Susana Martinez (left, courtesy photo) and Diane Denish (Photo by Heath Haussamen)
The gubernatorial candidates will debate education later this month, and while both campaigns say they look forward to additional debates, no others have been scheduled.
Democrat Diane Denish proposed a series of eight debates on Monday.
The education debate—the first between the two candidates – will be held Aug. 19 at Eldorado High School in Albuquerque beginning at 6 p.m. It will be moderated by Albuquerque Public Schools Superintendent Winston Brooks.
There’s a lot to talk about. The announcement of the debate came the same day that the state revealed that the number of schools meeting federal Adequate Yearly Progress standards had dropped from one in three last year to fewer than one in four this year.
Under the federal guidelines, all schools are supposed to meet AYP standards by 2014. The AYP standards increase each year, so this year’s decline essentially means that New Mexico schools aren’t improving as quickly in areas AYP measures as federal guidelines require – if at all.
For Denish, the news came at a bad time – on the same day the Albuquerque Journal published an article in which she said education policies of the Richardson administration are beginning to lead to gains in graduation rates and need to be given time to work.
Denish’s Republican opponent, Susana Martinez, was quoted in the article as saying she wants to shift gears, trying a new approach the Journal article says is “modeled after a series of reforms put in place in Florida in 1999 that focus on more student testing, more money in the classrooms and curbing promotion of students who aren’t making the grade.”
Martinez’s message is simpler and may match more closely with public perception: The system is broken and we need to try something new.
To get beyond the headlines, Denish is going to have to explain in nuanced detail – but in a way that’s understandable – how the Richardson administration’s education reforms are working when fewer schools are meeting AYP benchmarks.
Denish also revealed on Monday a trap she may try to set for Martinez at the education debate. Martinez has been saying on the campaign trail that she supports school choice – the ability of parents to put their children in a public or private school using a tax credit or some other funding mechanism.
The new Journal article paraphrases Martinez as saying she “would not support school vouchers in the traditional sense, which are promoted in the Florida system, but she would be willing to give tax credits to businesses that donate money to private school scholarship programs.”
Denish called that a flip-flop, citing a past statement in which Martinez suggested that parents should “get to receive a tax credit, voucher, whatever it is you want to call it, that that child should have in order to select a charter school, a Christian school, a Baptist, whatever kind of school that parent decides their child should go to.”
Now that Martinez is taking a more specific position on how she plans to increase school choice, she’ll likely be challenged to explain how tax credits to encourage scholarship programs are consistent with what she’s said in the past.
Other debates?
There are other issues to discuss as well, but no other debates have been confirmed. The Denish campaign put out a news release on Monday proposing eight debates between the gubernatorial candidates and three between the candidates for lieutenant governor – to be held in Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Santa Fe and Taos – and suggested that the Martinez campaign has been avoiding scheduling debates.
“…the Denish campaign has repeatedly contacted the Martinez campaign to discuss the release of a full debate schedule, but the Martinez campaign has thus far declined to agree to a schedule of debates. The Denish campaign first approached the Martinez campaign about debates on June 2, the morning after the primary,” a release from Denish states.
Martinez Campaign Manager Ryan Cangiolosi, however, said the campaign plans to schedule “additional debates in the fall.”
“We look forward to discussing the epic failures of the Richardson/Denish Administration that have led to higher unemployment and job loss, rampant waste, fraud and abuse, and unacceptably low graduation rates and performance levels in the classroom,” he said. “We are pleased the Denish campaign agreed to participate in an education debate on the 19th of August and look forward to continuing our conversations with the Denish campaign as we schedule additional debates in the fall.”
The debate schedule proposed by the Denish campaign includes three televised debates. As I reported on Monday, both candidates also agreed to discuss policy initiatives at the Domenici Public Policy Conference at New Mexico State University in September. The candidates will present initiatives and take questions from students. Though a release from NMSU said the candidates will appear separately, the Denish news release called it a “joint appearance.”