On this week’s show, we spent a lot of time talking about the proposed Hispanic Education Act.  Governor Richardson has charged Education Secretary Veronica Garcia with helping to draft the legislation in time for the upcoming 30-day session, which starts on January 19th.  The legislation is designed to help bridge the achievement gap in our schools between ethnic groups.  Here are some of the main reasons why the Governor and others believe the legislation is crucial to shoring up that achievement gap:

• Nearly 56% of students in New Mexico schools are Hispanic and Latino
• The graduation rate for Hispanic and Latino students is about 56%, compared to 71% for non-Hispanic white students
• Hispanic and Latino students also lag behind Anglo students in both math and english scores by about 20%

“The Latino education crisis is not a Latino problem; it is America’s problem.”
–President Barack Obama

So, what exactly would the Hispanic Education Act do?  According to the PED, the Act would “include language, culture, unity, community and parental involvement, accountability, and student outcomes or impact on students.” Secretary Veronica Garcia went on to outline four primary goals of the Act:

1. Codify a formal Hispanic Advisory Council that would institutionalize statewide community engagement.
2. Require the PED to provide an annual P-20 status report on the state of Hispanic Education.
3. Require district and schools to: ensure and measure student access to programs, ensure and track student participation in programs, access effectiveness of education programs with regard to Hispanic students, ensure that parent committee memberships are representative of the ethnic makeup of school communities; and promote parental involvement.
4. The Act would be modeled after the state’s Indian Education Act that was passed back in 2003.

For those not familiar with the Indian Education Act, it was designed to support tribes in implementing curricula in Native American language, culture and history, in the hopes of improving test scores in reading and math.  As part of the Act, an Indian Education Division was created within the PED, as well as an Indian Education Advisory Council, which helps districts and tribes plan and implement curricul in native languages, culture and history. If Lawmakers approve the measure in the upcoming session it would apparently be the first such legislation passed in the U.S.  The Obama administration has made the schievement gap a big priority as well, as expressed by Juan Sepulveda, director of the White House Initiative on Excellence for Hispanic Americans.  Mr. Sepulveda has said he admires New Mexico’s aggresive approach to the problem, and wants states in general to have a bigger sense of urgency on this issue.

Of course, not everyone is in favor of the legsilation.  Senator Mark Boitano joined us on the show with Secretary Garcia to lay out his concerns, in part because they feel it will just create more bureaucracy. Secretary Garcia counters that this issue is crucial to the overall health of our state, especially when you consider dropouts from the class of 2008 will cost New Mexico roughly $3.6 billion in lost wages (over their lifetime).

No one seems to dispute that the Hispanic achievement gap is a substantial problem.  The real question seems to be whether or not this legislation is the best way to go about trying to solve the problem. Only time will tell what happens with this legislation, but I think everyone agrees as a state we need to find new and unique ways to try and bridge this gap.

Updated: A big mea culpa from all of us here at NEW MEXICO IN FOCUS.  In the show on the Hispanic Education Gap, we mistakenly identified Senator Mark Boitano as a Democrat.  He is, of course, a Republican.  We apologize for the mistake and will work harder to do better in the future.

The Public Affairs Team

Tags: Hispanic Education, KNME, New Mexico, NMiF

This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 7:00 pm and is filed under New Mexico inFocus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.