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Protesters in black lined up along the sidewalk outside the Bernalillo Public Schools District Office in a rally Wednesday as part of a statewide movement by teachers and other education employees to protest a new teacher evaluation system.
The rally aims to get the attention of the New Mexico Department of Public Education and Gov. Susana Martinez, said Betty Patterson, president of National Education Association New Mexico.
“We want them both to realize that teachers are not being treated fairly, the evaluation is not going well and that kids are being tested too much,” she said.
This school year, the governor decided to implement a new teacher evaluation system that links educators’ evaluations to students’ scores in a standardized testing process, according to The Associated Press. Martinez approved this evaluation process after Democrats in the state Legislature turned down similar proposals earlier this year.
Patterson said her organization and the American Federation of Teachers began to plan the event two weeks ago.
“Our teachers had just had enough,” she said. “So, we decided we needed to do some kind of event to channel this energy and to let the state know that we are unhappy.”
About 50 people attended the event.
The main problem caused by the new evaluation is the time it takes away from teachers, Patterson said.
“Teachers’ lesson plans have gotten longer,” she said. “It’s taking more time to do all of the data for teachers. They don’t have time to work on their teaching. The whole reason for writing the new evaluation plan was so teachers could be accountable and make the changes they need to make to be a better teacher. And now they don’t have the time to make those changes.”
Jennifer Trujillo, president of NEA’s Bernalillo chapter, said the evaluation stresses student test scores too much.
“We have two evaluations a year where the principals go and observe you in your classroom,” she said. “But our concern is 50 percent of it is assessment. It’s all about student test scores.”
Trujillo said the evaluation does not support teachers as it should.
“How they should do it is have an evaluation where they support teachers, improve good ones, bad ones, whatever it may be — not punish us,” she said. “And they’re punishing us.”
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Allan Tapia, superintendent of Bernalillo Public Schools, said he decided to come out and support the protesters because he disagrees with the heavy emphasis on test scores in the new evaluation process.
“Although I don’t completely oppose the evaluation process, I certainly think it needed more thought, and it needs to be refined,” he said.
Tapia also said he is not sure if teachers and administrators were involved enough in creating the evaluation.
“I don’t know that there was enough input from the teachers and even from the different administrations across the state,” he said.
While Patterson said she agrees there needs to be some kind of evaluation, she said she thinks the evaluation should be postponed to be implemented next year. She said there was supposed to be a principal evaluation alongside the teacher evaluation, but it has not been implemented yet.
“The big thing is we want them to wait until everything is finished, until we know what’s going on as far as testing,” she said. “It’s like some people have said, ‘We’re in an airplane that’s being built around us, and we may fall out of the sky.’”
If changes were made to the teacher evaluation, Patterson said she would like there to be less emphasis on student test scores.
“We need to look at other things teachers do, not just test scores on students,” she said. “We are testing students so much that they’re not enjoying school. And that’s a problem.”
Sandy Vigil-Varela, a teacher at Bernalillo Middle School, said the education department should implement a system that provides teachers with “meaningful professional development.”
“I’m a national board certified teacher,” she said. “And going through that process is probably the best development a teacher can have.”
Vigil-Varela said she doesn’t oppose teacher evaluation, but the state should make changes.
“Teachers love teaching,” she said. “They love kids. They want to do the best for kids. We’re not afraid of being evaluated if it’s an evaluation that’s done fairly, and done well.”
