At our recent Kids Count Conference, I asked the room of nearly 400 attendees to raise their hands if they had ever spent money on activities such as music lessons, team sports, preschool or a tutor for a child or grandchild. Then I asked if any of them would characterize that spending as “throwing money at the problem.”
When it comes to education, New Mexico ranks dead last. That’s according to a newly released national Kids Count survey, which looks at a range of indicators for child well-being — including education, health and poverty — in every state in the union. The Land of Enchantment didn’t fare much better in overall child well-being, either; New Mexico came in second to last.
Enough is enough. New Mexico is and has been at the bottom of every national measure of child well-being and educational achievement for years. Too often we read reports about the needs and underachievement of the child care and educational system in our state (“Study: N.M. has nation’s worst high school grad rate,” May 11, and “Hope comes from home visits,” My View, April 17).
Libraries in Aztec, Bloomfield and Farmington, along with those throughout the rest of the state, are sponsoring summer reading challenges to engage students in activities and improve their reading skills.
Because poverty has multiple causes and tends to be generational, we must address it by meeting the needs of the family as a whole. This is called a two-generation approach, and it does more than ensure that children are fed and safe. It also gives parents the tools they need to better their own situations—whether that means access to job training and further education or health care to deal with substance abuse problems or chronic illness.
A new report on early childhood education lauds New Mexico, a state that regularly ranks at the bottom of national surveys on child well-being, for increasing its investments in pre-kindergarten programs and increasing its pre-K enrollment.
Lawmakers and candidates met Wednesday with voters to discuss early childhood education, and ways they hope to improve New Mexico’s 49th-in-the-nation ranking for child well-being. The event featured three speakers, comments from the candidates and elected officials, and a brief question and answer session.
The administrative rule that was the subject of last Sunday’s editorial was never intended to limit free speech outside of the classroom nor be used as a hammer to intimidate public employees. If that’s how it’s being used, it clearly needs to be revisited and clarified.
New Mexico schoolchildren are being shortchanged millions of dollars by oil and gas companies that vent or flare natural gas into the atmosphere, according to a new report. The study by the Western Values Project says a proposed Bureau of Land Management (BLM) regulation would require producers on public lands to pay royalties on that methane gas that otherwise escapes.
The annual scorecard found that more New Mexico children lived with parents who lacked full-time employment in 2014 than those in 2008—35 percent and 30 percent, respectively. Amber Wallin, director of New Mexico Voices for Children, which published the 72-page report, said poverty holds back the state’s children.