The Rio Grande Foundation hosted a forum on K-12 education reform in Las Cruces on Jan. 12. Forum participants included Paul Gessing of the Rio Grande Foundation, Sen. Steve Fischmann (D-Las Cruces), Tracey Bryan of the Bridge of Southern New Mexico, and Robert Carreon of Teach for America.

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Recently, a report called the “Trial Urban District Assessment” was released. The report compared student scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 21 urban school districts, including Albuquerque.

Albuquerque Public Schools Superintendant Winston Brooks, upon release of the report, was quoted in the Albuquerque Journal as being “pretty ecstatic” about data showing that APS was “about average” compared to the 20 other cities in the report. Brooks went on to say, in a press release on the report, that “These results are encouraging because they show that APS is doing at least as well, and in several cases better, than many of the nation’s urban school districts facing similar educational challenges.”

(Albuquerque) Florida Gov. Rick Scott recently made headlines around the country when he argued that institutes of higher education in his state of Florida should prioritize funding for the study of science and technology in the his state’s institutes of higher education.

Said Scott, “If I’m going to take money from a citizen to put into education then I’m going to take money to create jobs…so I want the money to go to a degree where people can get jobs in this state. Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists? I don’t think so.”

One may agree or disagree with Scott’s statement, but prioritization of limited resources is essential. In order to better understand how those resources should be allocated in higher education in New Mexico, the Rio Grande Foundation undertook an effort to survey members of the boards of regents of the state’s six public senior universities on their views of their schools’ mission statements. Unfortunately, poor returns – only 26.7% of the regents responded – seem to indicate that many of the people responsible for leading these institutes do not take their mission statements seriously.

Said Pat Leonard an adjunct fellow with the Foundation and the lead author of new Rio Grande Foundation report “Are Mission Statements Mere Window Dressing in New Mexico?,” “The regents are political appointees charged with the guidance of New Mexico’s public universities. As such, we expected far more enthusiastic participation and willingness to share views on their institutes’ mission statements. Unfortunately, this was not the case.” Rio Grande Foundation president and co-author of the report noted that, “Without a clearly-stated mission, policymakers are left to judge for themselves whether New Mexico’s higher education institutions are achieving their goals or not. In times of constrained budgets, it is more important than ever to have a clear understanding of what these schools are attempting to achieve.”

The full report is available online here.

A sample survey containing the questions that were sent to each regent can be found here.

(Albuquerque) Recently, a report called the “Trial Urban District Assessment” (TUDA) was released (see charts here). The report compared student scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 21 urban school districts including Albuquerque. The Rio Grande Foundation and others have used New Mexico’s poor performance on the NAEP to argue for education reforms.

APS Superintendant Winston Brooks, upon release of the report, was quoted in the Albuquerque Journal as being “pretty ecstatic” about data showing that APS was “about average” compared to the 20 other cities in the report.[1] Brooks went on to say, in a press release on the report that, “These results are encouraging because they show that APS is doing at least as well, and in several cases better, than many of the nation’s urban school districts facing similar educational challenges.[2]”

But how similar are they? According to a Rio Grande Foundation analysis of the data (using US Census numbers), the families of students in APS are wealthier than 17 of the 20 districts analyzed in the TUDA report. In some instances, districts mentioned in the report had poverty rates more than two times that of APS.[3] “Interestingly-enough,” noted Rio Grande Foundation President Paul Gessing, “students in Miami-Dade, which of course has followed the ‘Florida Model’, brought to New Mexico by our Foundation, out-performed APS despite having higher poverty numbers.”

Gessing continued, “Poverty should not be a deciding factor in whether a child is educated or not. That is we have long argued for educational choice and reforms emphasizing accountability. Nonetheless, the worst possible conclusion to draw from the TUDA data is that administrators, parents, and legislators should be pleased because APS students are performing as well as their peers in other major cities, when in reality the students in these cities are in a state of poverty far worse than our own.”

This chart shows where APS is in terms of poverty relative to the other school districts mentioned in the report and which ones outperform APS on 4^th grade reading.

[1] Hailey Heinz, Albuquerque Journal, December 8, 2011, http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2011/12/08/news/aps-scores-average-on-national-test.html.

[2] APS Test Scores Comparable to Big Cities, December 7, 2001, http://www.aps.edu/news/aps-test-scores-comparable-to-big-cities

[3] US Census Bureau “Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates”: http://www.census.gov/did/www/saipe/district.html

When Gov. Martinez came into office back in January, among her top priorities was to turn New Mexico’s failing educational system around. To say that it is “failing” sounds harsh, but it describes reality. The problem is that, having had two opportunities to move towards fixing the problem, the Legislature has thrown up roadblock after roadblock in a (so-far successful) attempt to keep the status quo in place.

First, the problem: According to the “Diplomas Count 2011” report from the Education Research Center, New Mexico’s real graduation rate is 57.1 percent. This is 49^th in the nation. Only Nevada has a lower rate. The results are similar on the respected National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a respected national test. On the 2009 reading version of that test, New Mexico 4^th graders again beat the scores of only one other state.

A few years ago, we at the Rio Grande Foundation brought the “Florida Model” for K-12 education reform to New Mexico. The reforms enacted by then-Gov. Jeb Bush in Florida led to dramatic improvements in reading performance among Florida students.

Gov. Martinez has been pushing for some of the Florida-style reforms including the A-F school grading system which passed the Legislature earlier this year and is in the midst of being implemented. Bi-partisan legislation that would have prohibited social promotion (the passing of students from grade to grade regardless of their grasp of the material) of 3^rd graders was held up in the waning hours of the session by Majority Leader Michael Sanchez.

The following videos are from Friday's luncheon on virtual schools with Lance Izumi. The first video is of an introductory video celebrating what would have been Milton Friedman's 99th birthday as well as the world premier of the movie "Short Circuited.

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This video is of my introduction of Education Secretary Hanna Skandera and Skandera's introduction of Lance Izumi:

Expanding virtual learning opportunities is a critically important step for New Mexico. Virtual schooling was a critical component of the “Florida Model” for education reform, which helped transform achievement across student sub-groups there from nearly worst to first within a decade. The Florida Reform model has since been adopted by Gov. Susana Martinez—with good reason.

Academic outcomes indicate the state’s traditional schooling system is not up to the task. New Mexicoranks 49th in fourth-grade reading proficiency; 48th in eighth-grade math proficiency; and 50th in graduation rates. Poor funding does not explain such poor performance.