools exactly? Well, basically corporate-backed standardized testing for all!
Like Betsy DeVos, Martinez has a long history of pushing the corporate agenda to privatize education. Martinez’s own Public Education Secretary, the very unpopular Hanna Skandera, who like DeVos has never held a teaching position, has been reported as being up for consideration by the Trump administration for a top education job. Skandera is currently chair of Partnership for Readiness of College and Career exam, or PARCC, a test developed by the Pearson corporation, a UK based education publishing and assessment service. PARCC has been despised and fought by parents, students and teachers alike since its inception under the implementation of “No Child Left Behind” during the first term of George W Bush. This culminated in New Mexico with the 2015 debut of PARCC which was met by teacher protests, student walkouts and parental opt-outs of their children.This despite Skandera’s coercive tactic of lowering school grades if a certain percentage of students did not participate.
In our profit driven society, instead of giving struggling schools the material and financial resources they need to succeed, such school are instead denied resources, guaranteeing they will fail as a matter of policy.
The new mandates and reforms under the direction of Martinez and Skandera, have created impossible standards for both teachers and students. It is no wonder New Mexico has the second highest teacher turnover rate in the nation, as teachers are penalized for not meeting the impossible demands set by Public Education Department. Education unions have been under attack by Skandera, with her push for teacher evaluations unfairly based on students’ standardized test scores. Despite public outcry about these degrading and failed practices, Martinez and Skandera always promise that these “reforms” will eventually benefit students, but the opposite is obvious.
The reforms encompass: standardized testing, teacher evaluations, high-school graduation requirements, virtual charter schools, and school grades. These reforms have had disastrous effects on education, with many schools routinely performing poorly. The academic year 2013-2014, the high school graduation rate fell to its lowest in years with a dismal 68.5 percent . Also in 2014, New Mexico student proficiency dropped from 2010 with only 49 percent of students reading at grade level. With the state ranking 49th in child well-being and 50th in education these reforms are not, as Martinez says “for the kids” but instead a means to obliterate the quality of life for working-class people and ultimately, to make profit and protect corporate interests.
Public education is being dismantled right before our eyes but not without a fight. Every working-class person can save education. Everything from PARCC opt-outs to mass mobilization can help fight the corporate-greed behind these deplorable “reforms.” Education is a right!
