TODAY'S TOP STORIES: NCLB tweak rejected by feds
John McCain’s in town, as all the media outlets are reporting, including NMI. He attended a fundraiser last night at the Albuquerque Hilton and is hosting a town hall this morning at Hotel Albuquerque.
The federal government has rejected a “growth model” proposed by New Mexico that would have allowed schools to show improvement over three years in order to get off of the No Child Left Behind troubled schools list. The Albuquerque Journal reports that the model was proposed as an alternative way to assess school performance. Under the NCLB Act, if a school doesn’t meet certain requirements it isn’t considered proficient, regardless of the progress the school is making over time. Critics say that the single minded focus by the NCLB Act on reading and math scores lead schools to focus on students who are near proficiency, and reduces the incentives to focus on students with the lowest proficiency. This plan was seen as a way to provide an incentive for schools to work with students who have the lowest performance on the tests.
Is New Mexico’s newest private prison really necessary? The Santa Fe New Mexican’s Kate Nash takes a look at the numbers and the politics that may have put it in Clayton. Nash says the new prison caps a shift a shift in state policy over three decades to house more inmates in private prisons.
A man in Las Cruces got 48 years for an “inappropriate sexual relationship” with a minor, according to the Las Cruces Sun-News. The Albuquerque Journal calls it in plainer terms, though. Another fellow in Albuquerque got 337 1/2 years for the molestation of two minors.
In what will hardly seem like news these days, but still may be notable, the El Paso Times reports that both the national and New Mexico average gas prices have hit new records, at $4.109 and $4.048 per gallon respectively.
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