Education
TODAY'S TOP STORIES: High school football players suspended for a year
Three of six high school football in Las Vegas were suspended for a year for hazing and a physical assault on other students, reports the Santa Fe New Mexican.
Mesa del Sol president is playing hardball with Albuquerque Public Schools, the Albuquerque Journal reports today. President Mike Daly told the district's school board that if the district can't guarantee the development's funding for school buildings, then he couldn't guarantee that Mesa del Sol would be a part of APS.
The number of Dona Ana County residents who carry concealed weapons has doubled in less than a year, the Las Cruces Sun-News reports. Department of Public Safety figures show that, as of Friday, 951 people in Dona Ana County have a license to carry a firearm compared to the 455 residents who had a license in late September of last year.
The Las Cruces City Council will consider a five-year contract with a company that installs red light cameras, the Las Cruces Sun-News reports.
Atrisco out to prove cynics wrong
Writing assignments are to most ninth-graders what root canals are to you and me. Necessary evils. Let the root canals begin, I thought when I asked my ninth-grade media literacy students to write in their journals every day. I anticipated a lot of push-back from my students about this assignment, and I got some of that. But I also got some of this: "I was a scared shy daughter. I remember my dad yelling, calling me names and hitting me for no reason. I heard beer cans opening and lighters flicking. … I worried that my family and I were in danger. I’m only one person and I think the world is cruel sometimes. I will prove my dad wrong. I choose to be who I am, I dream that everything’s OK. …”
You, too, can watch your electricity meter go backward
A foundation that teaches organic agriculture and sustainable living in Costa Rica has sought to apply "wise use" principles to its Albuquerque office. Founder Franklin Wilson -- who says the foundation has cut its energy use and produces power that is sold back to PNM -- wants to spread the word that anyone can pretty much do the same. In fact, he says, it's "rather easy."
Not a farewell, at least not yet
The man who has dominated New Mexico politics in recent years today made a humble acknowledgement. “I am going to make an admission that I never, never make,” Gov. Bill Richardson said to the retiring U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici. “Had I run against you, you probably would have beat me.”
Newspapers' online products not helping readership
No sooner had the New Mexico Independent published a commentary I wrote Tuesday about the high school kids I teach at Atrisco Heritage Academy not being exposed to news, when I got an alert from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. It was the center's biennial news consumption survey on Sunday. Here's what it said:
"Findings on TV news and online-only news produced a few surprises, but on the newspaper front the indications were mainly negative. And it wasn't just bad news for the print side, newspapers' online products didn't do much better. Namely: while more young people are indeed reading newspapers online, their total readership, print and Web combined, has not grown in two years.
Newsflash: Many teens just don't realize they're interested in news
I asked my students if anyone was reading something interesting. Before I knew it, hands were shooting up and the topics ranged from how Ben Stiller directed his new movie "Tropic Thunder," to how a reporter went undercover in a religious cult just to see how freaky that was. One student read outloud the story in the Independent about our new school opening up. News was happening all around me. And nobody wanted to stop to go to the bathroom or to get a drink of water.
ACT scores on rise in APS
We all know the ugly news that most New Mexico public schools are not meeting Adequate Yearly Progress as required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Now for some positive news out of the state's largest school district.
According to Albuquerque Public Schools officials, the district's 2008 graduates earned better scores on all sections of the ACT college entrance exam than the previous year’s graduating class. Even better still, on average, APS students also outperformed the rest of the state and nation.
Today's Top Stories: Juarez death toll nears 800
NMSU still has beef with two fired professors
New Mexico State University officials are playing hard ball with two former professors who have been fighting their dismissal from the university since March. According to the Las Cruces Sun-News, the professors, John Moraros and Yelena Bird, received letters last month in which a university official said the two had never submitted proof that they had earned medical degrees from the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez.
The letters, from Valerie Pickett, director of New Mexico State’s Office of Enrollment Management, gave the professors until Aug.14 to provide final transcripts from the Mexican institution, or face “appropriate action, up to and including the possible revocation of your above-referenced graduate degree from NMSU," according to the letters.
Politicizing higher education
What is “traditional American history,” and who decides what it might be? The White House has vigorously promoted the notion of a kind of “getting back to basics” when it comes to teaching American history. But it doesn’t say what “traditional American history” is. In an informal search of recent literature on the subject, I could not find a single definition of the term. Is that because the conservative idea of traditional American history might be too inflammatory to be disclosed?
Back to school pains
It's back to school for most Albuquerque Public Schools students today, and it has been a little more challenging for the district to open doors at some schools this year.
Severe flooding at at least two schools, including at Manzano High School, meant APS maintenance crews working overtime to dry up the mess and get the classrooms and gym operational. APS spokeswoman Johanna King said that at Hodgin Elementary in the Northeast Heights, the flooding damaged floors but not books were damaged, allowing school to open today.
In addition to the cleanups, APS opened four new schools this year, but all of the schools are at temporary sites because construction at their campuses is not complete.
TODAY'S TOP STORIES: Metro Courthouse trial gets a green light
The Metro Courthouse corruption trial of former state Senate President Manny Aragon will go on as scheduled after a federal judge dismissed claims by the defense that the prosecution was tainted by political and ethnic concerns,The Albuquerque Journal reports.
Farmington middle school students are starting their school year with free Apple MacBook laptop computers as part of a new program in the Four Corners region, The Farmington Daily News reports. It's the first year for the Farmington Learning Initiative that focuses more on computers than printed textbooks for information, Farmington Municipal Schools officials said.
Teaching in a community of 'great promise'
Like most Albuquerque Public Schools students, Amanda Otero will be back in school today. "My whole summer was about waiting for us to start school," she said Saturday an open house for Atrisco Heritage Academy. I was there too. I'm a teacher at Atrisco and like Otero, my summer was spent eagerly anticipating today. I'm a first-year teacher and the butterflies in my stomach started about a eight months ago when I decided to leave a 20-year career at the Albuquerque Journal to teach.
AYP: Public education's dirtiest little acronym
NM public schools' report card revisited
State wants to avoid another grade-change scandal
Public confidence had eroded with some Albuquerque Public Schools parents last year when an administrator ordered a Rio Grande student's grade change in order to let him graduate on time and at the insistence of his parents -- Bernalillo County Commissioner Teresa Cordova and former APS board member Miguel Acosta.
The black eye that the grade scandal caused lingered, however. Something needed to be done at the state level, and now it looks as if the PED agrees.
Native kids at risk
A report released late last week concludes that the Bureau of Indian Education is "dangerously unprepared to prevent violence and ensure the safety of students and staff." The 17-page report was prepared by the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of the Interior, which visited nine BIE schools, including three in New Mexico that were surveyed in April
The science of green little men
Half a world away, the University of Melbourne in Australia announced this week it is bestowing its first doctorate degree in ufology to a man whose research took him to the three places in the world most key in the history of the subject. The No. 1 spot listed? You guessed it: Roswell, N.M.
In a press release, the university announced:
Martin Plowman, from the School of Culture and Communication, investigated hundreds of UFO sightings and interviewed dozens of ufologists as part of his PhD thesis.
Mr. Plowman will become Dr. Plowman next Saturday (August 9) when he is conferred with a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne.
As part of his research Mr. Plowman visited key sites in the history of ufology, including Roswell, New Mexico; crop circle hotspots in Wiltshire, England; and the Valley of Elqui in the Chilean Andes, and examined the links between UFO sightings and religion, politics, national security and popular culture.
That stubborn achievement gap
The latest achievement gap results announced by the state Public Education Department were both positive and negative.
The achievement gap, of course, refers to the difference between the academic performance of the majority of students compared with racial, ethnic as well as a few other subgroups.
The PED reported some positives such as a continued increase in the reading scores of disadvantaged students and an increase of more than 12 percent of Hispanic eighth-grade students scoring proficient and above on state standardized tests. Also math scores improced by 15 percent for Native American students over the last four years.
Historic Santa Fe Indian School in ruins
The turn-of-the-century buildings at the Santa Fe Indian School have been a part of the drive along Santa Fe's Cerrillos Road for the duration of the lifetime of virtually everyone alive in Santa Fe today.
So it's easy to relate to the shock described by those who witnessed their demolition without warning over several days last week. I felt it just seeing the pictures, several of which were posted by George Johnson on his blog, The Santa Fe Review, under the apt title "Indian Ruins."
Not making the grade
The state released its Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) report today. As in years past, it paints a bleak picture. Only 23 of Albuquerque Public Schools' 157 schools made AYP this year, versus 46 last year. In Rio Rancho, two elementary schools met the standard versus six of the district's 15 schools last year. All told, 245 of the state's 770 schools met AYP, compared to 368 last year.