New Mexico Business Weekly
Saying that New Mexico’s 46 percent high school dropout rate is unacceptable, Gov. Bill Richardson today announced a plan to get 10,000 state high school dropouts
back in school by the 2010/11 school year.
The “Graduate New Mexico! It’s Everybody’s Business” effort will work with a wide range of community, faith-based, educational and business groups to find those dropouts and encourage them to get back in school, Richardson said during a news conference at Albuquerque’s Rio Grande High School.
“To sustain New Mexico’s growing economy and work force, all New Mexicans must, at the very least, graduate from high school,” Richardson said. “We must accept that in the 21st century, to secure a job that will support a family and provide a decent quality of life, a high school diploma is a must.”
The $8.9 million effort will use federal stimulus money to make online courses available to dropouts.
Other parts of the plan include the formation of a task force to examine schools that have consistently failed to improve over the past five years, the establishment of the Office of Hispanic Education at the state’s Public Education Department, three statewide summits to address student achievement gaps, online cultural competency training for teachers and the creation of an annual report card for achievement, dropout and graduation rates.
Education Department Secretary Veronica Garcia said that 40,000 New Mexico students have dropped out of high school in the past four years.
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