Las Cruces Sun-News - Martinez Talks Up Education Plans

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By Diana M. Alba

Republican gubernatorial candidate Susana Martinez told a group of teachers here Thursday she would take money from the educational bureaucracy in New Mexico and put it into classrooms.

Martinez outlined an educational plan she said would put an additional 4 percent of current education dollars into schools.

That would free up $74 million to recruit and retain good teachers, buy textbooks and new technology, and offer remedial help to struggling students and schools in the form of additional teacher training, tutoring and summer school, she said.

Redirecting money would add funds to classrooms without increasing the state budget, said Martinez, who first announced the plan a day earlier in Albuquerque.

"Public schools succeeding is outrageously important and it would be the number one, the number one, priority for a Martinez administration," she said.

Martinez said that if she's elected and a poor economy forced state budget cuts, public education would be exempt. But she also rejected the idea of a tax increase for schools.

Also, Martinez said rearranging testing schedules in key areas of math, reading and writing is needed, to get a faster turn-around of results, so teachers are better able to gauge student performance and adjust their teaching.

That idea appealed to Nancy Ackerman, who retired from the Gadsden Independent School District this year after a 33-year teaching career. She said Martinez' idea is similar to a reading program called "balanced literacy" that's already taking place in that district.

"This program works," said Ackerman, who still does some work with the district. "It's an approach to teaching reading, where assessment drives instruction, so that every student is being instructed at his level. And you can have several levels in a classroom because of the way the program is set up."

Martinez faces Democrat Diane Denish in the November election. T he candidates will go head-to-head in a debate Aug. 19 at an Albuquerque high school.

One teacher at the event Thursday, held at the Staybridge Suites in Las Cruces, complained that elementary school educators sometimes don't know the math they're supposed to be teaching to students.

Martinez' response: "When we maintain teachers that can't teach the subject matter, we're really cheating the kids. We have to provide accountability of the teacher first."

Continued Martinez: "If that teacher can't teach, they need to be given some sort of report to learn it, learn it quickly or move on."

Martinez said she would ban the practice of passing students into the next grade if they lack basic skills and would solicit funds from businesses and individuals for scholarships for low-income students to transfer to private schools. Donors would receive tax credits.

Martinez also favors merit pay for teachers, including incentives to reward high-performing teachers who go to low-performing schools.

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