As long-serving teachers across the nation were honored on National Teachers Day, May 15, rhetoric focused on teacher accountability and the deadlocked initiative to introduce mandatory evaluation tests for the nation’s 1.3 million maestros.
It’s been five years since National Union of Teachers (SNTE) leader Elba Ester Gordillo signed an agreement to introduce teacher testing and on Monday she explained why her movement is still stalling on the issue.
“We won’t support proposals that damage our teachers,” said the gritty union boss, one of the country’s most canny political operators. “We need clear guidelines about what the tests will involve.”
Many SNTE members are wary of being singled out as a bad teachers if they perform poorly in the tests. Teachers often say they feel stigmatized by the media and blamed for everything that is wrong with Mexico’s education system.
After a meeting with 300 SNTE regional delegates in April, Gordillo announced that her members would not submit to the evaluation tests this year unless the government met certain conditions. Gordillo said at the time: “The teachers don’t have the minimal information about what the evaluation consists of, who is going to evaluate them or how their deficiencies are going to be corrected … there is enormous confusion.”President Felipe Calderon granted one of these demands on Monday: the creation of an independent body to oversee the tests, the Instituto Nacional para la Evaluacion de la Educacion (INEE)
He also promised that the evaluations would “not affect teachers’ labor rights” – meaning they will not be fired as a result of the tests. Their aim will be “to improve the preparation and performance of teachers,” he said, adding, “without evaluation, there will be no quality education.”
Mexico languishes near the bottom of tables of developed nations in educational standards. Improving education and widening educational opportunities is seen as a major way to discourage young people from wasting their lives in criminal pursuits.
Gordillo also accused the federal Education Department (SEP) of dragging its feet in upgrading the teacher training or licensure programs at the nation’s colleges that are referred to as “escuelas normales.”
The fiery union boss is under huge pressure from her members to walk away from the evaluation accord. Many teachers allied with the dissident faction within the union, the CNTE, demonstrated in cities around Mexico on Monday, including the Zocalo in the capital, unfurling banners calling for Gordillo’s removal as leader of the union.
Gordillo reminded journalists Monday that the evaluation initiative originated from the SNTE and not the SEP, and criticized former education ministers for using the job to climb the political ladder. She singled out the achievements of current National Action Party (PAN) presidential candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota during her stint as educational secretary between 2006 and 2009.
Vazquez quickly hit back, reminding Gordillo that it was under her watch that the corrupt practice of retiring teachers selling their jobs to others – condoned for decades by the SNTE – had been largely eradicated.