By The People of New Mexico: Closing the Achievement Gap

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. . . Welcome to the historic Wool Warehouse in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I'm Kate Nelson. In just a few minutes, these seats will be filled by members of our community here to discuss one of the most pressing educational issues in our state, the achievement gap. For centuries, New Mexico has boasted a wonderfully diverse, multicultural population, but too many members of that population continue to suffer in our schools. By the people is a unique effort by PBS to bring together 16 stations from around the nation for lively dialogues featuring everyday citizens. Besides meeting in small groups to discuss solutions to the achievement gap, they'll have a chance to question leading educational decision makers about what they plan to do to ensure a better future for all of our children. This is, by the people.

. This program was made possible by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation with additional support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. Additional support for the production of this program provided by the New Mexico Public Education Department. The achievement gap, I think, is quite obvious because New Mexico ranks number 48 out of the 50 states, and we need to change what we're doing. The achievement gap is very wide between the Native Americans and the Hispanics and the Anglos. Everybody should be working at the same level. I think the achievement gap in New Mexico is very racial to me because it really segregates a lot of our students.

They seem to concentrate on the fact that it was an ethnic issue. I think it's actually more of a family and economic level issue. The achievement gap is the last measure on your chart, and you could clearly see that Hispanic, African-American, Native American, as well as special education students, and children coming from economically depressed households are not achieving at nearly the same levels as their Asian and Anglos counterparts. In recent months, I have talked publicly and extensively about my desire to find lasting solutions to close the opportunity or achievement gap, and obviously it is clearly linked to issues of poverty. So I'm going to share a few statistics with you. In New Mexico, out of our total student population of 326,000 some students, we have 150,000 some students, approximately half of them, are referred to as Title I students.

These are students whose families are living or at or below the poverty level as designated by the federal government. Relative to most other states in the country, our number of Title I students relative to our total student population is very high. I came here today because I'm a concerned parents, and I have a parents with boys, and I'll bring the voices of a community too. And I want to talk about parental involvement. I want to try to voice all the parents that we're involved in in schools, and then how can we do a change? There are so many misunderstand about these students, especially students that came from Mexico. When they come to the system, they really don't understand what's going on.

And there's nobody to tell them, so you lose that kid. People think that because you don't speak English, you're an ignorant. And then when you have two classes and you have it in English, it's hard to achieve what you're supposed to. And even when they give the classes, sometimes they don't use the correct Spanish. And then the students don't feel connected with the system, with the way they're being teach. They need to learn English, and they need to do it right away. But sometimes they didn't get the help, and then teachers sometimes doesn't have time to do it. So these kids are pushed away from the schools.

They've been ignored. So they'll get tired and drop out. They're achievement gap. It needs to be with parents as well as schools. I think they need to learn from parents and parents' needs to learn from schools. But the big problem is that we don't have that communication. And then these kids have productive relationships with our students that can assess that's the idea for students and them. So, what do you think about getting more music to that skill? They have its faces. What do I think about being engaged and you don't know about that skill? I think about doing more work with the people that we're seeing.

However, that's a way to understand the skills that you give to the students. They talk about parent participation but the reality is that when they have that participation they don't know how to do with it. One of my ideas for the children to learn is preach with the example. That's why we have classes for parents and we do workshops and we do a lot of things with the parents. So they're with the example they're teaching their children, you know, what they can do. The first time that the parents come, it's usually the first worry about is to help their kids. Because they said, my kid is doing algebra and school and I can help. I don't know what's he or she's talking about.

But then, after coming to classes, they came to me and said, you know what, teacher? I could help my kids yesterday and doing this because he's doing exactly what we are doing. Not to be an animal, not to say, it's just a class. It's not to be an animal. It's not to be an animal. It's not to be an animal. It's to be an animal. It's to be an animal. It's to be an animal. It's to be an animal. It's to be an animal. It's to be an animal. It's to be an animal. The education leaders are in the first steps of barely listening to parents. And that's because the parents have basically come out and stayed the thing to be involved. The education leaders who may be an elected office seem to only be concerned before the elections. After that, other issues, whether it's fundraising or other higher priority fires, we're always putting out fires.

And education is a long-term need, which needs long-term concentrated attention. It doesn't always get it. People are like in Washington, for example. They need to come down here to Albuquerque and see what something the problems are. And when you don't know exactly what the problems are, the solution that you come up with may not solve the problem. Today, I'm here for some information or to get my views out on the education of my two boys. Eric's first grade year was an adjustment. Me and his father had separated, and we kind of all felt like, you know, where do we go? What do we do? And he had a hard time, you know, socializing with other kids at the beginning of the year was rough. Hi, guys.

Hi, mom. Hi, good to have a good day at school. Hi, my name is Corona. Thank you for all your help. You're welcome. Have a good evening. Good night. He went to an after school program. It was open to kids in our, in our school because of the probation period that they were on for having lower test scores than other schools. When I heard that we were on probation, it was kind of disappointing. I was school today. Good night. You have to be there spelling for sentences and everybody. My favorite pizza is. To know that the test scores were low and that our children weren't, you know, at standards. It's just, you know, you wonder why. And I guess that's the disappointing side is that you wonder, why aren't we there? So we had the opportunity to, you know, be in this program and because I was concerned about, you know, my son's education.

He had one on one time with a tutor and, and at this time he, you know, he had her complete attention. The area that Eric was having trouble in was his reading, was mostly his reading skills. He was reading the low grade level. I did. Having that one on one with the teacher, you know, where he felt comfortable asking our questions and learning. Just, just the two of them. I mean, I think it made an improvement on, you know, his work. He could sit and do a task from start to finish and do it well. So he made a tremendous turnaround. Now that the beginning of the year, we had an open house at school. They explained that we were no longer on a probation period. Our percentages in the student scores had improved, so they were no longer able to provide us with the YDI tutoring because we were off of the probation period.

So with the increasing test scores, they took this program away from us. And I do. I felt that it is disappointing because, you know, lots of times you just don't pick up where you left off. You need that boost to continue to make better scores. It's very frustrating to me because the kids still, they still need the tutoring. You know, just because the school performed at a higher level doesn't mean that each individual student performed at a higher level. And so those services should still be available to those students who need them. I'm hoping that we can get to that point where we're ahead or equal to two other states, other districts, other communities, even here in the city. That's the most important thing to me is that we succeed. I don't want my children to be a statistic.

I want to close by sharing with you one of my favorite quotes by Margaret Mead. This quote is, never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. And I believe that maybe today with your work, some really wonderful ideas will come forth that can help us as an entire community. Because I think as these statistics have shown us, the schools cannot address all of these issues by themselves. We as a whole community need to work together if we truly are going to close the achievement gap and raise expectation excellence for all students. So, as you head off into your break and out into your work groups, know that your ideas and input will be fully considered and are greatly valued. And I look forward to rejoining you in a few hours to discuss this issue further. Looking forward to hearing what other people have to say, since maybe there are some younger people here who are closely connected to the topic at the moment.

So, I've been in the background with no young children, no grandchildren. Small discussion groups are good because you get a chance to interface with other people and what they think. And interesting to learn what they perceive or problems are either good or bad. All right, so the next issue we're going to be addressing then is the teachers, more training for teachers in higher pay, would that help close the gap in which ways? Some of the biggest thing, how many people want to be in teaching, especially in New Mexico? Yeah, I mean, if we've got people who are in charge, more than we're in charge a lot of times, of how our children are going to turn out, and they're making minimum wage almost. It's so poor.

People are going to go out and they want a high paying job, or at least they want to be able to earn a good living. And here in New Mexico, our teachers can't really do that, so unless you have that just desire to teach, and here in New Mexico, that's what it is, the desire to teach that keeps people that we do have. Aren't they as important as an engineer who's going to come by and make sure that this works right? These are our kids. There's actually some teachers out there that haven't given a second job, support themselves. It's not because it's not enough money and teachers work a weekend, they stay laid out your school, they come in early in the morning because they need to get the job done. There's nowhere to pay for what they do. They need to, you know, people think, oh, well, they get off at 330, 345, whatever. There's not a teacher at our school, and we're at a charter school. There's not a teacher there that gets out the door before, five or six. It just doesn't happen because there's just so much going on, and then they've got all these paperwork now to fill out. They don't get any extra pay for filling out, but now they've got a lot of paperwork to fill out.

But doesn't that show you that the teachers care for their kids? The teachers do. Because I can tell you, and I'm not going to say, well, school, but it's just the experience that I had, they show me they didn't care about my grandkids education. Because mine is like already in the fifth or sixth grade. I didn't even know she didn't know how to read. And that's scary. And how come, you know, the teachers didn't tell me. But, you know, I would love to thank my teachers with the education that they gave to my grandkids. I thank everybody, you know, that helped me out. Because, you know, some of us are not educated, to be honest with you, because we're always home. I don't know what's going on. So we know we date our teachers. You know, I would love people every year to visit, and just because our teachers there that I loved, and my teacher will tell me. You know, he stays there because he loves teaching. He's really always talk about what I'm doing and where I'm working in. We got into this conversation one time about what I'm doing and how much I'm making. I make more money than he does.

And I just graduated the year and a half a year. Our question is, will sufficient support be provided for continuing education, for teacher development, using training paid by individual school districts? Welcome to the national level. Within North Charlotte behind, there is a provision to provide a teacher development and retention. And, in part of the president's 2006 fiscal year budget, which is still not been considered by Congress. There's a couple of programs, because we know that in high-need schools, particularly where there's minority enrollment, there's a high-qualified teacher specifically in the course subjects of math and science. And so the president's proposed a teacher incentive fund to attract high-qualified teachers to high-need schools. It's also improving a teacher grants program that's proposed so that it will contribute to teachers for the development again specifically in those high-need areas.

So there are some proposals on the way that is designed to address what's existing shortage among many school districts in terms of identifying, recruiting, and retaining high-qualified teachers. And that's at the national level. Let's get back to the question about teachers. And, Veronica, I'd like you to talk about the three-tiered teacher pay. Right. We, the legislature passed a significant reform bill called House Bill 212. And that contained a three-tiered licensure system for teachers, where entry salary is $30,000. And within seven years, if you progress through the program and you pursue further development can be making $50,000 a year, which we hope will help us retain and recruit qualified teachers. However, the issue of ongoing education and pain for ongoing education has been an area that we have not in the past, had the luxury of having additional dollars to bring to bear to that.

However, during this legislative session, as I mentioned earlier, it is evident that we're going to have to provide significant professional development to our teachers in mathematics in particular, but also in reading and second language acquisition. And so we need to partner with universities to provide summer institutes in these areas where they can also continue their coursework. This all sounds great, unless I'm a teacher in a rural area. How can I get that training out in the middle of nowhere? We have a mentorship program that we've been funding for quite some time now. And mentorship program are those for their teachers. We know that we lose them the first couple of years. So we set somebody up to stay with that teacher that first year or two through the university system. They're doing that mentorship program that we have in the state of New Mexico. We also have a teacher loan forgiveness program, which is really important. You come in, we're going to forgive some of those deaths if you incur it as you become a teacher. So we are moving in that direction. We have those opportunities available to them. Your question is right on the button, though. How do we do that?

We're going to have to make use of the technology that is involved right there, because those teachers are out there in the rural areas, they're going to have to be able to go to the community colleges and get credit at the university levels. And we're going to have to be able to reciprocate when we're going to have to. But are we doing that? Yes, we are. We have distance learning opportunities in various communities. In every rural area or is it facing you? Through the community, well, I would imagine that through the branch and some of the column twigs. We have different branches of the major universities across the state that pretty much anywhere in the state. You can have access through distance learning to get credit. We think there's one intended consequences here that I think that we see at Whitefield because we operate early here. We operate early head start and head start in four counties, and we have 33 centers. And as these requirements have been imposed upon our teachers at the early head start, head start levels to get higher educational levels and obtain it. Which is a good thing. As soon as we do that, we lose them.

We lose them to the schools. We cannot compete with them. So at the early head start, the childcare centers, all of that, we are now at a very distinct disadvantage. And so at very critical times when we and our children's learning, we are losing our most qualified teachers to the schools. Businesses are the ones who complain that they don't have an educated population to draw up on. Is anything being done to encourage businesses to individually step up to say provide a teacher's sabbatical support, not sort of thing. That's a wonderful idea, and I think something that we need to pursue, we have the GBs, which is the governor's business executive's for education. And I'm going to take that idea to them because I know that, like for example, P&M does support in a doubt chair or several at the university. But I don't know of any supporting sabbatical. And I think that's a wonderful idea. We had a parent that was from Cuba, and the daughter was enrolled in the institution going through the orientation. Not knowing that I knew how to speak Spanish.

So I was giving him all the information, and he was talking to his daughter, and basically telling his daughter whatever they tell you, don't believe what they say. When we come home, what tell you the room? Yeah, don't believe anything they have to say because they don't understand where we're coming from our culture and this and that sort of thing. So yeah, so are we doing a good enough job of reaching out to the various communities in the state? If these people are going to become so zoos and want to come to our country for whatever reason, why shouldn't that be a part of their coming in? Right. So the question still is who? I mean, is it the school administrators, the teachers, the NCAA government, because they're bringing them and encouraging them to come in? So that falls on their shoulder. Unfortunately, as long as I can remember it, I'm a grandfather now, a long time. I've been associated with neighbors, friends, people that have been in the United States for many years, and they still have a lot of speaking English. And unfortunately, when I've mentioned earlier, when the kids go home, there's nobody there to help them with a school or whatever.

And there's been here some 40 years and they still don't want to learn. Do we promote in our state diversity the way that we should? You think about it when I've had the pleasure of being able to travel extensively and talk to different people and in a lot of the European countries, they speak four different languages. However, you go to the schools and they're teaching you there's some tracks in French, maybe some tracks in Spanish and this and that. But they're really not promoting bilingual education for people to do. And it's controversial. I mean, it is. I mean, I hear these arguments about it. And yet, we have so many Spanish speaking people in our country that that at least would be one, but we have lots of languages in our country. Okay, you should see the little children how they pick up English, just like that. They learn, they pick it up fast.

So, it's when they're young. So, we need to educate the parents. How are we going to educate the parents? They're not willing to learn. And you can lay the horse, the water, but you can't make up your area. How do we do? Well, that's one issue that we should all maybe think about. We know that we can help contribute. Passes on to a state level and pass it on to a national level. That's who I go. So, this is one problem that we're always going to have. We don't get to the root of the problem. We are a bilingual state. So, there should be an expectation at our state level that even if the parents can't speak English, that we can facilitate speaking Spanish, Vietnamese, or whatever to the parents to help them understand the school system. The contracts with the students and the expectations for their student language. You know what? That I come across a lot of like the principals or people that don't speak Spanish. They will ask help from another person.

They do speak Spanish. They'll say, I don't know how to do it. I don't speak that good Spanish. They will not. And you know perfectly well that they do speak Spanish. They will not do it. And I know a lot of like principals or concerts that they want help in translating to people they won't do it. In our group, we were quite interested in the number of students in New Mexico at being a boarder state who don't speak English. Actually, more than half of the dialogue in our group was conducted in Spanish with various people translating. So, our question to you is how do we accommodate in our public schools those students who don't speak English? We really have two programs. We have one program which is a bilingual program and that in our district primarily focuses on children who speak Spanish as their first language. Though in other parts of the state that may be a Native American language. But we have a program in which we work with kids in both languages at the goal of preserving the native language but also learning English because English is the economic language. We also have English as a second language program or English language learners. You're right, we're getting children from all over the world.

And they don't speak Spanish or a Native American language and we have to have a program for them. But we pay a lot of attention to that because one of the subgroups in terms of testing is how we do with children who speak a language other than English. But it has impacted students. I mean for example they have to be tested in mathematics and English regardless and so many of those have word problems. So if you don't have academic English you're going to have a problem. Native American students, we don't have tests for them. I mean we do have tests in Spanish but students have to be tested in English with a few exceptions after three years. We know that it takes seven years to acquire academic English even though you might be conversant. So I think it puts students who do not speak English as their first language at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to testing and accountability systems. So please be honest with me on your answer here. How good of a job is the state doing with these types of students?

I don't think that get a job. And I think it's not just the schools, I think it's society in general. I've been telling people for a long time America is going to have to wake up and smell the tortillas. We're not wearing a world economy here that requires multiple languages and we have been so focused on just English only and really geared in that perspective that we in essence have harmed ourselves and harmed our total society. I don't think it's just a school's fault. I think it's just a title fault. I've got to imagine that some of these children aren't going to learn English if they're not speaking at home. Is there a way of bringing their parents into these programs as well if the parents don't speak English? Absolutely necessary if it's going to change. If you see whole areas of our community now that are basically Spanish speaking, if you go down a street, I made your street now, all the signs are in Spanish. And I don't think that's the part of society I'm saying that we've not done well in inculcating and welcoming new populations and learning languages both ways. Not just English going one way, but whatever the language may be.

How does the lack of English mastery in our students affect our test results and what is there any accommodation done? I think it has a terribly negative effect because of the fact that there's quite a few assumptions to the question that we don't have those assumptions really well thought out. One is that the child is coming from the fourth grade to the fifth grade and the fifth grade to the sixth grade has been mastering as he goes along. What if that child comes in at the sixth grade, never been to the United States, starts there. He has to take or she has to take that test in April in English assuming that they can master all that time beforehand. So when that child doesn't do well, only a few children have to do poorly in that the entire school gets hit with the school and need of improvement. So there's another assumption in there that, well, we can do that in about three years and I think the Secretary said that can't be done. The opposite end of it is that there's going to be a push to try to get them just to learn just what you need to get to pass that test and meanwhile they start to fall back on everything else and the child continues to move backwards. So I think we need to take a really close look at looking back at no child left behind working on some of the issues and talking about issues that I think are more important as to how to look at growth issues,

how a child grows from year to year is more important than how he does from test to test in year to year in that particular school. What is the goal of her education? It's pure and simple. Is it to make good workers that are educated and that's it? Or to make good citizens and provide all these other things that, you know, let the children achieve more. They're happy in their own skin as it were. I think the reason that so many kids are born with school and drop out is because they have no free choice to research what it is that they are interested in. The schools are not masculine enough for a boys interest nor is it feminine enough for girls interest. I think each child should be allowed not to research what they are interested in instead of being expected to wait. So they can, one day, if they're lucky, go to four years of college and pay all those fees.

You have some poor stamps. I said the opportunity of the corporation, the schools, for example, a few kids want to be in junior mechanics. You can go help to go do that. Some girls want to be nurse, can be school for that and help to go look for that and have a class as a special for go in the career. My orientation classes, no. Yes, career orientation classes. My orientation classes, student have opted to be an engineer. I don't think that kids really know what they're going to be. But they really were meant to be if they have no time to develop their own interests. I didn't know what I wanted to be until years after I dropped out of school. At this point, a year after dropping out of school, my IQ permanently went up 25 to 30 points.

You see, they need to identify very early. I want to be a doctor. I want to be a lawyer. I want to be an engineer. If that's what you want to be an engineer, then you've got to take this backwards and all of that. If you work toward that goal, do we have a good dossier on every student? I, his interests, his likes, his IQ, the family situation, et cetera, et cetera. You look at this individual and say, I predict that he won't make it in life. Or I predict that he can do great if you're given the right circumstances, et cetera. See, when I, when I stood, nobody cared. You know, I was a name and a number and you know, they marched me through and I just did what I was told. A couple of points on relying on the expectations or ideas of other people, setting the bar for students, I think, as a day first thing, rely on the opinions or expertise.

There has to be some objective measures that add to that. And frankly, I don't think we know our children well enough. Parents often don't know their children. The teachers really don't have time to get to know their children. The students that they have so, this is a huge area that we're talking about right now, I believe. Do we really know how the public schools will teach to the interests of students with creative strategies, using the tools of higher standards such as math, science, and language? How we move kids into, get them engaged in the subject matter by looking ahead to where they'll be going somewhere else. Yes, you're absolutely correct. You are involved in high school reform and we're talking about the three R's and I think Dr. Cleveland talked about one of them in terms of relevance, but and rigor and relationship. And part of the relevance is getting students out in the community and being able to see why it is that I'm taking this chemistry or this physics, or this particular math course and how can I use the courses that I'm learning and what's the connection to the real world?

If you don't see the relevance in what you're learning, I don't think that you have the same kind of motivation. In terms of the relational aspect, teachers have to be able to relate to the students, you have to have that connection, but then as school systems, we have to build relationships also with the community, with industry, and students have to see that relationship. What do you ask of that community in return? What do you need it to do for you? We need them to get involved, we need them to communicate to us their needs, we need to see how we can partner on initiatives. And it's fascinating, you know, in Albuquerque, it's much different, but I've been in some small communities where there have been some interesting partnerships that have developed around creating, for example, industry around the internet, and how we can train students to be technologically savvy and still be able to contribute in their community and see a need to learn these higher level thinking skills. And when you say you need the community communicating with you, what does that look like? A business owner who's watching this program decides to call you?

Well, I think that, well, that's one aspect. The other is that within the schools, with the side councils, I think it's going to behoove the school leaders to reach out to the community to create a forum, whether it's a community conversation like I've been having around the state, or whether it's to have a standing advisory group for business and community leaders to be able to inform the school about what they want. It's activism or it's marketing as well, and I think we have to be able to tell industry, this is the impact it will have on you from a profit perspective if you are involved in the school, and that's what we're not doing. We're setting up an expectation without setting up profit in that process. Thank you very much. I just wondering, we have not done this yet, right? We haven't accomplished this. Right. Everything we're speaking of is purely theoretical. No, actually, we have a model then. We have accomplished. We have a model then. We have accomplished it. We have a model. We have accomplished it several ways. I think one of the ways we've accomplished it is that we have career academies

and students have a great deal of choice. And in those academies, we have partnerships at a very high level with business and industry so that students are getting experiences that people in that level site will make a difference in terms of their ability to be successful in higher ed and when they come to work for me. And so I think that partnership is at a much higher level. It's not the adopt a school. It's not just come in and visit or send tutors. It is. We're having a dialogue about what do you need and how do we get students prepared and how do we modify our curriculum and our programs so that students are better prepared? The other piece of that is choice. I think if high school kids today, we need to give them choices in the programs that they have, the high school level because at that point they do have interest and when they see that what they're doing in the classroom, we'll pay off for them. When they leave that classroom, they are much more excited. They are much more involved and they do a much better job.

I have the hardest time trying to be a parent volunteer at the school. I have volunteered since my daughter was in, well, since kindergarten, but actually at a school, when she went to middle school. I went to one of the middle schools to volunteer. They don't want you in the office. They don't want you in the counseling. They don't want you to hear anything. They don't want you to know anything. I mean, they want to totally separate you. It's very hard. It's very hard. The reason is that APS is responsible for every child. There's a lot of molesters going around and if you want to work with a child, you don't need to get screened, but then you have to pay to get screened. So that's another expense that parents cannot do. But as far as welcoming parents, I mean, they're always welcome to go in there and tutor. Like she said, it doesn't take the whole community. APS is now really getting involved with community involvement, but let me tell you what, if you're having a heck of a time getting parents to attend.

I have an organization in the community and for since I started, I want to work with the schools. Okay, now it passed five years and now we get a lot of parents involved. We informed them and we haven't participated in everything that we've done. But the reality is that the schools are not ready for this participation. And you know what? The governance is not only the budgets. As soon as you step in with something that is going to affect the education of the children, then you're not a welcome person anymore. Being an educator, I would welcome how wonderful it would be if I could have a grandparent come in every day for each one of my children and tutor them. It would be wonderful. So how come I want them? Excuse me.

May I give one of them? What do we need to do? We need to work on. I think, you know, there's not that there's bad person or bad teacher or they don't want to. They just need to get the information of what a federal government means, and how we can be partners with them. You come to my classroom, okay? You can help this child with his numbers, with his letters. But you have to go to the office and get a pass. Before you get a pass, you have to get a permit. And I think they're like $35. And parents are not willing to put out that money. And APS isn't willing to pay it for them. So we have the problem. And we do need to overcome the barriers so that we can have parental involvement and community involvement in our schools. And so we need to sit down with those people and talk about how come there's so many barriers. But how many parents are actually interested in doing this? I mean, we can all sit here and easily say that we would all be interested in doing this. But seemingly, so we're all interested in being here as part of it by the people discussion.

But we don't necessarily represent the average parent. Both parents are working loose. I mean, grandparents possibly because there's retirement things that maybe they have more time. But how many people can we actually expect as parents or concerns citizens to want to go into the community? What elements are included in making school plan to address parental involvement and inclusion of community and the education of our children? This was a huge issue among all the groups today. How to get parents more involved in the school enticing them in, finding time for them. Who has a great idea out there? Well, we've heard several ideas when I've been out having community conversations of what we might do. One is to be able to train parents to train other parents to have like basically a home meeting and where they could invite other parents to their home. Another idea that I heard from someone from another community indicated that the students themselves went to their parents employer and said, if you would let my mom or dad come to my school eight hours this year, your name will go up on a plaque and our gym is being a supporter of our school.

We're also looking at maybe some tax incentives for employers to allow parents to attend meetings and maybe keeping schools open for parent meetings later in the night so that they have better access to schools. But what parents will tell you is that they were comfortable when their children were in elementary school with going to school. And they got less and less comfortable as their child aged in the system and felt less welcome. So welcoming parents in that way is important. The Governor's initiative on school-based health centers. I think it's a great way to get families back into a school environment. We're moving social workers into schools to partner in schools now so that there's family preservation work and family support work happening in the schools. Again, it's making the school the center of everything, but really that is where children come and that's where we want families to come to help communities be stronger. I think that you're right and in elementary we do such a good job with that.

And then parents either don't feel comfortable and honestly sometimes kids don't want their parents there. But we're trying very hard to say come at all levels and we set up those conferences and we didn't know if at the secondary level parents would come they'd come in great numbers when the opportunity was provided. And sometimes if that interaction is not positive both go away, teacher and parent say I don't want to do that ever again. It's being able to navigate the parents in through the school system. Being able to show them that they are welcomed in there. For us as parents most of us are not welcomed. Most of us feel fearful of that. And when we have parents that are confident enough and assertive enough and aggressive and sometimes aggressive in that sense enough to make the teachers aware of what's going on to make the parents as well as parent to parent rather than teacher to administrator to parent to student. We're spending some time on this one and rightfully so because of the topic about parental involvement is I think by far not half at least three quarters of talking about student achievement and as has been stated before but let's get back to the nickel and dying part of it.

The school should be an integral part of that community and in New Mexico because most of it's rural a lot of us are from Connecticut but that's because it's the it's the big civic center and the big center of the state. But the rural area that is those schools are what probably is the local gymnasium and it's the community center and it's everything else. And the other hand and it's worth noting is that we spend about four billion dollars in the state of Mexico that's our budget. Two billion dollars of that goes to education and so we have a right to ask what is going on in those schools and we have a right to come into those schools and be welcome that is very important. And as we get into the older years right now we have a bill that says you're going to have to have the next step program in which 11th grade parents are expected to come to the schools they're going to have to know how to navigate that system how to feel welcome. To ask and demand those schools be an open area and you're very welcome you walk through those doors and that's going to be hard to do that's going to involve change needed change.

I have a follow up question on that as far as going from a high school on over the transitional phase from from elementary to middle school is one one phase and then we have the middle school to high school. Now we have parents that are willing to be involved in the high school level but the thing is is what can be done at the university level to better educate teachers and development language barriers special education and the core academics so that we as parents are navigating now into the universities what can be done for that. I think the universities particularly are looking at that right now you know we have a new cabinet secretary of higher education and I think that if you look at what's going on in the universities and you see the dialogue in the newspaper you see universities concerned about that transition period. They've started now programs for young people and families to go before the school year starts and they're much more concerned about keeping them in school for that critical first year of university.

I think New Mexico's made some great strides we have the lottery scholarship but having the universities actually pay attention to holding the students and finding out what their issues are in order to keep them in that process and engaging the families in it. What's a little difficult I had a son that didn't particularly want to go to university and because he was 18 it's difficult for a parent to stay involved in that process. I think the universities are beginning to address it in a much more proactive way. We have our final question and this is a really good one this sort of wraps up everything that this day is about and will continue to be about in the years to come. We have the politically incorrect statement for you in question. As we looked at closing the achievement gap we began to be concerned about those people who are in charge of making legislative and educational decisions and the legislation that goes with it and we're wondering when was the last time each of you were actually in a classroom where you were completely responsible for the management of that classroom and for the learning that went on there. Actually let this week you were for how long for how long were you in that classroom.

I did teach a class I taught a class at the Row High School and I got to teach it a math class and it was fabulous being in that classroom. I did try to get up to the work and was it we're we're wanting this to be in an incognito talking where they don't know who you are. The classroom is not set up. The school is not prepared. I do. I do get a realistic idea from this level of what's actually happening down here. I think it's a wonderful idea. Let's start with you. I'd love to answer that question because of the fact that I put myself out as soon as I became the vice chairman of education many, many years ago. I put myself out as a sub. I worked as a sub every single day in Albuquerque Public Schools. Nobody knew where I was coming from. Every year I come back and I try to do at least at least two weeks worth of work as a substitute teacher in the APS Public Schools. I'm not experienced. What did you learn from that experience? What did you learn that you hadn't known before?

That's a great question because every teacher that I spoke after they found I didn't take long for it. So there's a representative in B1. They all said, you know what? And I spoke with them. I said, we'll do this and do this. You know what? I can't do that because the law doesn't allow me to do that. And I said, you know what? I know the law and that's not true. You really can't do that. The teachers have a lot more control and they have a lot more abilities than they think they do. But that's a great question. Let's go down the panel. Adam Chavez. I haven't been in a classroom teaching the way you suggest. But I am a product of Public Schools. Chris Baca? I have been in the classroom. I have taught in the classroom. It's been at the graduate school level, though. And it's scared to have a lot of me. I don't know how to teach and do it. I just don't know how they do it. I have a lot of respect for teachers. Mary Dale Bolson? It's been about a month since I've been in a classroom in the way that you're talking about. And I think it's a fantastic idea. One of the things that I think Dr. Garcia and I would agree on is that we miss being with children.

We both came from education. And so the opportunity to do that is fantastic. Sue Cleveland? I'm in classrooms all the time, but it's really hard for me to go in, Cagneato. Because they know who I am. I could. And you know, I'm a product of the Albuquerque Public Schools. So I might go back and offer to do that there. But I do think your point is well taken. And people who get too far from the classroom and don't understand the complexity and the difficulty of that job. I think they lose a lot. And I think we do appreciate that role. What's the most important thing that you would like decision makers to learn by having that experience? I would like them to see, you know, when you're at this level and you're isolated, you have great ideas. And you put them into practice and you tell us down here to do it. But it's not practical for where you are in your school with your kids. And you need to be in that environment to realistically legislate and make decisions. Does that make sense?

No, one of the ways you alleviate that is that decisions don't come that way. And that you build a process by which those decisions are made after there has been considerable discussion with people at the school and classroom level. And if you have those taught down, then I think the problems that you talk about occur. We have a lot of taught down that come as a necessity of legislation, whether state or federal. But I do think that, you know, much of those problems can be alleviated if you have a good system and good processes in place where that feedback can be provided. And that's exactly what today is all about. I'll be curious to see what Veronica Garcia does. I'm hearing what you're saying, but I would think if you ask most teachers at this level, we don't see that top-on-down coming in and really asking and being involved. I mean, everybody says it, but we don't see it. The reasons I've been having community conversations is for that purpose, and we've invited teachers and parents and students to tell me what they think we need to do to close the achievement gap. And that's been very successful.

But it's also been an eye-opener that everything isn't like Albuquerque, and everything isn't like Santa Fe. And when you get out to those little tiny rural communities, they have other challenges that are so different. That's all the time we have for today, unfortunately. It was a great experience, enjoyed talking with everybody in the group. It's always encouraging to find that you can take a disparate group of people as we had in our group that were nine out of us. Coming from different disciplines, different life experiences, and when we talk about the same problems, we each bring our own perspective that makes the contributions better than the sum of the parts. I think the thing that I came away with the most was the degree to which the discussion about education has become a discussion about economy. That when we talk about education that I'm hearing vocabulary like market forces, I'm hearing workforce, I'm hearing global economy. And that concerns me. I worry that we're focusing so much on training a workforce that we're not paying enough attention to educating citizens.

And while I agree that it's vital to the American economy that high school seniors graduating in 2005 have some idea what you're talking about when you bring up the name Pythagoras, I also think it's vital to American democracy that they know what you're talking about when you talk about Rosa Parks. And I'm concerned that we're losing that. I was amazed that able to talk to some of the Latino speaking portions of our community and how they actually feel that English is the number one language in business, that their kids need to learn English. I kind of felt initially before I came here that maybe they wanted to have Spanish taught in schools when in fact it's the other way around. I think they already hear everything that we said before. And that's what I wouldn't see what's going to happen next.

So I want to hear that they tell me, you know what, we're implementing this and this have been the results. I think that to address some of the cynicism out there that more things like this probably would help because my cynicism has been assuaged by that. In addition, I think that if we see more of our elected officials and kind of have support for public school teachers out there. My impression is that they're kind of floundering without the net. They're being asked to do all this stuff, but they're not being given the net to help support them in that effort. And I would like to see that. In my lifetime, I am hopeful that treatment gap will be closed. However, it takes the community to educate this child, to build this child, to grow it with this child. So some deliberation means that people may listen to us and today it came out very clearly that they will.

It means that we can have an input to the solution or problem. I think sometimes like in Washington decision, I may without the proper input. But today, I think we saw that they are going to go back and look at what we did. And maybe we can have some better ideas on how to improve education. I feel that we got something across that is going to make a difference in the education of our children. Thank you. This program was made possible by the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation with additional support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station for viewers like you. Thank you. Additional support for the production of this program provided by the New Mexico Public Education Department. This is PBS. Thank you.

Thank you.