NM: 10 Year Struggle To Fix Funding

Pennsylvania is the most recent state to be declared in violation of its obligation to properly fund education, but it's certainly not the only one. And looking at others can be instructive about how well it works to use the legal approach to forcing fair funding . (Spoiler alert: not great) Let's look at New Mexico.

Their tale starts in 2014, with Wilhelmina Yazzie and her son Xavier. Xavier got straight As at the Gallup-McKinley school, but his results on national standardized tests suggested that maybe he wasn't actually in tip top learning shape. Maybe that's because the school lacked funding, teachers, tutors, computers, and enough textbooks to allow students to take them home to study.

Yazzie couldn't get a satisfactory response from school administrators beyond "we're doing the best we can with the resources we have." So she sued the state of New Mexico for not sufficiently funding education. In particular, the suit said, the state is failing to provide for students from poor economic backgrounds, Native American student, ESL students, and students with disabilities. It was failing to make students college and career ready.

Yazzie's suit was folded in with a similar suit from Louise Martinex, and thus was born the Yazzie/Martinez lawsuit.

That suit until its fifth year, 2018, Judge Sarah Singleton handed down a ruling. The thing is 76 pages long, but the outcome was simple enough--the court declared that the state was doing a lousy. 

Singleton explicitly avoided telling the state what it should do or where it should find the revenue. But she also was clear that the current method of starting with last year's budget number and arguing about whether the legislature felty like spending more or not, without once considering the question of how much money was actually needed to get the job done-- that method was not okay. 

Which is kind of remarkable when you think about it. We are pretty much used to the idea of education budgeting based on what officials feel like spending without ever, ever having a conversation about what is needed to do the job. It's an aspect of education reform that nobody ever talks about. 

At any rate, Singleton gave the state a deadline--have the public education department develop a plan to Do It Right by April of 2019. So the legislature came up with a plan that fixed the whole thing. Ha! Just kidding. The state asked the court to throw it all out, claiming that it had totally met the demands of the judge's ruling--the court said no. In some pointed words.

The state cannot be deemed to have complied with this court’s order until it shows that the necessary programs and reforms are being provided to all at risk students to ensure that they have the opportunity to be college and career ready. There is a lack of evidence in this case that the defendants have substantially satisfied this court’s express orders regarding all at risk students. The court’s injunction requires comprehensive educational reform that demonstrates substantial improvement of student outcomes so that students are actually college and career ready.

Well, yeah. In 2019 New Mexico was still 50th in graduation rate, and the Chance for Success index was D-plus--and last among all states. 

The state dragged its feet and embarked on a series of draft action plans to do... something. Here's a really comprehensive look at all the argle bargle and draft planning from 2022. 

Lots of various features had begin to take shape. In hopes of fostering some community and culturally responsive teaching, the PED called for Equity Councils for both public and charter schools. The job was to "implement a culturally and linguistically responsive framework to prepare students for college, career, and life by supporting their identity and holistic development, including social, emotional, and physical wellness." These, predictably, got a lot of pushback. And still, not much is actually happening.

Now it's 2023, and there was a summit in June by the Institute of American Indian Education on the subject of "So What The Heck Is Happening With That Lawsuit That Was Decided Five Years Ago?"

And now this month, New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez wants his office to take over the state's response, citing a "frustration with the lack of progress over the past five years." 

Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, whose administration has been in charge since 2019 (so that attempt to get the courts to let them off the hook is on her) responded via spokesperson by saying, "Hey, we created some agencies and sent more money to local schools. Maybe you should go get on those local schools' cases about not spending the money well." They have in fact increased spending by, maybe, $3000 per student, which moves New Mexico all the way up to 36th place in the nation. 

But that's just money. The actual plan for how to boost education for the most disadvantaged students in New Mexico is still a draft in the PED computers. Meanwhile, conservatives continue the old complaint of "We're spending more money but scores aren't going up." As if five years or increased spending (with a pandemic smack in the middle) should be enough to turn the whole thing around.

Yes, New Mexico has charter schools (98 of them, with 25,000 students). The legislature even just handed them piles of money for building. That hasn't fixed things. Open enrollment--they have that in some locations. New Mexico has no state subsidies for private choice, though some folks would sure like them. 

What New Mexico has is a clear directive to get adequate funding its schools, even if that means wealthier residents have to pay taxes to educate Those Peoples' Children, and no apparent political will or interest in actually getting the job done. And really--if this were something the state's leaders cared about, simply knowing that they were at the bottom of the barrel in most educational indicators would have been more motivational than some court directive. And now Yazzie/Martinez is approaching its tenth birthday with no end in sight.

New Mexico's issue is the same issue as Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, etc etc etc. If state leaders don't feel particularly compelled to treat education as an important priority, can a court order really change that? I'm reminded of Rick Hess's insight, from another context, that you can use rules and regulations and, I suppose, court orders, to compel people to do something--but you can't make them do it well. Particularly if they don't want to. 

After all, there's nothing to keep legislators from making quality, well-resourced public education for all students a major priority and crafting budgets that reflect that priority. Any legislature could do it any time they wanted to, and they wouldn't even have to wait for a court order.