Report from Santa Fe; Gay Kernan and William Soules

The National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Tau's New Mexico. Hello, I'm LeRine Mills and welcome to a report from Santa Fe. Today our topic is education and we have two gifted educators, our guest today, our Senator Gay Kernen, Republican from District 42, which is which counties? Lee Eddie Chavez. And you live in Hobbs. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. And our other guest is Senator Bill Sewells, Democrat from Doniana County. You live in? I live in Las Cruces, District 37. And you are both, thank goodness, on the education committee because you're a lifetime educators.

You're the ranking member on the Senate Education Committee. And you're the vice chair of the education committee. Thank you for your work. This is one of our biggest problems. What would you say I'll let you take turns in this, that our main problems facing education are right now. Gay, ladies first. Well of course the main thing is we need to prepare our students for college or career. And that's been the goal for many years. How do we do that? And we've tried many things and I've been in education a long time, just as Senator Sewells has. And we've seen many projects come and go and back and forth, but we have to stay on track and do the best we can to make sure our children are prepared for college and for career. And you've been educated for almost 30 years. That's correct. Yes. Is that one of your, obviously one of your main problems too that you see? Certainly. We want to make sure that when our students leave our public schools, that they're prepared for life.

And that's whatever life they're choosing and look for lots of them that's going on to college. Many of them it's a career, but also to be valued citizens within our democracy. We want to make sure that they're able to live a good life. Now a lot of our audience is also very concerned about education. There's a lot of hot button issues that are around this session. So let's look at a couple of them. I'd just like to throw some of these out. Teach your evaluations, the park testing, third grade retention. I mean, these are, people lose all reason when they come to arguing these things and that's why I've asked you here to shine the light of reason on it. Is there a topic you'd like to start? I'll let you choose. Go ahead. Senator Sewells. I think all of those very much are hot button issues. And in general, those are not the real things that are going on in education. They are sort of the side issues in many cases. There's always been testing in schools. When I grew up, I think we were taking the Iowa test of basic skills. And there was a day of testing each year.

We've transitioned into the CTBS, the NMSBA. There's been a number of the alphabet soups of different tests, and we currently have the park. I think most people's concerns with the park have to do with how big a change it is from what we've been doing, and whether it actually is doing what we expect as far as preparing students or giving good information to our schools on how the students are doing. And then what do we do with that information to make for better education and better outcomes for our students? Well, and I agree with Senator Sewells that we always have been tested. And you remember all the acronyms for them, and here we are at the park. And I want to remind your audience that actually the SBA was the test that was given previously. But in 2010, the former administration under Governor Richardson, they decided that we would change our New Mexico state standards to common core standards. And so when you have a change in standards, you have to develop a test that is going to

determine whether teachers are teaching those standards and whether students are understanding and learning the standards. So here we are with common core. And that has led us to the need for a new test called park. And there are, it is a big change. It is more difficult. The standards, I think, when they compare with Mexico state standards, about 70, 75 percent of them align. But there are additional standards that our students are going to need to learn. I think it's going to take a few years. I don't think this is going to happen overnight. I think that's kind of the concern that we're giving a test over standards that perhaps we have not taught long enough to make sure that we have a good outcome. So. But that's been a long way to a problem with national tests that are shown that are being applied in New Mexico. I remember at the early testing, they would give, say, Santa Fe kids, a word problems that had subways and escalators, and these kids had not, even many of the men in the two-story building, let alone a subway, and they just didn't have the context to answer some of

these questions. Now, the accusation is over-testing. Is this dramatically much more testing? I think for the early tests it was one day a year, and now it's maybe, tell me, tell me how it's working, how much testing does the park involved. I'm not sure I could tell you the absolute specifics. I'm a current high school teacher, and I know essentially for the month of March the school schedule changes on a daily basis because of testing. There was the pre-tests and getting students ready where they had to be on the computer so they knew the process for how to do that, the testing that's going on of most of the grades, but not all students are taking the test, but very rarely are classes one grade specific. And so if some students are taking the test and others aren't, you can't continue on with the curriculum for the others because some of the students are missing it. And so we have about three weeks that are totally disrupted by the testing on a daily basis. I think one of the changes is the move from paper and pencil tests to computerized testing.

And I believe, frankly, even though it's difficult to make that transition, I believe that our students are going to live in a world where things are done on computer. And so this is kind of the first step. I believe the actual test time is two hours less than what we did under the SBA. But again, I think the preparation time, and this is the feedback we're getting that maybe that is what's creating some of the issues plus. I want to mention many of our school districts, when you talk about what's mandated by the state and the federal government, school districts are also placing tests on students that maybe are not required by the state, but that they feel are very important. Certainly don't want to take away local decisions on what tests they want to add on. But when we look at the testing picture, we need to remember the state only mandates this one test, the feds only mandate this one test. But oftentimes there are other tests that are necessary for various reasons. And so not to criticize the local districts at all, but that is the big picture about

testing. It's just increased, but I can't believe that we need to blame one particular area for that. Now you mentioned that some of the schools have choice about which any or all tests, except for the one basic one. That's correct. But you have a bill about individual choice on some school tests, and there's a whole issue about students opting not to take them, parents wanting them not to take them. And does that not greatly affect that not only is the student tested, but the teacher receives a grade, somewhat related to the results of the test, and so does the school. This is very complicated. What about your bill? My particular bill essentially goes through and supports the parents decision if they choose to have their child opt out of the testing, that there cannot be penalties for that student as far as playing in athletics, graduation grades, other kinds of things. If the parents choose for them not to take those standardized tests. And how's that bill doing?

It got through the first committee, it's got a long way to go when we have less than two weeks left. And so I'm under no illusions that it's going to get all the way through, or that if it weren't to get all the way through it almost certainly I would expect the governor is going to veto it. One of the things about the park test, we know that the scores on the park test, we don't set the cut score until after the test is given, and that's normal with any new test. You look at the results and then you make a determination where that cut score should be. It's mind-or-standing in talking with representatives from the public ed department that that cut score they're going to be very careful about making sure that the scores on the SBA from previous years, in other words the percentage of students that scored proficiently, it's going to crosswalk over to the park for the first few years. So we could have a very, very low cut score for the park which means that we're still going to have about the same percentage of students that are going to be determined proficient because it is a new test and it's a very hard test.

So I'm going to keep a very close eye on that to make sure that in reality that occurs. So that's something we won't know until after the test is given and graded. The other issue with regard to the park test, students don't have the opportunity at this point to opt out because it's required by the state that they must have that for graduation. So I worry about the students who did not take the test because now they don't have the opportunity for the alternative demonstration of competency. So my suggestion, take the test and then if you don't do well you're going to have the opportunity to go and say, you know, I can't do this but let me show you what I know by doing this, this, and this. So I would strongly urge people to take the test. There's a consequence. Not only to themselves, but to their school and to the state of New Mexico, which could lose up to $400 million in federal dollars if we don't have a 95% participation right in the state of New Mexico. Excuse me, you take my breath away. That's a huge amount of money and we need that money desperately of education here.

I would agree. Yeah. Well, and certainly that is one of the concerns and both at the federal level and at the state level, there have been put in some qualifiers to pressure people into taking the test so that they can get the data and use all of that. That's one of the areas I've got real concerns about. I think that takes away from the local control and I'm not sure whether that's the right way to go about doing some of the things that Senator Kernan and we've got some disagreements on is how the test is going to be used. At both the federal level, this first time taking the part nationally is when even part is going to use the results to do the validation studies, the reliability studies and to set cut scores. They don't know what the various levels of proficiency are going to be until after the students have taken the test. And similarly, the state of New Mexico is going to set the levels after the scores come in based on trying to match it and there's some serious statistical concerns about trying

to match the results with a prior test. The scores almost certainly will look low as far as a percentage of questions answered because the test is much more difficult, but then they're going to use some statistical maneuvering in order to try and match it with prior scores. I've got concerns about all of those and that we won't know until after the fact. Well that's the student evaluations. You both have spoken in the press and in committee about teacher evaluations. How do you think we're doing with that is a room for improvement? Absolutely. And I have spoken about that publicly and my concerns have been the data collection. The school districts currently use the STAR system to report to the state of New Mexico and over time, when that was implemented, that reporting was done and really, I don't know how accurate it was because there really was nothing tied to that report. And so now that that STAR's reporting is incredibly important, we're taking a look back and finding

out that some of the reporting from the districts to the state might not have been accurate. And what that means is if a teacher is not tied correctly to a student, their evaluation could be, I don't know if you want to say invalid, but it certainly could be impacted. So it's very, very important to make sure the teacher and the student are connected correctly. Looking forward, the AccuData system, the new system that they're going to use to make sure that occurs, will mean that the data is more accurate. But my concern has been over the last few years that the data has not been cleaned, they've gone back, they've tried to clean it up, but I do not want to carry that data forward. And I've made that wish, but I think probably it's going to be used, which concerns me, when we don't use the clean data from this current year and going forward, they're going to go back and pick up the old. I'd like to leave the old on the shelf for a while. I mean, Senator Kernan and I agree very much. You can't make decisions based on bad information and that's what's been happening and I think

has everybody very concerned is just the bad information or data and that it's now being used. And so some serious concerns with that as we move forward. And I think there are also some concerns about the percent of a teacher's evaluation that's going to be used on student test scores and there are lots of other research-based ways of evaluating teachers that are supportive of teacher development to get them to be better teachers rather than punitive or just rating them on some sort of a scale that then says some are good and some are bad rather than trying to help all of them be better. Well we're speaking today with Senator Gay Kernan, Republican from Hobbes and Senator William Souls, Democrat from Doniana County. We talked about evaluating the teachers but let's come back to a very thorny aspect of student evaluation, the third grade retention thing. Oh my gosh, what a hot potato.

This has been kicking around for a long time. Would either of you like to appraise us of the progress and tell us your thoughts on it? Well it actually, and before we actually started the taping, Senator Kernan and I were discussing her bill and some of the things and trying to work through some of the really tough issues and trying to find the areas where we do agree because I think, and I want to compliment my friend from Hobbes because she is truly a great educator. And everything we do up here, I never question that she's trying to do what's right for students and what's right for teachers. And that doesn't mean we agree, but there's never a question that her heart and her mind on these issues is the right place. And that is indeed her reputation. Thank you for everything. And that makes it very easy to try and work on where the issues are and trying to keep it on that level. And so some of the things where I think we can agree is we want students to learn to read. We want students to be proficient.

It has to do probably the issues more with how do we do that in a way that doesn't penalize students who are not reading proficient. And I often point out the current system or what they talk about with third grade retention, I probably would have been retained as a third grader because I was a late developer in reading. Part of that, boys develop later in their reading skills. And so I worry about in third grade that we're going to be having a disproportionate number of boys just because they develop their language skills later and trying to balance all of those while making sure that we're getting good instruction, good remediation for students who truly are struggling. And so tell us about your bill because you are really addressing this. Well this bill, my original bill, I substituted with another bill, a committee said because frankly, I wanted to put my stamp on the reading bill. The bill from the House is all coming over. It's probably somewhere on the Senate side. But my bill is one that I introduced to the Senate Public Affairs Committee.

We had a good hearing and Senator John Sapien introduced his bill as well. And we've always hoped for the opportunity to come together and have a chance to see if we can reach an agreement on some things. Unfortunately both of our bills were tabled. I believe mine was tabled and his was, do not pass in Senate Public Affairs. So I introduced, had the opportunity to take another bill and create another reading bill and it does have some changes in it. And so it's on its way we don't know where yet because that will be determined by the majority later in the Senate. And hopefully we will get an opportunity to hear that bill in Senate education because I have made some changes. But basically what my goal is, in current law, we have a retention law that I think is not good for children. Basically a teacher can recommend retention as early as 1st, 2nd grade. And if the parent disagrees, then the next teacher that has that child can also make that recommendation at that point based on nothing other than the teacher just saying,

I just don't think you're ready, that child will be retained. And I don't think that's good law, good policy. So this bill actually gives many intervention opportunities. It also allows a SAT team to begin to work together with the parent, the teachers, the school counselor, working together to try and figure out how to get this child prepared along the way. So the other thing that I have in my bill that I like are some opt-outs. So if a child reaches 3rd grade and has experienced the intervention over the last 2 years and has not been habitually true and has been there every day, the principal and the teacher working with the parent and the SAT team can make a determination that that child should be promoted to the next grade. But if you have a child whose parent does not participate in help with the interventions, does not have the child in school, there is a reason why we need to make sure that that child stays in 3rd grade because we know once they leave 3rd grade, they're not going

to teach them reading anymore. They're going to be doing other things and that child will continually fall behind by the time they're in 9th grade, typically many of them drop out. So I want to better statute them what we have currently, I have tried to listen to those that have been opposed and incorporate some of their thoughts and actually I've had some really good suggestions just over the last couple of days, I'm having the bill redrafted again to get a good bill and hopefully we can at least have a hearing in education. Thank you for bringing up the other factor which is outside of the classroom, whether the parents are encouraging and supportive of the kids' education or just not paying any attention. You have another bill of breakfast before the bill bill because a lot of these children arrive hungry and they can't pay any attention if their stomach is growling. Well and I cannot take credit for that bill, it's a wonderful project that is currently going on in the school system.

The only thing I tried to do with that bill was to give our school districts a little flexibility because it's required in the statute that breakfast has to be served after the bill. We have many districts that have been serving children before this bill, they were serving them before and then those that came in late with swing by the cafeteria, they were fed and then on to class. I worry about the time off task when from kindergarten through 5th grade I believe we're spending 20, 25 minutes in a classroom eating breakfast. You can read a book to a first grade while they're eating but that's just about all you can do and that's a good thing but I would just like for school districts to have flexibility but that bill was stable so we're not going to be able to do that. So in effect you were changing the name from before the bill, I was not taking way breakfast. I just wanted flexibility on when we have breakfast so it's okay, it's fine. We are placed, everyone's getting breakfast that participates in that program. And we know that breakfast is very important and this was one where Senator Kernan and I disagreed in that I was one of the ones that I think I probably made the motion to

table the bill because I was worried about some areas, some districts that would figure out ways of going around making sure or students who come in late we want to make sure that they're all fed. Absolutely and I agree with that. Yeah. Well, I sort of once more into the breach I want to applaud you both for your ongoing efforts and as we were taping toward the end of the session and some of these things are seeing fruition and not what do you want the average member of the public out there to know about education and your efforts. You know, if it doesn't happen this time we're going to, you know, you've had a lifetime of devotion to education to our students. What do you need the parents and the regular citizens to know about what's happening in education? One thing I want to say is that there are many, many wonderful teachers in our state and I want to be sure that they know that we do care about them and that we are trying our

very best to make sure that as we move forward with some of these new initiatives that we do listen and we do care. The other thing I want to say is that there are many, many professionals that care a great deal about children and when I hear when are we going to take care of the children I want to say we have been doing that for many, many years, many devoted educators that are doing all that they can for these children. I don't think the children have been forgotten. I think we sometimes have to shift in how we provide that education but I want to say I support our teachers and our administrators and we all care about the children. I would agree and I think the biggest thing is in New Mexico we want to make sure that we realize that education is the business of New Mexico. If we really are going to move New Mexico forward we have to remember that it starts with education, it starts with early education, it moves forward, all of education is the business that we are doing and so we need to make sure we are supporting that.

Absolutely we have wonderful, wonderful teachers. Most people don't go into education for the money, they don't go into education for other reasons than that they really care about children and they want to make a difference in the world and that shows every single day in the classrooms in the schools. And the other burning issue of our seat right now is economic development and the key zone, the foundation of our economic development is having an educated workforce and so people say well I don't have a kid in school and what does it matter to me, oh it really matters to our overall health as a state. So what would you say to those people who say ah my kids are grown, what do I care? Well I think you are absolutely right and we all know that as students come out of high school with a degree with a graduation diploma that as they go into college or to the workforce if they are not prepared then that does impact economic development in our community specifically when they can't do those things that we need them to do to hold a job or to be admitted

into college without remediation. And we know we spend a lot of money on remediating about 50% of our high school graduates. So we've got to make sure that they are ready. And part of it may be an alignment issue with regard to our high school requirements and our college expectations. So sometimes we might get that right someday, we might get that right. And that could be part of it but we have to prepare them so that we don't spend dollars just continuing to try and get them ready. Well and I think as a high school teacher I see at my high school the increased focus on vocational kinds of programs and these are new age vocational programs. These are engineering, they are culinary, they are programs in nursing, certified nursing assistants where we know that a number 50% or more of our students are not planning on going directly into college. And these are programs that start with every class they take is focused towards getting

a good career right out of high school if they aren't choosing to go on to college. But they are not limiting that if they do decide as a senior that hey maybe I am college ready that they still count towards all of the college. And so it is really a nice program but we need to continue to support those new vocational education areas. And in your part of the state you have so much of a high-tech, the oil pad that you have. And again there is a relationship between the contributions that oil and gas makes to our state budget and therefore to education. And the permanent funds, oh we don't have time to go into that one using some of our permanent funds for early childhood education. Well we have to do that for another show. Because I am sorry to say we have run out of time. Before I even introduce you again I want to thank you so much because you have contributed so much to our children and to education and to the health and well being of our state.

So our guests today are Senator Gay Kernan, a Republican from Hobbs. Thank you for what you do. Thank you so much for having us. And Democrat Senator Bill Sewells from Doniana County, you work at the elementary level or now with administration too. And high school, the whole arc. Thank you both for what you do for us. Thank you very much. You enjoyed being here. And I'm Lorraine Mills. I'd like to thank you our audience for being with us today and report from Santa Fe. We'll see you next week. Most archival programs of report from Santa Fe are available at the website report from Santa Fe dot com. If you have questions or comments, please email info at report from Santa Fe dot com. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future.

And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Tau's New Mexico.