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Monday, January 17, 2011
'Education Slam' Opens Up Expectations
By Marybeth Schubert
Executive Director, Advanced Programs Initiative
The danger signal should be blaring an increasingly desperate warning to New Mexicans. The Pew Charitable Trust's "Chance for Success Index" rates the prospects for prosperity of New Mexico's children nearly dead last in the nation.
In a joint report by the Center for American Progress and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, academic achievement in New Mexico outranks only Washington, D.C., and Mississippi. And New Mexico is at the bottom of a talent pool in the United States that is being devoured by international competitors, as was confirmed by December's Program for International Student Assessment results, in which American students scored below the average of 65 countries in the threshold discipline of mathematics.
At the Advanced Programs Initiative, a Santa Fe-based nonprofit supporting public school districts on student achievement, we are intent on changing conditions in the education industry that lead to these results. An enormous amount is known about what works today in education: Good teachers; high expectations; rigorous curriculum; more time on task for the students who need it; and educational leaders who hold everyone accountable. But it has been extraordinarily difficult to sustain changes in the attitudes, behaviors and incentives that work against these outcomes. Rather than submit to more noisy arguing among the adults, we must enable student action.
This summer, our foundation is asking the seminal question: What do students want from their education? We are sponsoring the nation's first "Education Slam" to give voice to the concerns of our young people about the loss of their futures. The best efforts of our citizen task groups, analysts, politicians and CEOs will not come to solutions unless we can change the stakes — and the perception of what's at stake — for the students themselves.
The Education Slam emulates the National Poetry Slam, in which school-based teams compete in presenting original compositions on the education culture. Research tells us what we know from experience, that even the most disaffected young people are inherently smart, positive, resilient and creative. Given the chance, they will flock to the opportunity to participate meaningfully in this form of social media.
Educationally, the Slam accomplishes easily what otherwise is being done painfully slowly. It attracts non-traditional students, many of whom come from spoken word traditions in low-income Hispanic and American Indian communities, to take part in a demanding teaching exercise that incorporates necessary life skills like writing and public speaking.
Strategically, there is a reason to choose our state to launch this national dialogue. New Mexico faces perhaps more difficulty in the coming two decades than any other state unless it can produce a viable homegrown workforce. And doing that means capturing the attention and the interest in college of its young ethnic populations. We already have the greatest proportion of Hispanic residents and nearly highest share of Native Americans of any state in the country, but just 7 percent of Native American and 10 percent of Latino eighth-grade children in New Mexico are considered "proficient" on the national mathematics assessment. If Native American and Hispanic students continue to reach only basic levels of competency in English and math and graduate from in-state public colleges in percentages just above one-third of those who enter, the state will be effectively closed.
As a nation, we have tried adult recipes for "closing the achievement gap." In the individual schools that do succeed in teaching all students well, superstar teachers and school leaders coax minority children and their peers alike out of their adolescent complacency, fear of failure, social awkwardness and belligerence. The Education Slam empowers students to recognize and trust in their own ability, to be responsible for working hard, and to stand tiptoe on the rock of that confidence to peek into the book of life.
In generations of our history, New Mexicans have expected to struggle for the betterment of themselves and their families. Let's ask today's generation what they expect for themselves.
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