by Katy Knapp
Daily Lobo
Six college students presented education reform policies to Lt. Gov. Diane Denish on Tuesday.
The presentation was part of an Experiential Learning Community course that focuses on education policy training.
Denish was invited to the class by the course instructor, Heather Balas, who is also a policy consultant for the government and nonprofit organizations.
"That really speaks about the lieutenant governor's commitment to hearing from young people directly," Balas said.
Student Michael Barker tackled funding recommendations and the No Child Left Behind Act.
"Funding is the most important part of education policy," he said.
Barker said all the funding promised by the act in 2003 and 2004 was not given to schools. He said taking money away from schools where students do poorly on standardized exams only makes the problem worse.
"I personally disagree with the testing, and I think we all agree this testing has made a hurt, not (a) help mentality," Barker said. "It does more damage than it does good."
Denish agreed with Barker that the major failure of the No Child Left Behind Act was the distribution of funding between schools.
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"And they just haven't funded it," she said. "It's $16 billion short."
Balas said she helped guide the students in organizing their presentations, but said they did all the research and proposals themselves.
"No single adult stood up and said, 'These are the recommendations you should make,'" she said. "They came to all of that on their own."
Balas said the purpose of the Experiential Learning Community course is to provide an interactive approach to learning.
"The focus is to get a creative syllabus and have more hands-on experience," she said.
The students did independent research, observed a legislative session in Santa Fe and met with members of the Senate Education Committee and Albuquerque Public Schools. They also held two focus group sessions with community members, Balas said.
The students had their own topics to research and present to Denish. The six topics presented were parental involvement in schools, how to nurture teachers, extracurricular activities, classroom size and environment, evaluation and testing and funding.
Simon Cordero spoke about extracurricular activities. He said the state should consider requiring all high school students to participate in at least one extracurricular activity.
"In doing that, that would decrease the number of drop-outs, because they would be more involved," Cordero said. "It's also shown students would benefit from higher grade point averages."
He said high school students in New Mexico who are involved in extracurricular activities have an average GPA of 2.8, and students who don't participate have an average GPA of 2.0.
Melissa Trujillo presented on parental involvement. She said communication between teachers and parents needs to be improved. Among other things, she suggested Spanish translators be made available for parents who don't speak English.
"I really like the idea of Spanish translators," Denish said. "Not a lot of schools do that."
Barker said one thing he learned in class is the importance of a balanced budget in the state government.
"You can't put so much money into one thing in government or else everything else will go down the drain," he said.
Balas said she thought her students did a wonderful job.
"They presented recommendations in a very direct way, and I felt they represented the University very well," she said.
