Comparing gubernatorial candidate education plans (there really is no comparison)

If you haven’t figured it out by now, Mark Ronchetti is a policy wonk. His education plan spans six pages of detailed proposals. We’ll discuss some of it here in this post.

Incumbent Gov. Lujan Grisham apparently believes she can win another four years in office without telling people what she intends to do. She offers a bit of information on what she’s done in education but fails to account for the numerous challenges of the last four years or New Mexico’s pitiful performance in education.

Ronchetti on the other hand spends 1.5 pages discussing the importance of education, then he addresses learning loss during COVID and some ideas for making up that gap. He wants to cut administration so $$ flow to the classroom, he wants to tangibly increase parental involvement, he wants to enhance intra-district choice although limited to public and charter schools.

Ronchetti further focuses on vocational learning and apprenticeships, emphasizing recruitment and retention of school leaders. He addresses early reading preparation and even pre-K. In conclusion he discusses ways to improve school safety.

We’d like to see Ronchetti focus more attention on funding students directly rather than bureaucracies, but no matter what you think ideologically, Ronchetti and his team have clearly studied NM’s education issues and have put together a detailed plan. MLG offers no serious ideas for getting New Mexico out of 50th (or 51st) in education.