Santa Fe New Mexican
By Robert Nott
October 22, 2017

In a marked contrast to Gov. Susana Martinez's administration, U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce said if he is elected governor, he will give school districts more local control over such hot-button issues as teacher evaluations and standardized testing.

Pearce — the only Republican to enter the 2018 gubernatorial race to date — said he also would contract with local businesses to start internship programs in high schools to help disengaged students earn training certificates so they can work in industries they enjoy, even if they do not go to college.

"I would push decision-making about education as close to the classroom as possible," the 70-year-old Hobbs native said during an interview at The New Mexican Saturday. He said education, as well as the economy and crime, would be the top issues during the gubernatorial campaign.

Though he stopped short of saying he would get rid of the teacher evaluation system or standardized testing, Pearce said: "I would trust superintendents to make those decisions.

"Why go through mindless exercises on testing and teacher evaluations?"

Pearce's remarks about reforming public education are far different in tone to those of the Public Education Department, which during Martinez's administration has drawn the ire of educators and others over what they see as an overemphasis on testing and an unfair teacher evaluation system. That evaluation process has led to two lawsuits that are pending.

Pearce said teachers are under stress to be "everything but teachers — we demand they be policemen, we demand they be truancy officers, we demand they be probation officers, we demand they be priests, pastors and counselors."

As a result, he said, they are demoralized and leave the profession.

"Just put ‘em in the classroom and let them do their job," he said.

He said if New Mexico — which is generally ranked at or near the bottom in most national reports on public education — does not improve its education system, students will continue to drop out or graduate without the skills to get jobs. As a result, he said, "we're not going to get any businesses to come here."

Pearce tied the education system's failure to the creation of a pipeline in which disengaged youth leave school for a life of despair, crime or drugs.

"We have to catch kids earlier," he said, adding that a high school journeyman training certificate could help do that by preparing students who want to work as truck drivers, plumbers or carpenters to go directly into those fields.

He said he does not yet know how the financially challenged state would pay for such a program.

Pearce said it is too early for him to consider who he would appoint as his secretary of the Public Education Department but that person would be "somebody from New Mexico and somebody who has time teaching in the classroom."

Many critics said former Secretary of Education Hanna Skandera, appointed by Martinez shortly after taking office in 2011, had little if any time teaching in the classroom. Originally from California, Skandera was working for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush when Martinez tapped her for the position in New Mexico.

Pearce declined to criticize the Martinez administration's handling of the state's proposed science standards for K-12 schools.

"What New Mexico should be teaching is a broader range of ideas, not a narrowing range of ideas," he said. "Kids need to learn how to distinguish between good scientific arguments and not-so-good scientific arguments."

Those new standards, which the Public Education Department first posted in mid-September, immediately drew criticism from educators, scientists and faith leaders who decried the elimination of such scientific concepts as evolution, global warming and Earth's age. They said the new standards would weaken the teaching of science and leave room for creationists, among others, to incorporate religious lessons into the classroom.

The department recently announced that it would revise the standards to address many of the issues raised.

Pearce, a seven-term congressman who served as a combat pilot during the Vietnam War, said regardless of who cinches the Democrat nomination for governor next summer, he is in for a challenging campaign.

"For any Republican to run in any race in New Mexico, it's tough," he said. "It will be a very hard race, but for New Mexico, the stakes are very high."

Democrats running for governor are U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, state Sen. Joseph Cervantes of Las Cruces, political newcomer Peter DeBenedittis of Santa Fe and media industry executive Jeff Apodaca.