STATE OF THE LAS CRUCES PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND TWO SUGGESTIONS

      In May, Superintendent Ignacio Ruiz delivered an end-of-the-year State-of-the-District address.  I have not heard or read it, but I have no doubt that it pleased everyone.  I imagine it to run along the lines of, every day, in every way, the District is doing better and better.  In response to my recent speech to the School Board and my follow-up blog, senior District personnel have invited me to make my suggestions for improvement.

Just to be clear, I preface my suggestions with remarks which will provoke the Pollyannas in the community.  I do not hold or seek office, so I do not have to placate the perpetrators and before- and after-the-fact accessories about the District’s performance.  I speak my truth to their power and leave it to the District to respond constructively.

 

In the college grading system of yesteryear, 60 was the threshold between a passing and a failing grade.  Against that standard, the District’s continued record of student performance, with 4^th-grade proficiency percentages of 33% to 44% in reading and 22% in math, can be regarded only as a failure, indeed, as a really bad failure.  Continued official denial will not lead to anything better.  This failure clearly implies the failure of elementary school teachers to teach reading and math.  (I know that not all teachers are failures; I know that exceptions prove the rule.  And, if most were good, why are most results bad?)  There are many reasons for their failure—ignorance or incompetence in the subjects taught, lack of confidence in themselves, and lack of commitment to educating students—and many excuses to cover their deficiencies: poverty, hunger, abuse parents, broken homes, yada, yada, yada—and low salaries (apparently, Senator Bill Soules cannot raise them fast enough).

 

But as the educational revival of former state competitors for the worst education system shows, these excuses are just that—excuses.  Mississippi, flanked by Alabama and Louisiana, are now doing a better job of educating their students than some states thought to lead in public education.  According to Nicholas Kristof, “These Three Red States Are the Best Hope in Schooling” (New York Times, 9 Feb 2026),

 

• Once an educational laughingstock, Mississippi now ranks ninth in the country in fourth-grade reading levels — and after adjusting for demographics such as poverty and race, Mississippi ranks No. 1, while Louisiana ranks No. 2, according to calculations by the Urban Institute. Using the same demographic adjustment, Mississippi also ranks No. 1 in America in both fourth-grade and eighth-grade math.
• Black fourth graders in Mississippi are on average better readers than those in Massachusetts, which is often thought to have the best public school system in the country (and one that spends twice as much per pupil).

 

And New Mexico: still last and doing its best to stay so.

 

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I make two low- or no cost proposals to address two problems:

 

Truancy.  Truants learn nothing when they are absent from school, and the schools do not get revenues based on their attendance.  Everyone loses.  The District has programs which attempt to persuade students and their parents to ensure attendance, but they have had only modest success.  One additional means to improve attendance is the use of the state’s truancy law.  This law should be used only as a last resort, but the threat of using it may be sufficient in many cases.  Given the context of ICE’s and CBP’s violently inclined personnel, truant officers should dress and act in a completely non-threatening manner, and give assurances to make no reports to federal agencies.  To this end, the District should work with the City, including the police department, to develop an effective counter-truancy program.  The point of using the truancy law is twofold: one, reduce or end truancy; and, two, make clear that the District is committed to public education and its importance to students.

 

Teacher Preparation.  In this broad topic, which abuts others related to it, I focus on only NMSU’s School of Education (SOE).  I assume that it is staffed by the well-intentioned.  But I know that its good intentions, possibly well described as according with the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI: which a blog of mine has strongly endorsed) and evident in teaching methods, have little or nothing to do with ensuring that SOE graduates, especially the many prospective elementary school (ES) teachers, are competent to teach the subjects required at grade level.  Most elect an English and take the same two English writing courses required of all NMSU students.  But that 100- and 200-level course sequence is about college writing; it has nothing to do with the fundamentals of English which ES teachers need simply to comply even with the woefully inadequate state curriculum.  To correct this dereliction of (what should be) SOE’s duty, the District should enlist the support of Senator Bill Soules and the Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce to get NMSU’s SOE to develop courses the content of which prepares its students to teach the subjects for which they will be responsible to teach.  (It would be entirely appropriate for ES teachers to take a course which ensures mastery of grammar.  As Superintendents Rounds and Trujillo admitted to me, ES teachers do not know grammar; obviously they cannot teach even the bare minimum which the state curriculum requires.  Not that either enforced requirements or cared about ES incompetence.)

 

Another suggestion, one not related to academic performance, is the restoration of parental and community involvement in District governance.  Before Maria Flores and Stan Rounds secured passage of a District rule eliminating standing committees, the School Board had a few such committees.  The current Board should establish a handful of committees—examples only: budget, library, health, transportation, athletics—with meaningful work to do and the right to present annual reports directly to the public.  Not only would such committees provide a useful “second opinion” to the Board, but also they would involve the community in the schools and educate citizens, some of whom would run as informed but independent candidates without the predispositions of former teachers.  Public education cannot be public if it is a closed shop.