How can NM improve education?

Welcome to The Independent Forum. Every week we ask a different question and solicit responses from a diverse group of New Mexico thinkers, pundits and other observers of the state’s political landscape. We’ll add more responses as they come in, so keep checking back to see how the conversation progresses.

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As we all know, New Mexico is struggling to improve public education and the state was not chosen for the first round of Race to the Top education funding. As Trip Jennings noted, “The two states won on the strength of their innovative plans to reform public education in their respective states. The monetary rewards are substantial: Delaware could take home as much as $107 million and Tennessee’s haul could top $500 million. …New Mexico didn’t make the cut, failing to win finalist status earlier this month. More than $3 billion remains in the Race to the Top fund, meaning other states could win money in future rounds.”

With an eye on innovative programs that might help New Mexico qualify for federal Race to the Top money, this week’s question is:

“What should New Mexico do do improve public education?”

PAUL GESSING, president of the Rio Grande Foundation:

The good news is that losing out on Race to the Top money is not going to do dramatic long term harm (or abort any progress) in New Mexico’s K-12 educational system. That’s because no solutions from Washington — including No Child Left Behind — are going to provide what New Mexico needs in order to stop failing half of the state’s children.

Instead of relying on Washington for ideas and funding, New Mexico policymakers need to look at what is working in other states. Florida is one example of success. Due to a combination of choice measures including tax credits and vouchers, solid statewide standards that haven’t been watered down, alternative teacher certification, and a ban on social promotion, Florida’s educational results have improved dramatically.

The bad news for New Mexico children is that from the Governor’s office on down, K-12 education reforms that actually work have not been a priority. Teachers’ unions are one reason for this, but until average New Mexicans decide that failiing to graduate 50% of the children is simply not acceptable, we’ll continue to see failure — regardless of the latest “flavor of the month” from Washington.

BILL TURNER, hydrologist and former director of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District:

Drastically reduce administrative staff.  Implement vocational education for students not destined for college.  Implement pay for performance.  Introduce competition among schools.

FRED NATHAN, executive director of Think New Mexico:

One essential reform is to make New Mexico’s public schools smaller. Decades of independent research have shown that smaller schools have significantly higher graduation rates and improve the academic performance of students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. This should come as no surprise, since smaller schools provide more personalized educational environments, where students are known by teachers and by one another, and where it is much more difficult for students to fall through the cracks. (Smaller schools are also much safer, with far fewer violent incidents per capita.) Yet despite the research showing that high schools should be no larger than about 900 students, two-thirds of New Mexico’s ninth graders currently enter high schools with more than 1,000 students.

Along with their academic benefits, the research shows that smaller schools are no more expensive to build or operate on a per-student basis. If we look at the construction cost of schools built in New Mexico over the past several years, we find that there is no correlation with school size – in other words, it cost no more per student to build the smallest schools than it did to build the largest schools. Operationally, smaller schools save money because they have lower administrative, transportation, and security costs. In this time when both the educational system and the economy are in crisis, smaller schools are a reform that can improve student outcomes without increasing costs.

New Mexico’s school districts have already begun to take small steps toward increasing access to smaller schools, such as through the development of the new Early College High School in Las Cruces and the Nex+gen Academy in Albuquerque, both capped at fewer than 500 students. However, in order to make high quality, smaller school environments accessible to students across New Mexico, we need a strong statewide effort to incentivize the construction of new small schools and the renovation of existing large schools into smaller schools within schools.

In 2008, Senators Cynthia Nava and Sue Wilson Beffort sponsored a bill to do just that, which passed the Senate 28-11 before running out of time in the House. For more information about this legislation, and ongoing efforts to enact these reforms, visit Think New Mexico’s website at www.thinknewmexico.org.