A New Mexican vision for public education

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

In September, 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, including many from Santa Fe Public Schools, responded and recommended clear next steps:

Challenging academic content standards should inform social and cultural awareness, life skills, literacy, and science, technology, engineering and math.

Teachers can best gauge students’ learning through limited standardized testing, and with hands-on work individualized, and 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 attitude, and family and community relations.

Through another stakeholder engagement process, the New Mexico Public Education Department partnered with New Mexico First to convene town halls in Santa Fe and five other local communities

and offer an online survey. The department heard from more than 1,825 New Mexicans. The findings can be found on the New Mexico First website.

In aggregate, thousands of New Mexicans shared their voices, insights and expertise to inform the future of our public education. The Public Dduction Department has the opportunity to listen to this feedback, inform the plan to submit to the Department of Energy and implement changes based on thoughtful input. We ask the Public Education Department to utilize the input from all stakeholders — New Mexico School Superintendents’ Association, New Mexico Coalition for Charter Schools and Learning Alliance First Report as well as other stakeholder feedback methods — as they finalize their Every Student Succeeds Act state plan. Communities, districts, individual schools and policymakers have opportunities to be responsive, too.

Asking for feedback and then ignoring it is a quick way to lose trust. The New Mexico School Superintendents’ Association, the New Mexico Coalition for Charter Schools, and Learning Alliance New Mexico 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 communityled strategies to improve our public education.

Greta Roskom and Kelly Callahan are co-executive directors of New Mexico Coalition for Charter Schools. Other contributors include Ian Esquibel, executive director of Learning Alliance New Mexico, and Stan Rounds, executive director of New Mexico School Superintendents’ Association.