In 2019 a court found the state of New Mexico violated the constitutional rights of certain students through inadequate education. But New Mexico is still struggling to meet the remedies laid out by that court in the Yazzie/Martinez lawsuit. A policy analyst told lawmakers Tuesday this is true despite increases in education funding.
The lawsuit found several state agencies and the Legislature responsible for violating the constitutional rights of certain students by providing inadequate education. Those included English language learners, Hispanic and Native American students, those with disabilities and low-income students.
Legislative Finance Committee Analyst Sunny Liu told the Legislative Finance Committee that since the ruling, the Legislature has increased funding for public education by 58%, which amounts to about $1.6 billion.
In spite of this funding, Liu said that at-risk students weren’t receiving more money than their peers meaning that those achievement gaps in test scores, graduation rates, and college remediation rates are not being closed as mandated by the lawsuit to provide a sufficient education for these students.
“Those achievement gaps are still there between the at-risk categories that the court noted. Even though we have a different metric today, we’re still seeing similar trends that what we saw when the court issued its order,” said Liu.
By looking at Fiscal Year 2023, the gaps in reading range from 16% to 32% and 13% to 25% in math.
Liu said another goal of the lawsuit was to provide high-quality teachers to students. While the legislature has boosted teacher pay, increasing our ranking from 49th in the nation to 22nd, teacher vacancies have increased a bit from 644 in 2019 to 751 vacancies in 2023.
Gwen Perea Warniment, director of the Legislative Education Study Committee, asked lawmakers on the committee moving forward to consider making specific, but differentiated, policy in order to meet multiple goals of the lawsuit at once. She also suggested lawmakers make policies that go beyond the Yazzie/Martinez suit since everyone should be committed to creating quality education even when all the goals of the lawsuit have been met.
Warniment also said looking at some implementation so far, the state is seeing some positive outputs like more teachers in teacher prep programs and more community schools, but actual outcomes from those shifts will take at least one to three years.
This coverage is made possible by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and KUNM listeners.
