Education
Widening income gap partly due to NM's high illiteracy rate
The income gap has increased in New Mexico, according to a report released last week. According to some, one reason for the growing inequality may be found in the state’s shift to a knowledge-based economy at the same time that a sizable portion of adult New Mexicans are functionally illiterate.
Politicizing higher education
What is “traditional American history,” and who decides what it might be? The White House has vigorously promoted the notion of a kind of “getting back to basics” when it comes to teaching American history. But it doesn’t say what “traditional American history” is. In an informal search of recent literature on the subject, I could not find a single definition of the term. Is that because the conservative idea of traditional American history might be too inflammatory to be disclosed?
Teaching in a community of 'great promise'
Like most Albuquerque Public Schools students, Amanda Otero will be back in school today. "My whole summer was about waiting for us to start school," she said Saturday an open house for Atrisco Heritage Academy. I was there too. I'm a teacher at Atrisco and like Otero, my summer was spent eagerly anticipating today. I'm a first-year teacher and the butterflies in my stomach started about a eight months ago when I decided to leave a 20-year career at the Albuquerque Journal to teach.
Curbing big pharma
Students at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center helped the facility join a national movement to keep pharmaceutical salesmen at arms-length. The conflict of interest policy approved last month means no more free lunches or tickets to a baseball game, no more T-shirts or ball caps emblazoned with "Lipitor" or "Viagra." And now the students are talking about having an "amnesty day," when they can return all the schwag they've accepted in the past.
Reading, writing and financial literacy
Lt. Gov. Diane Denish wants to require high school students to take a financial literacy course in order to graduate.
Newsflash: Many teens just don't realize they're interested in news
I asked my students if anyone was reading something interesting. Before I knew it, hands were shooting up and the topics ranged from how Ben Stiller directed his new movie "Tropic Thunder," to how a reporter went undercover in a religious cult just to see how freaky that was. One student read outloud the story in the Independent about our new school opening up. News was happening all around me. And nobody wanted to stop to go to the bathroom or to get a drink of water.
Cradles of hope, with love to Africa
The science of green little men
Half a world away, the University of Melbourne in Australia announced this week it is bestowing its first doctorate degree in ufology to a man whose research took him to the three places in the world most key in the history of the subject. The No. 1 spot listed? You guessed it: Roswell, N.M.
In a press release, the university announced:
Martin Plowman, from the School of Culture and Communication, investigated hundreds of UFO sightings and interviewed dozens of ufologists as part of his PhD thesis.
Mr. Plowman will become Dr. Plowman next Saturday (August 9) when he is conferred with a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne.
As part of his research Mr. Plowman visited key sites in the history of ufology, including Roswell, New Mexico; crop circle hotspots in Wiltshire, England; and the Valley of Elqui in the Chilean Andes, and examined the links between UFO sightings and religion, politics, national security and popular culture.
N.M. History 101
Former Lt. Gov. Roberto Mondragon and educator Georgia Roybal have worked for 17 years to get a textbook of New Mexico history published and distributed in schools statewide. It will become a reality this fall. Mondragon’s and Roybal’s nonprofit group, Semos Unlimited, is rejuvenated and back to the task of completing the textbook. It will be published as a pilot project at the Atrisco Heritage Academy (AHA) high school this fall.
Mexico notebook: Obama on bilingualism
"Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English -- they'll learn English -- you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about how can your child become bilingual."
After reading Barack Obama's above response to a discussion about "English-only" legislation, my traveling companion said his view of the presidential candidate "just went up."
I'm guessing impressions of Obama went up for people all over the world.
What Obama said merely points out the obvious in the eyes of many outside of the United States. He said: "We should have every child speaking more than one language."
Home Hiving
Backyard beekeeping makes sense in light of widespread reports of "mysterious" bee colony collapse. It makes just as much sense as it does to grow one's own vegetables and fruits. And because pollinators of all types are threatened by pesticides, genetically modified crops and other industrial farming methods, "we as members of the community need to pick up the slack," says one local expert.
No surprise: NM kids fare poorly
New Mexico is once again near the bottom of the Annie E. Casey Foundation's rankings designed "to track the status of children in the United States."
New Mexico ranks 48th overall out of 50 states in the group's annual Kids Count report. Last year, New Mexico ranked 47th.
"It's always disappointing to see New Mexico so close to the bottom," said Lisa Adams-Shafer, Kids Count program manager for New Mexico Voices for Children, which co-releases the annual report. "But, as always, there are some bright spots. We continue to do very well in terms of infant mortality rates, and we continue to outpace the national average in improvement in high school dropout rates," she added. "Sadly, our child death rates have continued to worsen."
NM has second-worst graduation rate in nation, new report says
A new report out shows that New Mexico has the second-worst graduation rate in the country.
According to the report, which is in Education Week, fewer students in New Mexico's class of 2005 graduated with their peers than students in virtually every other state in the union, except Nevada.
Here's an excerpt from the report:
Nationwide, about 71 percent of 9th graders make it to graduation four years later, according to data on the class of 2005, the latest available. That figure drops to 58 percent for Hispanics, 55 percent for African-Americans, and only 51 percent for Native Americans. While more than eight in 10 students graduate on time in Iowa, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Wisconsin, that rate drops to fewer than six in 10 in the District of Columbia, Georgia, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, and South Carolina.
The press release announcing the report also has a link to a cool map that allows you to see what the graduation rates are for local districts.
You, too, can watch your electricity meter go backward
A foundation that teaches organic agriculture and sustainable living in Costa Rica has sought to apply "wise use" principles to its Albuquerque office. Founder Franklin Wilson -- who says the foundation has cut its energy use and produces power that is sold back to PNM -- wants to spread the word that anyone can pretty much do the same. In fact, he says, it's "rather easy."
Not a farewell, at least not yet
The man who has dominated New Mexico politics in recent years today made a humble acknowledgement. “I am going to make an admission that I never, never make,” Gov. Bill Richardson said to the retiring U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici. “Had I run against you, you probably would have beat me.”
Newspapers' online products not helping readership
No sooner had the New Mexico Independent published a commentary I wrote Tuesday about the high school kids I teach at Atrisco Heritage Academy not being exposed to news, when I got an alert from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. It was the center's biennial news consumption survey on Sunday. Here's what it said:
"Findings on TV news and online-only news produced a few surprises, but on the newspaper front the indications were mainly negative. And it wasn't just bad news for the print side, newspapers' online products didn't do much better. Namely: while more young people are indeed reading newspapers online, their total readership, print and Web combined, has not grown in two years.
ACT scores on rise in APS
We all know the ugly news that most New Mexico public schools are not meeting Adequate Yearly Progress as required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Now for some positive news out of the state's largest school district.
According to Albuquerque Public Schools officials, the district's 2008 graduates earned better scores on all sections of the ACT college entrance exam than the previous year’s graduating class. Even better still, on average, APS students also outperformed the rest of the state and nation.
Today's Top Stories: Juarez death toll nears 800
NMSU still has beef with two fired professors
New Mexico State University officials are playing hard ball with two former professors who have been fighting their dismissal from the university since March. According to the Las Cruces Sun-News, the professors, John Moraros and Yelena Bird, received letters last month in which a university official said the two had never submitted proof that they had earned medical degrees from the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez.
The letters, from Valerie Pickett, director of New Mexico State’s Office of Enrollment Management, gave the professors until Aug.14 to provide final transcripts from the Mexican institution, or face “appropriate action, up to and including the possible revocation of your above-referenced graduate degree from NMSU," according to the letters.
Back to school pains
It's back to school for most Albuquerque Public Schools students today, and it has been a little more challenging for the district to open doors at some schools this year.
Severe flooding at at least two schools, including at Manzano High School, meant APS maintenance crews working overtime to dry up the mess and get the classrooms and gym operational. APS spokeswoman Johanna King said that at Hodgin Elementary in the Northeast Heights, the flooding damaged floors but not books were damaged, allowing school to open today.
In addition to the cleanups, APS opened four new schools this year, but all of the schools are at temporary sites because construction at their campuses is not complete.