Eliminating educational achievement gaps.

There is really only one important educational achievement gap; it is the difference between where a student is in their education, and where they should be in their education.

Other gaps can be measured; like the relative gaps between students grouped according to ethnicity. If you wanted to, you could group students by sex and find a gap, by height and find a gap, by home town and find a gap, by number of healthy teeth and find a gap.

None of them play. Just because you can calculate a number doesn't mean the number is relevant.

In the end, you have an individual student with individual educational difficulties, which are best addressed individually. Grouping them by ethnicity serves no educationally relevant purpose; it doesn't help.

So why focus on gaps calculated on ethnicity? It is simply a convenient and effective excuse for forming yet another bureaucracy. Instead of investing in classrooms where all students can learn, we will hire another bunch of bureaucrats who in the end, will not have added anything concrete to the solution.

Consider the recommendations, link, that come up when you gather people according to ethnicity. Substitute for African American, the ethnicity of your preference.

1) Mandate changes to the New Mexico standards and benchmarks to incorporate relevant and authenticated curriculum in African American history and culture.
2) Explore existing rigorous, multicultural-relevant programs.
3) Produce and integrate African American contributions within all phases of education vs. one month of African American history.

Ask someone with some real teaching experience whether they think taking any of these steps will help (African-American) students with learning difficulties. You will find few among those on the front lines who will endorse the plan.

And as long as they're sitting around dreaming, how about;

".... the NM Public Education Department should ensure there are two or more teachers in every classroom to support students with the lowest grades. The second teachers might be volunteers or retired teachers who would receive a small stipend for their service."

Right, like the doors are being beaten down by hoards of "volunteers and retired teachers" just dying to get into the classroom in exchange for a "small stipend".

There are literally hundreds of thousands of years of teaching experience in classrooms, and no seat at the table where decisions are made. It is time to go to the source to solicit solutions to the problems.

I think you will find little support for grouping students according to arbitrary classifications.