Opinion: State's school issues start at family level

New Mexico legislators have thrown many billions of dollars at its public school system over the years in an effort to elevate student test scores, graduation rates and attendance records from rock-bottom rankings, with little effect.

That’s because public funding isn’t the primary reason students perform far worse, on average, in New Mexico than in most other states — broken or unstable families are to blame.

The percentage of children living in single-parent homes in the United States has been rising steadily in recent decades, tracking a parallel decline in marriage among Americans since about the 1970s. A 2019 Pew Research study of 130 countries, for example, found the U.S. had the highest rate of single-parent households in the world, and the Centers for Disease Control reported in 2021 that four states recorded the highest percentage of births to unmarried women: Nevada, Louisiana, Mississippi and New Mexico.

Studies comparing the academic performance of students in single-parent families to those with two parents suggest it’s no coincidence these same four states also consistently rank among U.S. News and World Report’s 10 worst performers in educational attainment every year.

The reasons for this correlation can be arrived at mostly intuitively, but many studies have pinpointed the comparative lack of time and money available to a single parent as two of the biggest obstacles to a child’s academic opportunities and performance.

Divorce, death and incarceration greatly exacerbate the emotional challenges children of single parents face, such as increased rates of depression, anxiety and low self-esteem, all of which can extend well into adulthood.

We know higher than average rates of incarceration and substance abuse in New Mexico are two of the leading reasons why so many of this state’s children are being raised by a single parent, or are bouncing between that parent’s home and that of a grandparent, with whom many New Mexico children live full-time. And while a child’s bond with their grandparents can be an important component of any healthy childhood, the previous generation caring for their children’s children is merely a band-aid for a larger problem.

New Mexicans and all Americans need to acknowledge that the post-modern idea of floating from relationship to relationship indefinitely isn’t actually good for anyone, as it turns out, and especially not for children.

New Mexico’s educators, administrators and legislators should know by now that while paying teachers a competitive salary, keeping facilities up to date and creating opportunities for students through new programming are necessary, the most meaningful change New Mexicans can make to improve our state’s academic performance needs to happen at the most basic, family level.

The governor and the Legislature are attempting to address this in various ways, including restructuring the foster care system, proposing paid family medical leave and funding early childhood education.

— Taos News