NMPolitics.net (https://nmpolitics.net/index/tag/education/page/26/)
Next year can be the year real improvement is made in New Mexico public education if all of the stakeholders, including politicians, join hands to solve New Mexico’s education problems. Continue Reading
The usual choice presented for reforming education – money or management and technology – is a choice between irrelevancies or worse. A discussion of educational reform must start and stay with a definition of education. Continue Reading
School administrators’ only reason for being must be to support the mission of the schools – that being educating children, which means providing teachers with what they need to carry out their responsibilities to the children. Continue Reading
We do not have to wait until September for data on how our students are doing; we can have it every week. We are in the 21st Century, so New Mexico should use new short-cycle assessment tools to improve our students. Continue Reading
We cannot even begin to discuss school reform until we deal with parenting reform. How can we convince parents that they are the front lines of education? Continue Reading
Any statewide educational “reform” effort needs to address school security concerns head-on because they directly impact all others including student and employee performance. Continue Reading
To instruct and teach the young has been a part of the human social contract since long before our ancestors swung down from their trees on the African savanna. And isn’t it just amazing that we are, in 2011, arguing about what education is and how best to go about it? Continue Reading
It did not take me long to find myself in trouble. Thirty minutes into my first day in kindergarten the powers-that-be lost patience with me acting like a boy. So I was put in “time out.” Continue Reading
Sen. Eric Griego was right on in a recent commentary to criticize state lawmakers who refused to discuss, debate and vote on raising revenues during the 2011 legislative session. Continue Reading
What I will get in the end zone will be exactly what I put in my retirement fund. Why does that work for me and not public education in New Mexico? Continue Reading
Perhaps the time has come to have a public dialog that is not about charter schools, vouchers, tax credits, magnet schools, free schools, grading schools and teachers, ending social promotion, corporal punishment, and so on. Continue Reading
The state should enact a tax credit of up to $500 for any parent or guardian who pays for any qualified educational expense – no matter if that child is in a public or private school. Continue Reading
New Mexico is one of a handful of states that continues to lose jobs, prolonging the recession well past its June 2009 “official end” for tens of thousands of New Mexicans and their families. The top priority for policymakers for the foreseeable future must be to create jobs. Continue Reading
On evidence, public education is remarkably resilient in spite of its pronounced shortcomings, evading one doomsday after another. The monster is such that society seems to have no choice but to complain while, at the same time, paying for it. Continue Reading
This session I sponsored legislation to allow my colleagues an avenue by which they could support and fund our public schools without raising taxes, and to allow the citizens of New Mexico the chance to vote on their support for our public schools. It didn’t pass, but there’s time to try again next year. Continue Reading