K-12 education is a serious and ongoing problem in New Mexico. I wrote about it in The Alibi last week. The Rio Grande Foundation has been impressed with the results of Florida’s education reform under Jeb Bush approximately a decade ago, so Dr. Matthew Ladner wrote a study explaining how Florida turned their educational system around and how that has led to dramatic improvements in educational attainment, particularly for minorities. The full study can be found here.
One chart that explains just how well Florida has done is this chart which explains how low-income Hispanic children are beating New Mexico’s general student population on an important and widely-respected standardized test:
Because of the importance of this issue and the compelling results experienced by Florida, we are hosting Dr. Ladner for a series of events in Albuquerque. More information on Ladner’s presentations in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Las Cruces — including information on how to register and attend these events — can be found here.
Could it be that Florida retains its poor scoring third graders and, thus removes them from the testing pool?
Our 2009 state test results for Hispanic tenth graders were as follows in our five level system:
Level 1 (lowest possible on this test) 40%
Level 2 30%
Level 3 16%
Level 4 6%
Level 5 8%