Richard Coltharp’s 4 August column, “The rankings of O Fair New Mexico,” reported that, in “WalletHub’s rankings of 2023’s States with the Best & Worst School Systems, …. Frustratingly, New Mexico didn’t even make the top 50. Thanks to the pesky inclusion of the District of Columbia, New Mexico ranked dead last at 51.” How’s them apples, teach?
There are two possible answers to the first question. One is that, collectively, no one is trying, not teachers, teaching assistants, and reading specialists through fourth grade, no school board members in all districts, no members of the House and Senate Education Committees, no employees of the Public Education Department (PED), and the Governor. The other is that even those who would try—you know, good intentions—to improve the public school either have no clue how to do so or lack the courage to make the effort.
There is no credit to go around after an honest look at the educational attainments of public-school students in the most basic of all subjects: reading. The rule of thumb is that, through 4th grade, students learn to read; after 4th grade, they read to learn. Why Juanito can’t read joins why Johnny can’t read. According to 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results, 21% of New Mexican 4th-grade students read with proficiency or better. Which means that 79% do not.
The simple, uncomplicated fact which no one—teachers, teaching assistants, and reading specialists through fourth grade, school board members in all districts, members of the House and Senate Education Committees, PED employees, and governors—will face: teachers through the 4th grade are failing to do their job. In fairness, the teachers themselves are not well-enough educated or trained to do it. In fairness (?), school hiring personnel do not care so long as there is a baby-sitter (family member of friend?) in every classroom. Though state government can demand more of the PED and schools of education—even their name is a joke—, it does nothing to any effect, as the NAEP results show, and not for just this year but for many years past, with no relief in sight.
Which means that New Mexico’s public schools set up four of every five students for academic misery, struggles, or failure, with, even if they graduate, a deficient education for little better than unskilled or low-skilled jobs. Which means that they will not have careers and the state will not have a workforce attractive to out-of-state, high-tech firms. When the oil and gas run out and stop providing half the state’s revenues, New Mexico will remain and continue to rely on a third-world economy as a retirement destination of low costs and lousy services, a tourist attraction, a dependent of the film-industry, a water-intensive, low-wage agrarian market, and a repository of radioactive waste. As it is, New Mexico’s legislators and governors are content that the federal government essentially subsidizes the state on about a $4000-per-capita basis. Only fossil-fuel tax revenues and federal welfare, not state efforts, prop up its educational system and keep it from collapsing, not just trail Mississippi and the District in national rankings. New Mexico’s public school system might be better off as a ward of the Department of Education. Am I the only one outraged by this sustained, slovenly performance?
One answer to the second question is twofold. One, Soules thinks that raising teachers’ salaries and supporting more programs like Early Childhood Education which require more teachers will do the trick. The factual record says otherwise, that these expensive undertakings are not magic bullets. Soules, elected in 2012, serving since 2013, does what other New Mexican legislators and governors do: throw money at problems and build empires. Two, in Soules’s case, like that of so many others, uses taxpayer funds to bribe his constituency of teachers to vote for him when he runs for re-election and thereby continue in office as the chair of the Senate Education Committee. Nice work if you can get it, and he’s got it.
In return for spending taxpayer funds in higher teacher salaries and more programs, and thus in Soules’s political career, he has allowed the slide begun before he took office to continue. Although covid can explain some deterioration in scores, the decline in New Mexico was steeper than in the nation. Which means that the more spent on education, the worse thing got as the gap widened. After very modest gains for a few years shortly after Soules ascended to high office, reading scores have descended rather precipitously in recent years, while teachers’ salaries increased dramatically. In short, Soules knows how to pay for what he wants and gets—votes for re-election—without concern whether students get what they need—a competent, committed, and confident teacher in every course defined by a rigorous curriculum.
Worse, I know that Soules has rejected reforms which might make a difference. He scorns them because he knows that to consider, not to say support, them would blemish his political attractiveness to teachers. Any reforms—that is, improving changes—in academic curriculums or teacher qualifications, in certification, and in compensation he views as dangers. I know because, years ago, when I lunched with Soules to suggest these and other related reforms, he objected then, regarded me as a threat, and has refused ever since even to acknowledge my presence in shared venues.
New Mexico’s climate may be heating and drying up, but its public school system is cooling off. Last again and ever more likely to stay there.
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