Fixing an Expensive, Under-performing Education System in NM

As usual there is a flurry of discussion about fixing education as a new administration begins.  Some voices incorrectly equate spending with improvement.  Some want to do away with symbolic nuisances like the PARCC tests.  Some want to focus on a narrow sliver of the whole, such as early childhood education.  Eventually all the voices get converted into votes on real bills and we tend to prejudge future performance on what got passed and seldom check later to seeif things improve as promised.

Aware of public concern, the last three governors generated reassuring talking points about improving the poor quality of public education in New Mexico.  But they didn't do much about it.  Governor Johnson promoted taxpayer-funded school vouchers for private education and we ended up with a batch of charter schools.  Two decades later they perform no better, as a whole, than public schools.  Governor Richardson raised teacher salaries 50% and was named Education Governor of the Year by the NEA.  But when he left office student performance had not improved.  Governor Martinez withdrew the carrot Richardson offered in hiking teacher salaries--for the stick of shaming poorly performing schools by revealing their "grades."  Student performance did not improve.  New Mexico still competes with Mississippi and Alabama as the lowest performing school system in the country.   Performance in math and English rank NM at 48.  We are surrounded by states that outperform NM in schooling--Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas--in each of which dollar expenditures per pupil are significantly lower than ours.  Wanna check?  (1) Surrounding states score higher:  https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?chort=1&sub=MAT&sj=&sfj=NP&st=MN&year=2017R3   (2) Spending per student:  http://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-education-spending-per-pupil-data.html

We can improve schools.  Gadsden School District--low income parents, with 37% English Language Learners--moved within five years from the bottom of the 89 NM school districts up to the top third.  A new superintendent implemented a "no excuses" policy at all levels, and it worked.  Other districts improved, and other states have moved up the ranks.   If a governor were willing to keep track of progress and advocate "no excuses" she could make a difference.

Higher education is also overpriced and under-performing.  Washington Monthly, a respected magazine that ranks colleges, calculated in 2018 that out of 14 research institutions in the surrounding states (not counting UT Austin) UNM ranked only eighth in research dollars, and NMSU twelfth. Worse, in the category of "social mobility" (efforts to recruit and retain low-income populations) UNM ranked eleventh and NMSU thirteenth.  UTEP ranks fifth.  NMSU's math and engineering departments used to rank regularly in the top thirty, nationwide.  Today they have slipped out of sight in national rankings. At UNM Archaeology and Latin American Studies were in the top ten.  No more.  Money?  In sheer dollars per full time student (FTE) NM ranks a robust ninth among states.  In each of the surrounding states higher education spending per FTE is significantly lower than in New Mexico.  Arizona and Colorado, with better universities, spend one-third and one half, respectively, of what New Mexico spends per FTE!
(1)  Washington Monthly Rankings: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018college-guide?ranking=2018-rankings-national-universities.

(2)  https://nsf.gov/statistics/state-indicators/indicator/state-support-for-higher-education-per-fte-student

As Secretary of Higher Education during Governor Martinez' first term I worked with college presidents to create a new funding formula that would reward graduating more students, more STEM degrees, and more low-income students.  We were grossly overproducing criminal justice majors, social workers, and teachers while grossly under-producing graduates in STEM-related fields.  Hispanics and Natives were lagging.  They comprise 60% of our population so we can't afford not to do a better job if we want a trained workforce.  The legislature, however, responding to vested interests, funded the formula only at 3%.  The rest of the higher education budget was simply doled out proportionately to each institution's appropriation the year before.  Five years later, in 2018 formula funding was up to 4%--not nearly enough to change the behavior of managers, a fact consistent with falling rankings.  And with independent boards governing each institution, no system exists to promote statewide goals.  All too often regents with arbitrary agendas bicker endlessly on minor issues, seldom challenging top management priorities.  A statewide board, setting statewide goals, would help.  Politically difficult?  Yes, pero si se puede.

In 1960 New Mexico ranked 17th among states in the proportion of residents with a high school degree.  By 2015 it had dropped to 44.  In 1990 New Mexico ranked 22 in the proportion of residents with at least a Bachelor's degree.  In 2010 it ranked 37, and in 2015 it ranked 42.  UNM was once competitive in research with Arizona State, Utah, Texas A&M, and Colorado State:  no more, and UTEP is catching up fast.  While there are pockets of excellence here and there, the overall story is one of decline.  Some students are already voting with their feet.
 (1) High School:  for 1990-2000-2010 see http://proximityone.com/edattain.htm; for 2015 see NCHEMS, http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/?level=nation&mode=graph&state=0&submeasure=237.  

(2)  Bacchelor's Degree or Above:  for 1990-2000-2010 see :  http//proximityone.com/edattain.htm

Over 60% of our state tax dollars go to education.  Citizens, media, and legislators need urgently to place comprehensive education reform high on the agenda for incoming Governor Lujan Grisham.  Given the power of vested interests, improving education will require strong advocates, not just reassuring sound bites.