New Mexico think tank publishes set of education reform proposals

Oct. 11—A Santa Fe think tank is looking to another U.S. state as an example in improving education: Mississippi.

In 2019, Mississippi ranked first in the U.S. Department of Education's National Assessment on Educational Progress. In six years, the state improved its rankings in fourth grade reading from 49th to 29th and in math from 50th to 23rd.

Think New Mexico's policy report on public education contains a host of recommendations for lawmakers and education officials it hopes will lead New Mexico — which has placed at the bottom of five recent national education rankings — to such dramatic improvements.

Think New Mexico founder Fred Nathan said the effort grew from a concern the state lacks a comprehensive "roadmap" to better educational outcomes.

"There are so many ideas for educational reform, so we've limited ourselves to those ideas where there's evidence to show that a population of students has increased their achievement," Nathan said.

The report proposes reforms throughout the state's education system, with recommendations concerning school boards, charter schools, student assessments, principal pay, school budgets and funding sources for the group's proposals.

"With education, there are so many interconnected pieces," Think New Mexico Associate Director Kristina Fisher said. "We looked at it and said, 'We need more and better trained teachers. Well, that really requires better-prepared principals. Well, that really requires school boards and superintendents providing support. We kept seeing this as a really complex issue area but a profoundly important one."

Among the report's many recommendations are policy changes aimed at improving education for teachers. While education programs at colleges nationwide have seen an enrollment decline of about one-third in the last decade, the report points out New Mexico's have seen a 75 percent decrease.

In order to "revamp colleges of education," Think New Mexico recommends tasking the Public Education Department with evaluating education programs in the state's colleges, whose curricula the report states "have not generally evolved to keep up with new research about best practices." The group also recommends reinstating the Praxis exams requirements for teacher licensure, which was eliminated by the department this year.

"The PED currently accredits schools of education," Fisher said, "but what we don't think they've taken a really good look at are things like, how does the current curriculum that's being taught match up to best practices?

Mississippi Superintendent of Education Carey Wright has attributed much of the state's increased reading proficiency to implementation of the "science of reading" method of instruction. Think New Mexico's report points out teachers throughout the state are completing courses in that "evidence-based system for improving early literacy" and questions why it wasn't in their college curriculum.

Under a new law, the report proposes, the Public Education Department could make accreditation of the eight colleges in the state with education programs contingent on curricula standards.

In April, the department issued a memo stating most Praxis examinations — subject skills tests for educators — would be removed from the requirements for teaching licensure in lieu of a new portfolio review process to demonstrate competency in instruction. Passing scores on an elementary reading Praxis test remain a requirement for elementary educators, per state statute.

The report recommends the governor and legislature act to maintain the Praxis requirement, citing research from the National Council on Teacher Quality that shows a correlation between testing rates of teachers and student achievement.

Other policy proposals in the report include:

Increasing the minimum instructional time for elementary, middle and high school students to 1,170 hours — the equivalent of an extra hour a day for elementary school students and a half-hour a day for middle and high school students.

Requiring school board members to resign from their seats as soon as they file paperwork to run for another elected office.

* Making it easier to close charter schools that are failing to meet performance measures.

* Streamlining the process for replicating successful charter schools.

* Allowing voters to choose to deconsolidate Albuquerque Public Schools, and any other districts that exceed 35,000 students, into several smaller districts.

The recurring expenses of the recommendations, the report states, can be covered by the $84 million likely to be generated if voters pass a November ballot measure to draw money from the state's Land Grant Permanent Fund for education.

Fisher said some of the group's proposals have been discussed in New Mexico before while others are new — such as policies aimed at discouraging nepotism and careerism in school boards at the expense of students.

"There is money to do everything we're recommending, which is rare in New Mexico," Fisher said. "We're often in a sort of scarcity mentality. But right now, it's not."