I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
One of the big ticket non-budgetary items on the agenda for the legislative session is the Hispanic Education Act, which passed its first committee hearing on Monday.
The legislation has come to the fore as one way to focus attention and resources on closing the “achievement gap” between Anglo and Hispanic students.
Senate Bill 132, would create an office within the Public Education Department to specifically focus on “measuring the gap, analyzing it, and closing it, systematically,” according to its sponsor, Sen. Bernadette Sanchez, D-Albuquerque.
A Hispanic Education Advisory Council made up of “citizen-stakeholders” would also be created, she said, to support the efforts of the office.
The extent of the Hispanic achievement gap was spelled out in a report on the state’s teacher licensing system by New Mexico’s Public Education Department in June 2009 for the Legislative Finance Committee. There is a significant disparity between white and Hispanic students when controlling for income, the report states. For instance, in assessments of 4th grade reading levels, the gap between low-income Anglo students and low-income Hispanic students was about 15 percentage points, with Anglo students performing higher.
“Consider that 56 percent of New Mexico public school students are Hispanic; that’s 189,507 kids,” Sanchez said in an email to The Independent. “At the fourth grade level, only 36 percent of Hispanic students demonstrate math proficiency (versus 59 percent of Causcasian students), and only 46 percent demonstrate reading proficiency (versus 67 percent of Caucasian students). …
“Finally, only 56.2 percent of Hispanic students graduate high school in New Mexico, versus a 71.3 percent graduation rate for their Caucasian counterparts.”
Given that the majority of New Mexico students are Hispanic, Sanchez said, the future of the state’s economy depends on changing the current trajectory of Hispanic students’ education.
“We have one shared economy, comprised of a diverse population. The strength of this shared economy will depend on how many of our citizens can compete in this century’s global marketplace,” she said.
“Given the sheer number of Hispanic students in our schools, and the plain fact that not enough of them are doing as well as we ALL need them to do, the state must proactively figure out why, and step in to solve the problem.”
But other senators oppose the idea. Senator Mark Boitano, R-Albuquerque, thinks it will create unnecessary bureaucracy when solutions are already at the Public Education Department’s fingertips, modeled at the local level by charter schools.
“[A] charter school in the South Valley found that some students need four and a half years to graduate,” Boitano said in a note to The Independent, as one example of successful educational innovation. “…Local districts are already identifying the problems and fashioning solutions to them — let’s multiply those best practices not create more bureaucracy in Santa Fe.”
Boitano also said it was wrong to focus on just one ethnic group.
“If a program or service, or if funding, is beneficial for a high risk student who is Hispanic it should be available to all students, regardless of race or culture,” he said.
Sanchez agreed that other student populations have an achievement gap as well, but said legislation, or institutions, already exist that focus on those populations–like the Indian Education Act, passed in 2003, and the state office of African American Affairs, which she said works with PED on improving educational outcomes for African American students.
Senate Bill 132 will not affect the budget, according to the legislature’s fiscal impact report, as no appropriation was requested to create the office. The Public Education Department has said it can use existing resources to create the office.
The bill was passed by the Senate Education Committee on Monday and is now waiting to be heard in the Senate Finance Committee. There is also a House version of the bill, HB 150, sponsored by Rep. Rick Miera, D-Albuquerque.
