AFT News:ALBUQUERQUE ― American Federation of Teachers New Mexico President Stephanie Ly released the following statement:
“The New Mexico Public Education Department has released their annual teacher evaluation ratings, and already, educators are reporting inaccurate, incomplete, or missing data from their evaluations. Sadly, these errors on the part of the NM PED will continue to be used to blame New Mexico’s public educators for the shortcomings and failed promises of seven years of so-called PED ‘reforms’ under Hanna Skandera, and now, Christopher Ruszkowski.
“Let’s be clear – the NM PED is still using bad math to rate our educators, a fact that led a New Mexico court to say that the current evaluation system is causing “irreparable harm” to our educators. Additionally, New Mexico’s educators are still being penalized for using their contractually allowed sick leave, forcing educators to make a decision between coming to school sick or being punished for staying home to get well.
“It is astounding to me that the NM PED continues to court the press in advance of every major release of scores or ratings days before New Mexico’s educators, schools, and administrators are given the same data. Just like NM PARCC scores, school grades, and now educator ratings, the NM PED continually attempts to manipulate bad data to correlate with their narrative to undermine New Mexico’s public schools.
“New Mexico’s educators and public should ignore these results as they are not a reflection of the hard work and professionalism displayed by New Mexico educators every day. We will continue to advocate for an evaluation system in New Mexico which provides real, meaningful feedback for educators which allows them to grow their skills and abilities to best provide a quality education for all of our students.
“Secretary-designee Ruszkowski needs to ditch his status-quo sound-bite reforms and start to engage with educators on a meaningful level, otherwise, he will continue to compound the damage done by his predecessor, Hanna Skandera.”
