Mandi Torrez, 2020 Teacher of the Year, Joins Think New Mexico

We are delighted to welcome Mandi Torrez at Think New Mexico’s new Education Reform Director!

Mandi is New Mexico’s 2020 Teacher of the Year. She has a decade of experience teaching third and fourth grade in the Bernalillo Public Schools, and she was also recognized as that district’s 2019 Teacher of the Year. Mandi holds an undergraduate degree in Journalism and a Master’s in Integrated Elementary and Special Education. Before becoming a teacher, she worked at the Farmington Daily Times as the News Editor and as Copy Editor.

Prior to joining Think New Mexico, Mandi served as Teacher Liaison at the Public Education Department, and she has experience advocating at the state legislature as a New Mexico Senior Policy Fellow with Teach Plus, a policy and leadership training network for teachers.

We are excited that Mandi will be leading Think New Mexico’s major new effort to rethink New Mexico’s public schools and lift up student performance and outcomes, particularly for the at-risk children who make up nearly three out of four students in our schools. Read a recent Albuquerque Journal editorial about our proposed reforms.

Our New Project: A Roadmap for Rethinking New Mexico’s Public Schools

Think New Mexico has just released a new report laying out a sweeping ten point plan with 30 separate legislative recommendations to improve the performance of New Mexico’s struggling public education system, which was ranked last in the nation for quality by five separate evaluations by Education Week, Forbes, Kids Count, WalletHub, and U.S. News and World Report.

This report, several years in the making, differs from Think New Mexico’s past policy initiatives, which have generally focused on a single core reform, like repealing the food tax or ending predatory lending.

The reason for this different approach is that the solutions needed to improve our public schools are interlinked. For example, New Mexico needs better prepared principals in order to recruit and retain good teachers, and highly effective teachers are essential in order for students to benefit from extra time for focused learning. While there are many good ideas for improving our schools, we searched for and highlighted those ideas that the evidence demonstrates can move the needle for student achievement—particularly for at-risk students—based on experience in New Mexico and elsewhere.

You can read the report and find out more details about our recommendations on the Education Reform section of this website.

If you like what you read and you’d like to be part of this effort to revitalize public schools in New Mexico, please contact your legislators and the governor and urge them to enact these reforms during the upcoming 2023 legislative session!

Thanks to you, we met the challenge!

Our deep thanks go out to the ten extremely generous New Mexicans who put together a pool of challenge grants totaling $165,000 and to the 404 New Mexicans who helped us more than match that challenge!

Including both the challenge grants and your matching contributions, during the online fundraising campaign between October 17-28, 2022 you helped us raise $329,986, which is more than 45% of Think New Mexico’s annual budget. We are especially pleased to welcome our 65 first-time supporters.

Find Out Where Your Candidates Stand on Think New Mexico’s Policy Reforms!

On November 8, every seat in the New Mexico State House of Representatives is up for election, as is the governorship.

As you make your decision about who you are going to support, we encourage you to find out where your candidates stand on Think New Mexico’s policy initiatives. Here’s how to do it:

1) Find out which New Mexico State House district you live in by entering your address on the New Mexico legislature’s website. (Note that due to the recent redistricting, your House district may have changed.)

2) Look up email addresses for the candidates running in your state House district and the gubernatorial candidates on our handy chart.

3) Send your candidate (and the candidates for governor!) a quick email asking where they stand on an issue or two that you are passionate about.

Here are some examples of questions you might ask:

• Would you oppose any legislation that would reimpose the food tax?

• Would you support making financial literacy a high school graduation requirement?

• Would you support legislation that would maximize the amount of New Mexico’s education budget that is spent in the classroom, rather than on school district central administration?

• Would you support legislation to reform infrastructure funding in New Mexico by creating a merit-based process to prioritize and fully fund the most urgently needed projects across the state?

If you get a response to your questions to candidates, please let us know!

This information is extremely helpful to us as we work to build coalitions in support of Think New Mexico’s policy reforms – and candidates are more likely to support these reforms if their voters are asking about them. Many thanks for your help!

Think New Mexico Welcomes our 2022 Leadership Interns!

This summer, our exceptional summer Leadership Interns include Malina Brannen, who grew up in Santa Fe and is now a senior majoring in Government and minoring in Spanish; Alyssa-Noelle Capuano, who graduated from La Cueva high school in Albuquerque and is now a rising senior at the University of New Mexico, majoring in Political Science, working on her MBA, and minoring in French; Salomon Moises Cordova, who was born in Cedar Crest and raised throughout central New Mexico, and just graduated from St. John’s in Santa Fe; and Abigail Goldstein, who graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in Sociology and a minor in Spanish and is currently pursuing a Master’s of Public Policy at the University of New Mexico.

Read more about this year’s Leadership Interns.

Financial Literacy and Civics Should be Graduation Requirements!

The Public Education Department recently unveiled a proposed redesign of New Mexico’s high school curriculum. That plan rejects the ideas of including personal finance and civics as high school graduation requirements and proposes to shift required courses in government, economics and New Mexico history to optional electives. We oppose this proposal because the research shows that relevant courses like civics and financial literacy keep students engaged and on track to graduate, and also that students will rise to meet higher expectations – it does them a disservice to water down graduation requirements.

Read our Education Reform Director’s guest editorial about this proposal and join us in urging your legislators and the governor to keep New Mexico’s graduation requirements rigorous and relevant for students!