Let’s Talk New Mexico 10/12, 8am: Yazzie/Martinez v. State of New Mexico is the landmark education equity case that found the state was not meeting its constitutional duty of providing high quality education to students who are low-income, Native American, have disabilities or are English-language learners.
However, the suit settled in 2018 and the state is still out of compliance with that ruling. The parties headed back to court earlier this year where the New Mexico Public Education Department was tasked to create a remedial order, or an action plan, detailing how the state would carry out several key issues like improving low test scores and graduation rates, addressing the lack of culturally appropriate curriculum, and curtailing high rates of college remediation.
Over the last seven years $1.6 billion dollars have been spent on New Mexico students’, especially those named in the suit, but inequities have persisted.
That plan was brought to court this week, but the Santa Fe New Mexican reports, it received documents with interviews with current and former state workers and their emails showing that despite PED creating multiple drafts of a plan, none were ever carried out, even those plans that were sent to Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham for review and approval.
Advocates are outraged as years of promises have been broken and many kids in the state’s public education system have been left behind.
On the next Let’s Talk New Mexico we’ll dig into why the state has yet to carry out the plans in Yazzie/Martinez and next steps. What would you like to see for New Mexico students? Do you believe there needs to be greater oversight of the Public Education Department? Email us at LetsTalk@kunm.org, leave a voice message by clicking the button below, or call in live Thursday morning at 8.
Support for this episode comes from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
