Education In New Mexico

Education: To Fail or Not to Fail
The education system in New Mexico is slowly crumbling. The students of New Mexico are losing interest in gaining wisdom and knowledge, they are also slowly losing their desire to succeed and being ambitious is slim to none. Without the tools to create a fire of intellect, students are sitting in darkness. The system is causing students to feel like failures when truly the system is failing. It is said that Rome was not built in a day, but it was not destroyed within a day either, same goes with a good educational system, they are neither built nor destroyed within a day. Students when in educational environments tend to lean on their advisors and mentors to give the tools that are needed to succeed.
Teachers now, are giving the bare minimum, for little prosperity. The teachers are forced to use a limited amount of copy paper; this causes the teachers to limit the amount of packets or papers they give students down. There is twenty students for every one teacher or substitute; this causes teachers to revert to note-taking in order to get their message across. Students do not recall the information when they are robotically writing notes, they do not pay attention when writing the notes because they are trying to get all the needed material within a short time frame. Time spent writing notes causes the teaching staff to have less time to help their students understand the material, they are trying to cover several common core standards at a rapid pace. Teachers gravitating at quicker paces causes students at slow paces to be or feel left behind. Under six percent of students within the K-12 grades in New Mexico are learning at grade level or above. While teaching is a popular career, they also seem to be a supply in demand. Roswell High School has 85 teaching jobs; currently only 69 positions are filled. The rest of the professions are either substitutes or are completely depleted. With substitutes filling those positions students tend to get the shorter end of the stick. Substitutes are not fully qualified for the criteria they have to teach, but they are to follow state standards nonetheless. Many substitutes do not have material to follow either. Students are then forced to recall what they are never taught or are compelled to self-teaching, and may not fully understand the subject. This causes New Mexico students to be at a disadvantage when looking for jobs and collages. Of course the education deadline teachers follow are due to testing.
An honours or AP student has to take several tests that includes; S.A.T., E.O.C., E.O.S., benchmarks, discovery, AP exams, finals, and other quizzes and tests their advisors assign. The state of New Mexico currently has a subject proficiency of forty percent in English and thirty percent proficiency in Math. Only six percent of all high school students in New Mexico is considered advanced, and twenty-nine percent is considered proficient. High school is a pathway to college, which is a pathway to a good career. A total of sixteen and one-tenth percent of the student body is college ready. Though testing is an excellent way to watch the students growth and understanding, students should not have their class performance based solely on their test score. Students spend more time preparing for tests or taking test, than they do learning or asking questions about the criteria. The undergraduates are taught how to quickly remember material, then tend to forget after the test, rather than actually grasp and comprehend the
material. In like manner, students are expected to function properly at extreme stress levels. Stress levels are commonly caused by extensive amounts of projects, tests, homework, and school or state standards. Studies show that high school students now have the similar amount of anxiety and stress as the average psychiatric patient did in the 1950s. The healthy stress level on a ten-point scale is a three and nine tenths. Many adults average approximately a four and six tenths, teens are currently averaging a five and eight tenths. Stress levels increasing causes the health of individuals to deteriorate. Stress causes less sleep; one in five students do not receive the recommended needed seven and four tenths hours of sleep. Stress also causes over and under eating; thirty-four percent of United State citizens often overeat when under immense neurological pressure, also thirty-one percent also undereat or skip meals when stressed. Often students with stress do not get the suggested three to four hours of exercise. At least twenty percent of the student body do not exercise enough. Pressure creates diamonds, but too much pressure causes coal to turn to dust. In reality diversity is common, the educational gaps and boundaries that diversity cause are even more common.
In Roswell High School we have over 1250 students; out of these students eighty percent are Hispanic, seventeen percent are Caucasian, three percent are African American, and one tenth percent are other or two different ethnicities. Thirty-eight percent of Roswell citizens are only spanish speaking or speak little english, many books and pamphlets at Roswell High School are english only, causing native spanish speakers to be at an educational disadvantage. Though some teachers speak spanish, much time in class would be used translating rather than covering the criteria in the already limited time frame. Teachers who do not speak spanish may rely on bilingual students to help teach or translate for other students to learn. If teachers do not do those options the solely spanish speaking students fall behind, or are taught by teachers that speak spanish but do not comprehend the material they are attempting to teach, this may also cause the student to fall behind as
well.
Diversity does not end in ethancy, it also has to do with gender; forty-eight percent of the Roswell High School student body is female. This diversity within classrooms have caused female students to follow strict dress codes. Females are forced to cover up more as to not disturb the other sex. Dresses and skirts are widely popular, especially during the warmer seasons, along with tops that show more shoulder and collar bone area, but if they tend to show more skin than the school board believes is acceptable they are not allowed. The school board often chooses the dress code based on the reaction the students have to the type of clothing over time; many males around and above puberty age tend to have strong impulses to look at what they believe is sexually appealing, causing them to be more interested in the female that is appealing to them, rather than pay attention in a classroom setting. If the females do not follow the dress code they are given she is then sent to In School Suspension and or suspended. This then interferes with the female education, disrupting the transfer of knowledge from teacher to student, also forcing the student to stray behind slightly. Female education then is no longer a priority due to the male sex’s inability to behave their sexual desires, or have enough respect to not focus on the female during class. Females did not receive the right to a fair education until 1972 (the enactment of Title IX) this gives them the uncertainty that their education is on a fair platform. Though Female equality is becoming more popular within our nation we must first start with the young disciples, teaching them that male and female education shall be treated equally and they should be given the same amount of respect from the school board and the education system. Diversity gaps in education are roads rarely traveled and often the hardest to cross.
Adjacent to diversity, the average student needs approximately two thousand four hundred calories a day, for the superb educational edge. With Students in New Mexico receiving at least one meal a day, and many needing to pay for the other, it would seem that students are getting close to the needed amount of calories, However, some students are unable to pay for lunch and occasionally (more often than not) skip meals. The Roswell High School student body has forty-five percent that could be eligible for free or reduced lunches, a surplus of them do not receive them, due to being unaware or not sure if they qualify for the reduction. Along with prices, palatability is an increasing issue. Many students do not find the school meal appetizing so the skip eating it. If students skip meals, they are often unfocused, drowsy and prepared within a classroom setting. This disrupts the learning process for the individual and can occasionally disrupt that of their peers as well. Calories are needed by the students digestion system, but appetizing meals are needed by the personal body, students often wish to receive palatable nutritional meals.
Regardless, Albert Einstein once said, “Education is not learning facts, but the training of the mind to think.” Students education is important, but the tools they should be given to reach their goals are even more so. The opportunity for success is dwindling, the current graduation rate for the New Mexico schools is sixty-six percent and has fallen over the past years. Advisors are needed to lead students to success, though the requirements and boundaries they are confined to teach students in causes distress for the students, and staff alike. The education system may be flawed and failing, but failures lead to success, if you learn to change what has caused the failure to start and change it once more.