GUEST COLUMN: It's time for school choice

According to a September 20 article in the Santa Fe New Mexican, preliminary state testing data show “stagnant” results. As the article begins:

Student achievement data from the past school year is out — and it’s more of the same.

Reading proficiency for students in New Mexico public schools is stagnant at 38%, and math proficiency is down two percentage points to 22%, according to test data from the end of the 2023-24 school year.

Unfortunately, status quo should be unacceptable to all New Mexicans. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, New Mexico’s education system struggled. Then Gov. Lujan Grisham made the fateful and awful decision of locking students out of school for more than a year. Results predictably tanked.

So, while this standardized test is New Mexico-specific, we know that New Mexico children are at the very bottom in terms of educational outcomes. Sadly, these results seem to indicate that there has been no “rebound” effect where struggling students reverted to their better performance prior to the pandemic.

While helpful in understanding where New Mexico students stand, the state’s testing data provides no useful comparison to student outcomes in other states. For that we must rely on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The NAEP results are to be released later this year or at the beginning of 2025.

In 2022, New Mexico students scored dead-last among the 50 states (as well as DoD schools and those in Washington, D.C.). Will New Mexico students again rank at the very bottom nationally in all four categories? Only time will tell.

School choice may not be a panacea, but according to the Mountain States Policy Center, there are 187 studies on the impact of educational choice, and the results are overwhelming in their findings that choice has a positive impact on student outcomes.

A robust group of 29 U.S. states have some form of private school choice while 18 of those states have enacted Education Savings Accounts, which let education dollars follow the child. Sadly, New Mexico is not among the states with school choice.

Why is that? Simply put, the unions that dominate government schools across the nation also dominate the Democratic Party. If New Mexicans want a better education system and better futures for their children, they need to vote for candidates that are not beholden to the unions. In New Mexico, the Legislature ultimately makes education policy with the governor and Public Education Department also engaged in the process.

New Mexico has lagged the nation for many years in educational outcomes, but it doesn’t have to. It can be among the growing list of states that have a robust program of school choice where parents and families choose the best option for their children, not government bureaucrats. It will take time, but the best time to start improving student outcomes is yesterday. The next-best time is today.

New Mexico’s education system has long been a problem, not just for our students who are often unprepared for jobs in the “real world,” but also our economy, which is held back by an education system that simply doesn’t get the job done.

It is time for a change. It is time for school choice.