Education secretaries discuss need for more collaboration

The leaders of the state’s three education agencies emphasized a need for collaboration when it comes to tracking the educational — and ultimately, professional — needs of New Mexico’s students.

To achieve that goal, Higher Education Secretary Stephanie Rodriguez highlighted a tool called the New Mexico Longitudinal Data System during a virtual panel Tuesday morning. It will connect the Department of Workforce Solutions with the Higher Education, Public Education, and Early Childhood Education and Care departments and build a system that develops a warehouse of relevant information that can help state leaders identify what practices and programs are essential in turning children into productive members of the state’s workforce.

As for what data might be captured, Rodriguez casted a wide net for the four departments to mine.

“It’s everything,” Rodriguez said. She emphasized it was important for the system to find which services and programs were helpful in steering children through school to either college or a successful job.

“This is going to be an intense collaboration with these four agencies to really start measuring students’ performance,” Rodriguez said.

A key component to that system is to improve the pipeline of teachers and educators the state produces, and the three department heads said they already were on a path toward doing that. Elizabeth Groginsky, the early childhood education and care secretary, said her department is focused on improving pay for child care and early childhood educators. She said the average salary for child care workers is $27,000, and the department created a wage supplement program in its budget for them.

Groginsky added the Governor’s Office has requested $4.5 million to help boost pay for child care employees with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

“We have made significant investments in wage supplement and will continue to look at ways to increase compensation for the early childhood work force who do seek credentials and degrees to make sure that pay matches the experience,” she said.

Public Education Department Secretary Ryan Stewart said making certification of Native language teachers on par with certification of other programs will be a priority for his department this summer. He added it is crucial to address because it affects those teachers’ salaries, while also providing an enriching education to students, especially Indigenous students.

“We need to look at this system and how to better balance it to create more parity among that group of teachers, so that way this situation doesn’t persist in the future,” Stewart said.

Rodriguez said several colleges provide Native language programming, but the Higher Education Department is working with school officials to develop programming that is representative of the diverse culture in the state.

Rodriguez added the Higher Education Department’s Teacher Affordability Preparation Scholarship, which goes to students involved in teacher preparation programs at in-state schools, helped more than 600 students during the 2019-20 school year. The Teacher Loan Prepayment Program, designed to increase the number of teachers in highneeds public school positions through a loan repayment program, has been used by more than 500 teachers.

“Supporting these programs [is] key to providing future teachers with the financial aid they need to carry them through higher education and beyond,” Rodriguez said.

Another important component of Rodriguez’s plan is the expansion of the Opportunity Scholarship, which could help up to 30,000 college students. The Senate Education Committee has backed Senate Bill 135, which appropriates $26 million for the program and includes $4 million for a pilot program aimed at students who don’t qualify for the Lottery Scholarship.

Rodriguez said the Opportunity Scholarship program would not just affect full-time students. It is geared toward part-time students since it requires participants to take only six credit hours. That provision, she said, is to help professionals seeking to earn associate or bachelor’s degrees to help with their advancement of their careers.

Stewart said programs like that can help education assistants who are trying to fulfill their course requirements while also getting essential classroom experience.

“We want to make sure every school and staff member is allowed to make a wage where they can lead the lives they need and have the support they need,” Stewart said.