Should Albuquerque Public Schools just give up until the economy turns around?

A former mayor of Albuquerque wrote an article defending the district for its poor academic performance. His basic thesis being: poverty makes it impossible for the District to perform as well as other, more economically-prosperous districts.

All I can say is “wow” and that this is the type of defeatist attitude that has led New Mexico to its current sorry state. We can’t develop our economy because we are too isolated and don’t have enough water (to name a few issues). We can’t educate our kids because we our too poor. I guess we should just give up.

The fact is that school choice has repeatedly been shown in empirical analyses to improve student outcomes, but APS has opposed choice and worked in the Legislature to oppose it.

The Democrat-controlled Legislature is in session RIGHT NOW. They COULD adopt school choice to help fix the situation right now. They won’t, not because it doesn’t work, but because of politics and the fact that too many New Mexicans have accepted the lie that we are somehow too poor to succeed.

Still don’t believe that poverty can be overcome? Look at the international PISA test results and see how many countries far poorer than the USA are beating us educationally: