I support significant reform of New Mexico education.

This would include:

1) school choice, including vouchers, for all New Mexicans
2) tuition tax credits, in the event vouchers are not adopted
3) expanded charter schools
4) full support of parents who choose to home school their children
5) full accountability of the public school system
6) testing of every student every year
7) increased emphasis on quality vocational education
8) full support of athletic and extracurricular programs, but an increased emphasis on academic/scholarly interscholastic competition----to reward and encourage academic as well as athletic pursuits
9) merit pay for our best teachers
10) de-emphasis of School of Education-driven "credentials" and "credentialization extremism" currently pushed by the New Mexico "educatocracy"
11) recruitment of alternative certification teachers----teachers who are experts in their fields, but who don't have scores of semester hours in "education classes"

I oppose:

1) the radical teachers' union bosses' agendas and goals for New Mexico children
2) the control of local school systems by unions or collective bargaining entities
3) the idea promoted by NEA New Mexico and the Albuquerque Federation of Teachers that they are not accountable to anyone other than their own membership-----and that the 3 R's do not stand for Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, but rather "Rights, Respect and Raises."

Public education is not supposed to be about the protection of a bureaucratic structure, consisting of guaranteed jobs for union members and others who are able to become part of the "system."

Rather, the whole idea of a public educational system is to produce high school graduates who are either prepared for post-secondary education, specialized training or vocational/technical training, or who are qualified to enter the workforce at another level.

The kind of superstructure and bureaucracy we construct in New Mexico is not the key question involved in achieving the true goals and objectives of public education in our state. There is no imperative in our Constitution, nor in common sense, that we retain, at all costs, the current union-dominant education superstructure which completely stifles creativity, innovation, incentive and achievement.

What we must focus on is the end product of education. It is not a "threat" to the "system" if a significant portion of our populace becomes productive, contributing members of the workforce, or of society, through home schooling, charter schools, or through a system of school choice. Rather than look on innovation and new approaches to education as a "threat" we should do all we can to encourage all innovation and creativity we can. New ideas are not threats to our system. The only threat is the growing
irrelevance of non-functioning schools along with the non-producing, radical union-boss mentality which dominates the non-producing schools.