Avoiding blame is the No. 1 priority for Martinez
In high school, I knew that being a student in New Mexico meant being a student in one of the nation’s worst education systems. An article in the Albuquerque Journal last year outlined the statistics we know all too well: of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, New Mexico ranked 49th in educational quality, 50th in K-12 achievement, and 51st in college and career readiness metrics.
For me, though, the most concerning statistic is our high school graduation rate. According to the state Public Education Department’s most recent data, our graduation rate hit a record high in 2016 at an underwhelming 71 percent, 12 percent below the national average.
Since taking office, Governor Martinez has adamantly backed her cure-all for our education woes: mandatory third-grade retention laws. Although her exact proposal changed over time, the core function of mandatory retention legislation remained constant. The most recent iteration of the bill, which has been shut down by the state Legislature each year of Martinez’s tenure, would have retained 2,000-3,000 students who weren’t proficient in reading by the end of third grade.
Martinez’s administration believes that retention is necessary to improve graduation rates. Hannah Skandera, her former secretary of education, said, “When kids can’t read by the third grade they are four times more likely to drop out.”
Skandera was right when she said this statistic is “compelling.” She’s just right for the wrong reasons.
The National Education Association, America’s largest organization of education professionals, officially opposes third-grade retention. In a backgrounder on the issue, the NEA provides evidence that being retained is actually “the single largest predictor of dropping out.” The overwhelming majority of literature on mandatory retention laws conclude that, at best, they have no impact on student achievement.
Why, then, did Martinez make these laws a cornerstone of her educational reforms? Some say it’s just bad policy-making. Others say it’s loyalty to her party and specialinterest groups. Both these claims, while certainly valid, don’t explain the full story. Martinez’s push for third-grade retention stems not just from political incompetence or party loyalty, but from calculated maneuvers designed to alleviate her share of the blame for New Mexico’s woes.
Her actions mirror what public policy experts Fritz Sager and Markus Hinterleitner call blame-avoidance behavior. Martinez uses this behavior to avoid public blame for highly visible problems. Take Martinez’s statements regarding low graduation rates. Martinez said “the special-interest groups need to fall back and … look at what is in the best interests for our kids.” She shifts responsibility for dismal graduation rates away from herself and onto unspecified special-interest groups. At other times, her administration blamed Senate Democrats and their “political games” for the lack of educational improvement.
Martinez’s blame avoidance is most obvious in her actions. For her entire tenure as governor, Martinez has fruitlessly pushed for mandatory retention legislation the state Legislature made clear would never pass. She always knew this legislation would fail in our political climate and supported it for that very reason. She wasn’t concerned with finding a solution to our low graduation rates and claiming credit for it afterward. She was more concerned with avoiding the blame for the low rates in the first place because it would hamper her broader political ambitions. So, by futilely proposing this policy, Martinez wasn’t demonstrating her inability to break from party lines or political incompetence. Rather, she did almost the exact opposite, exhibiting her ability as a calculated, power-consolidating politician.
Martinez’s blameavoidance behavior failed New Mexico’s students, and many will associate this failure with her brand of politics. But, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that blame avoidance isn’t exclusive to any political party. So, when we head to the ballots to elect her replacement, we should beware of this type of blame-avoidance behavior in every candidate. Otherwise, we’ll see the same bleak statistics about New Mexico’s education system for years to come.