The June 2023 Beacon Has Been Published!
The June 2023 issue of the Beacon has been published, and is online here! All previous issues of the Beacon are located here.
In this issue: President’s Message (Jesse Johnson), 2023 Legislature Public Education Bills, (Jack Jekowski), Why New Mexico High School Graduation Rate Calculations Do Not Align with a School’s Time-Opportunity to Impact Student Learning (Kim Johnson), NM State Science Fair Winners, A Toon by Thomas, CESE Annual Meeting, CESE congratulates TODOS on its 20th anniversary!
Important note about Annual Meeting:
The times they are a changing, and so is CESE. Instead of an annual meeting in June with a speaker, we are planning a ‘meet and greet’ at an Albuquerque restaurant that will be partially subsidized by CESE in July or August. An on-line poll will be sent out sometime soon. The presentation will be held later, possibly in the fall after people return from summer vacation. We hope to see you at both!
May 2021 Beacon: Annual Meeting Announced
Dr. Tracie Collins, MD, MPH, MHCDS, Secretary of the New Mexico Department of Health
The May 2021 Beacon (XXIII, No. 2) has been published! This issue has a President’s Message by Lisa Durkin, a detailed look at "What is Culturally Relevant Instruction in the Era of Yazzie/Martinez?" by Jessica Apgar, Ph.D., Education and Anthony Rodriguez, Ph.D., Education, and the second article of a series on genetics by Dr. Rebecca Reiss, on the status of gender and genetics, and a Toon by Thomas. It also announces the upcoming CESE Annual Meeting, June 5th 2021 at 1:30 PM, featuring an address by Dr. Tracie Collins, MD, MPH, MHCDS, Secretary of the New Mexico Department of Health. Details in the Beacon!
This issue of the Beacon, along with every other issue, can be found on CESE's Beacon Page.
January 2021 Beacon: Calculating NM At-Risk Funding with the CESE Method
The January 2021 Beacon (XXIII, No. 1) is now available! This issue has a president's message from Lisa Durkin, a major article by Kim Johnson on on "A New Way to Calculate NM At-Risk Funding Using the CESE Method: Introducing the Opportunity and Equity Index," and a toon by Thomas.
Read the whole account here.
From Lisa Durkin's introduction to Kim Johnson's article, "It represents the culmination of over 20 years of analytic inquiry into the elements that predict student outcomes, it builds an index of school remediation needs, and it provides an avenue to change the dynamics that plague our state as indicated by the Martinez-Yazzie lawsuit." The article itself explains "The Method offers the potential to identify those schools that are both significantly outperforming and underperforming expectations using a predictive procedure that accounts for schools’ student demographics. As it turns out, this same performance predictive method can be used to identify schools both by name and their degree of “risk” as explained by those demographic factors associated with New Mexico’s educational achievement gap that manifests from kindergarten through 12th grade."
This issue of the Beacon, along with every other issue, can be found on CESE's Beacon Page.
February 2020 Beacon: Letter from a Teacher in the Trenches
The February 2020 Beacon (XXII, No. 1) is now available! This special issue is devoted to one topic, "A Day At School in New Mexico." What it is like to be a teacher these days? We received this article from a New Mexico teacher; someone in the trenches. This science teacher offers a rare and candid glimpse into the experience. By most accounts, this is not atypical. Other K-12 teachers report similar classroom and school-wide frustrations, obstacles, and yes, joy and satisfaction.
Read the whole account here.
This issue of the Beacon, along with every other issue, can be found on CESE's Beacon Page.
The May 2017 Beacon is HERE!!
CESE is pleased to announce the publication of the latest Beacon, for May 2017. It is the first Beacon done by new editor Becky Reiss. Here are some teasers from President Jessica McCord's introductory article.
The first article, A Vindication of the Criticism of New Mexico Public Education Department’s Teach
er, Evaluation System, is an analysis by CESE of a December 2016 peer-reviewed publication that includes a coauthor who is the primary architect of the current teacher evaluation and school grading systems in use today in New Mexico. You will find that this paper’s conclusions do not support the use of the current NM teacher evaluation system.
The next article, How New Mexico’s Teacher Evaluation System Translates to the Classroom, is a personal account of one teacher’s experience with the evaluation system; a journey that will leave you with a better understanding of the effect these policies have on teachers. The results are evocative.
Then, we present one cartoon about NM graduation rates and the cut-off score that students need to achieve to graduate.. There is a long story behind this, but the cartoon has the answer to a question all New Mexicans interested in education should be asking about those graduation rates. Hint – look behind the curtain.
Finally, we are please to announce this year's keynote spe
aker for our June 24th Annual Meeting, Dr. Frank Etscorn. Dr. Etscorn is the award-winning inventor of the nicotine patch. The critical discoveries that lead to the 1986 patent Transcutaneous Application of Nicotine were made while he was mentoring students as a Professor of Psychology at New Mexico Tech in Socorro. He will discuss a subject very near to our prime mission: "Never Give Up on a Student."
You can catch up on all the CESE Beacons here. It's our 20th anniversary, see what we've been up to for the last couple of decades!