Opinion: Think tank pushing for public education

With an upcoming legislative session around the corner, I thought I’d check in with my favorite think tank, Think New Mexico, about its plans for this year’s Roundhouse romp.

In case you’re not familiar with this group, Think New Mexico is a nonprofit and nonpartisan think tank that examines issues impacting New Mexicans’ lives then pushes for specific legislation to address nagging problems. Samples of its successes through the years abound: taking and keeping the state’s sales tax off food, redirecting state lottery revenues into college scholarships, beating back predatory lending practices, making full-time kindergarten accessible to all, reforming the state Public Regulation Commission, and repealing the state’s tax on Social Security for low- and middle-income New Mexicans.

In other words, Think New Mexico gets things done.

And this year, when state government is flush with a $3.6 billion surplus and everyone will be clamoring for a bigger piece of the pie, Think NM’s brainiacs are keeping their focus on reforming the state’s system of public education — or, more specifics, pushing measures, that “have been proven to move the needle for student outcomes,” said Fred Nathan, executive director.

They’re going to push for eight pieces of legislation, to:

• Optimize time for teaching and learning by increasing instruction time from at least 990 hours to 1,140 hours for all public school students. “With the learning loss from the pandemic, this is more urgent than ever,” Nathan said.

• Establish a recurring fund to sustain and expand teacher residencies, which is proving to be the most effective way to train up the 1,000 or so new teachers being hired in New Mexico each year.

• Improve principal pay and training. “Good principals are the second most important school-based factor for student success, after good teachers, yet many are paid less than their most experienced teachers, and many are paid less than central office administrators,” Nathan said.

• Create a “rigorous and relevant” high school curriculum by revamping high school graduation requirements to include financial literacy, two credits of foreign language and two credits of career and technical education.

• Require school board members to step down if they are elected to another office or if they engage in nepotism, as well as full disclosure of their campaign contributions, and increase training requirements for the job and moving school board members’ compensation from per diems, which are essentially reimbursements, to stipends of $2,500 for smaller districts and $5,000 in the larger ones. “More than 50% of school board races were uncontested in the last two election cycles,” Nathan said. “We feel a modest salary may encourage more folks to run.”

• Overhaul the state’s colleges of education to attract more people into the teaching profession, with evidence-based curricula, direct classroom experiences and fourth-year residencies.

• Reform student assessments with smaller tests at the beginning, middle and end of the year, to provide quicker data for teachers and parents and a better measure of a student’s growth.

• And last but certainly not the least: moving more dollars into the classroom. Think NM is advocating for legislation “to direct the PED (Public Education Department) not to approve school district budgets if they grow central administrative at a faster rate than spending at school sites,” Nathan said.

The handwringing over New Mexico’s dismal results in public education has been going on as far back as I can remember (I came to this state 18 years ago). It’s been a political football, a blame game of sorts, even though both political parties are to blame.

Maybe Think New Mexico can parse through the political postering and convince lawmakers to address some of the core issues holding us back.

They’ve done it before, and they can do it again.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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