Hard work pays in NCLB era
New Mexico gets it right

There is a lot of gnashing of teeth around the states about the teacher quality provisions under the federal No Child Left Behind Act—much of it justified. “Do I have to load up on new courses?” … “Do I have to take a test?” … “Do I need another degree to teach?” They’re common questions at schools from California to Maine, and the answers are often desperately few and far between.

If the atmosphere seems a little less stressed in New Mexico than in other states, it’s not by accident. In fact, the 2006 rollout of “highly qualified teacher” provisions embedded in NCLB will hit New Mexico not as a rude awakening but as a work in progress. That’s because the state has worked hard the past few years in revamping its teacher licensing system and has made teaching quality a statewide priority—the focus of dozens of community meetings, legislative hearings, rallies, and, importantly, successful ballot initiatives that will make sure schools have the resources to prepare teachers and fairly judge quality in the classroom.

While the New Mexico experience is instructive, it isn’t necessarily reproducible in other states. Certain things, such as a statewide public school funding system, are unique. But New Mexico does show the value—the necessity—of making the connection between state-level reform and NCLB mandates.

The three-tier teacher licensing that New Mexico ultimately adopted and funded last year couldn’t have come at a better time. The system kicks in this summer and, thanks to a lot of foresight from the state education department and key input from teachers and AFT affiliates across New Mexico, the new licensing dovetails with NCLB’s teacher quality provisions. Under what’s known as the HOUSSE (high, objective uniform state standard of evaluation) provision included in the law, thousands of teachers across the state will be able to take advantage of a regulatory “two-for-one”: Not only will they be able to earn a license through a process that draws heavily on observation, feedback and encouragement from veteran teachers, they will also meet the new federal teacher quality mandates at the same time, in the same process.

FROM THE GROUND UP

It didn’t happen by accident.

And a big part of New Mexico’s success in navigating NCLB is the involvement of teachers like AFT member Pat Graff. The English department co-chair at La Cueva High School in Albuquerque, Graff served on a panel of teachers asked by the state department of education to make recommendations about the new licensing process and NCLB mandates. “One of the first things [the state department of education] did was put together a team of teachers to tell them what would work and what wouldn’t,” remembers Graff, who is also a National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certified educator. “They basically said, ‘Here’s the state law, here’s the federal law, what’s the best way to put them together?’”

Many of the recommendations made by the teacher panel—streamlined paperwork, an emphasis on professional development, objective assessment of practice using veteran teachers—made it into the final draft.

“What we were looking for was a system that would truly document a teacher’s work in the classroom and capture a true picture of a teacher’s competency,” says Graff, who now serves on a teacher panel charged with overseeing the system’s implementation and making suggestions for necessary refinements.

A QUESTION OF WILL

Optimism about New Mexico’s chances of successfully navigating NCLB’s teacher quality standards extends well beyond its borders. Eric Hirsch, senior director for policy at the Southeast Center for Teaching Quality (SECTQ), points to New Mexico as a standout state when it comes to hard-nosed analysis of teaching standards and a true public commitment to quality in the classroom—two advantages that could put the state in a great position to successfully address NCLB’s teacher quality mandates.

Many states are trying to create performance-based standards for teaching “but where New Mexico hopefully is going to keep pushing the envelope is in the assessment of those standards,” explains Hirsch, who was able to study trends in New Mexico when he served as executive director of the Alliance for Teaching Quality in neighboring Colorado. “The other thing that New Mexico brings to the table is that voters actually funded it. It creates the time and capacity needed to pull this thing off.”

That, too, didn’t happen by accident.

AFT affiliates throughout the state have beginning-to-end involvement in this success story: providing key input and feedback into drafts of the licensing system, lobbying for its passage in the Legislature, helping to identify classroom teachers like Graff to give the plans a “reality test” and aggressive education of classroom teachers about what the new laws really say.

Affiliates followed up with effective political action to help secure passage of a constitutional amendment that earmarks money for these and other school reform efforts. And they are working now to build on gains by developing similar licensing/NCLB options for ancillary school personnel and paraprofessionals. “Every step of the way, we have been players at the table in this process and used that as an opportunity to make sure teachers had a voice,” explains Christine Trujillo, president of the AFT state affiliate.

It’s not perfect by any means, Trujillo says. Securing passage of follow-up legislation for ancillaries and paraprofessionals is as tough as it is necessary, she adds. And, without adequate federal guidance, adjusting NCLB provisions for key groups such as special education teachers has been tough in New Mexico as it has been in other states. But New Mexico does show that good things happen (and jaws remain a little less clenched) when states seize the opportunity to use the HOUSSE provisions under the federal law.

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