Public feedback vital to deciding schools’ direction

Partnerships build trust, unify districts that have differing needs

The Every Student Succeeds Act, which replaced No Child Left Behind in late 2015, encourages more local control of education. Additionally, ESSA requires stakeholder engagement to inform the plans states will submit to the federal Department of Education. New Mexicans were able to comment on our state plan through April 1 by visiting the NM Public Education Department website.

During September 2016, the New Mexico School Superintendents’ Association, New Mexico Coalition for Charter Schools and Learning Alliance New Mexico invited New Mexicans to share their thoughts about the direction of public education. We created a toolkit with common questions and common processes for students, families, educators and community members to use across our state. More than 4,000 New Mexicans responded and recommended clear next steps:

Challenging academic content standards should inform social and cultural awareness, life skills, literacy and STEM.

Teachers can best gauge students’ learning through limited standardized testing, hands-on work, individualized, varied assessments.

Information important in identifying teachers’ strengths and areas for improvement include multiple student assessment outcomes, classroom observations, parent and student surveys and self-evaluations.

Vital aspects of schools to be measured or counted include student-focused school culture, teacher and staff work ethic and attitudes and family and community relations.

Through another stakeholder engagement process, NMPED partnered with New Mexico First to convene town halls in six local communities and offer an on-line survey. NMPED heard from more than 1,825 New Mexicans. Their findings can be found on the NM First website.

In aggregate, thousands of New Mexicans shared their voices, insights and expertise to inform the future of our public education. NMPED has the opportunity to listen to this feedback, inform the plan to submit to DOE and implement changes based on thoughtful input. We ask NMPED to utilize the input from all stakeholders — the NMCCS/NMSSA/Learning Alliance Report, the New Mexico First Report as well as other stakeholder feedback methods — as they finalize their ESSA State Plan. Communities, districts, individual schools and policy makers have opportunities to be responsive, too.

Asking for feedback and then ignoring it is a quick way to lose trust. NMSSA, NMCCS and Learning Alliance are committed to working with New Mexicans and moving toward the vision we created together. We invite you to join us.

The vision cannot be a “one-size-fits-all” model because we heard clearly that one size doesn’t fit all. Still, the vision can unify statewide work in innovative ways. Efforts like Mission: Graduate in central New Mexico, the SUCCESS Partnership in Doña Ana County and Santa Fe Birth to Career Collaboration align services and create bridges to better serve our students. Imagine if we scaled up a similar statewide effort, driven by local input, supported by local policy, led by local leaders, all for the benefit of our local students, educators and schools? That’s the future we work toward.

Partnering together through public, private and philanthropic groups, we can lift our state to better outcomes. New Mexicans have called for change and offered solutions. Now is the time to follow community-led strategies to improve our public education.