Union Resistance in Albuquerque Highlights a Threat to Academic Recovery

In the wake of the pandemic, test scores show widespread lost academic progress, but too many parents are not getting the message about their kids. The missing element is urgency, and only teachers can adequately communicate that urgency to parents. Unfortunately, if recent developments in Albuquerque are any indication, many parents won’t get that needed message from their students’ teachers.

Last week, the Albuquerque Teachers Federation (ATF) filed a grievance against Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) over their newly-published strategies for improving student learning during the 2023–24 school year. A major complaint of the ATF concerns the “Parent Communication Strategies” APS wants to implement to ensure teachers tell parents when their students are falling behind, and tell them early enough to intervene.

APS has a clear rationale for this strategy: “A primary purpose for grading and assessment is to inform and engage APS families of the academic progress their child is making, and for them to have a consistent expectation of how they will be informed of their child’s progress.” Under the new changes, teachers be required to proactively communicate with the parents of students in danger of failing. This provision is sensible; nonetheless, it’s a major complaint in the ATF’s grievance:

The memo states that “If students are in danger of failing, or not making adequate academic progress, teachers will proactively notify parents in time for early and appropriate intervention.”

For high school teachers, this rule is a violation Article 5.L.4 of the APS-ATF Negotiated Agreement, which reads:

“If a high school teacher anticipates that any student is failing at the end of the semester, they will be required to provide a list of all students who are at risk of failing a class one week prior to winter break so that the student(s) may be scheduled appropriately. The list is nonbinding and intended for planning purposes only.” 

For elementary and middle school teachers, early and appropriate intervention is undefined.

Hopefully, the attitude displayed by ATF is not shared by the average teachers union. It’s potentially disastrous for pandemic recovery, because it maintains that the most vital link in the chain between recovery services and the students who need them, teachers, cannot be required to play their part.

Across the US, services are available for students—including, in New Mexico, increased learning time and tutoring—but they are not widely used, even by those who need help the most. That is one reason students are not catching up. I addressed this lack of urgency, and teachers’ essential role in communicating it, in recent testimony before the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education:

How can we blame parents for not taking the steps offered to them, such as tutoring or summer school, if teachers and grades do not communicate the losses students have faced? No test score on an emailed report will convey the message that a student needs intensive help like direct communication from teachers will. A lack of forthrightness about where students are academically… will keep families from seeing the educational damage wrought by the pandemic—damage that students will bear the costs of far into the future. Communicating the severity of pandemic learning loss is a difficult task to lay at the feet of the nation’s beleaguered teachers and schools, but if we do not ask it of them, who will accomplish it?

Teachers alone can communicate the urgency of academic need to the families of students who need it most. Notifying parents that a student is at risk of failing can be automated with emails and letters, but impersonal messages cannot communicate urgency like teachers can.

If there is any comfort in the APS story, it’s that the respective responses of unions teachers can differ. Many teachers will reach parents with or without such requirements. Nevertheless, the Albuquerque case is worrying. If enough APS teachers would reliably reach out to the parents of at-risk students, it is hard to imagine APS would need to issue this memo in the first place, and even harder to imagine why the ATF would push back. That raises an important question for the next school year that goes way beyond Albuquerque: How many teachers will toe the line and push students who are falling behind to get the help they need?

Help is available in most districts, as Federal funding remains available for tutoring and other services this upcoming school year. But it won’t be effective unless school districts, teachers, families, and students share a sense of urgency. As one tutoring company executive working with New Mexico students said of academic recovery, “it’s not something that happens on its own, it requires all of us to be pushing in the same direction to build the awareness.”