When Michelle Soto started fourth grade in Albuquerque in 2009, her teacher was baffled by what to do with a student who didn’t speak English. She spent a lot of time playing games on the computer. Soto moved up to fifth grade the following year, not sure if she advanced because she’d done any of the work or because the teacher just wanted to be rid of a problem.
She flailed through fifth grade, too, bullied by her classmates for not knowing how to speak English. At home, she would cry to her mom and say she didn’t want to go to school anymore. Her mother worried about a daughter who had once loved to learn.
“I felt so horrible, so worthless in elementary, because I didn’t want to live like this — feeling dumb and like I couldn’t do anything,” Soto, now a high school senior, said. “I knew that I could do things, and I knew I was capable.”
Before Soto moved to the U.S. at age 9, she and her uncle would daydream about her future. Her mother had left their home in Mexico when she was 2. Soto and her brother were in the care of her uncles, one of whom became so close to her she, to this day, calls him dad. Her family couldn’t afford high school tuition in Mexico, meaning Soto, a star student, wouldn’t stay enrolled past middle school. They wanted better for her, and she and her uncle would picture what that looked like: graduating high school, attending college, and going on to become a doctor or a lawyer.
Her mother emigrated to pave the way for that possibility. She’d expected Soto and her older brother to follow soon after, but “soon” turned to seven years. By the time Soto arrived in New Mexico — a strange place, with different food and a different language — her mother was a stranger to her, too. She left knowing she might never see her uncle again.
“We understood that if we wanted to fulfill each other’s dreams, I had to come to the United States,” she said.
But by fifth grade, those dreams appeared to be out of reach, thanks in large part to New Mexico’s public school system.
Soto’s experience is not an outlier. In 2014, dozens of families and six school districts sued the state of New Mexico’s Public Education Department for failing to provide for the needs of all its students. The plaintiffs in two consolidated suits, Yazzie and Martinez v. State of New Mexico, argued the state’s underfunded education system had allowed students from low-income families and those who are Native American, Hispanic, disabled, or learning English to consistently fall behind their peers; test scores and graduation rates showed it. The children of these families, their attorneys argued, wanted to attend college, pursue careers, and participate as citizens, but their chances of doing so were limited by the education system’s deficiencies.
“These are not achievement gaps attributable to shortcomings of our children, families, and educators,” Gail Evans, former legal director of the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty and the plaintiffs’ lead counsel, said in a statement during the trial. “These are opportunity gaps attributable to a broken system that does not effectively serve our children.”
New Mexico may be the toughest state in the nation for kids. The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count report ranks the state 50th for child wellbeing, based on the number of children living in poverty, testing below grade level on math and reading, dropping out of high school, and dying before they reach age 19. Children in New Mexico experience among the highest rates of abuse and neglect in the country, and their parents are among the likeliest to have been incarcerated or abuse drugs or alcohol. One quarter live in homes where their next meal isn’t guaranteed. Last school year, nearly 250 schools were serving free breakfast. In some, the entire student population qualifies for free lunch.
“If you have a program where their language is respected and integrated into the culture … there’s nothing the kid has to give up. They don’t need to feel ashamed of who their parents are because they don’t speak English.”
Just 24 percent of New Mexico eighth graders were proficient at reading in 2017. But the numbers are worse for low-income (19 percent), Native American (12 percent), and Hispanic (20 percent) students. Those populations also drop out at a higher rate than the state average. If they do finish high school and go on to college, more than half of them must take remedial courses to catch up to their peers, increasing the time and cost of a degree, and the chance they’ll quit without completing it. Education Week’s annual Quality Counts report lists the state last in its “chance for success” index.
A 2008 report commissioned by New Mexico’s legislature found its education system underfunded by nearly $335 million. Then the recession hit, and budgets shrank even more. School districts that joined the 2014 lawsuit against the state argued those funding cuts left them struggling to keep the lights on.
In July 2018, after a two-month trial and close to 100 depositions, First Judicial District Judge Sarah Singleton ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, declaring the state’s education system a “dismal failure.” New Mexico’s constitution guarantees equity for Spanish speakers and children of Spanish descent, and state law requires culturally relevant education for Native American, Hispanic, and bilingual students. Singleton found schools’ bare-bones funding violated rights to education enshrined in law, and ordered more funding for schools and rapid work to overhaul the many issues within the system.
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, elected in November 2018, chose not to appeal the case. Instead, she worked with state legislators over a 60-day session in early 2019 to answer the court’s demands. The budget they passed increases funding to schools by $451 million to raise teacher salaries, add extended learning programs and school days, and increase funding for at-risk students.
But much of the additional funding just catches up to pre-recession levels, and still leaves school districts competing for funds. While a framework was established for adding bilingual teachers, it will be years before they reach classrooms. And many education experts are saying now is the moment for even more sweeping change — change that is harder to quantify than adding dollars to budgets. Having better paid, better prepared teachers and schools staffed with social workers and health care professionals is expected to help the most at-risk students, of course. But the key to keeping kids engaged in the coursework and enrolled through high school, these experts say, is ensuring students’ cultures and languages are present in the curriculum and honored in the classroom.
To that end, the legislature also passed a non-binding measure asking the Public Education Department to convene a task force on multicultural education. If assembled, the group of tribal members, school staff and administrators from different ethnic or religious groups, parents, students, and two legislators will work to define multicultural education and report on its current status in state schools.
The question of how to make our public education system work for students of all races, cultures, and ethnicities is not a question New Mexico is facing alone. Similar conversations have surfaced in California, Illinois, Montana, and Washington. Los Angeles teachers went on strike this winter, and their demands covered familiar ground: smaller classes, more support staff for mental and behavioral health, higher pay, and concerns that needs specific to Latinx students aren’t being met. In Montana, lawmakers debated whether recruiting more Native American teachers would keep Native American students better engaged.
Lujan Grisham calls this a “moonshot” for New Mexico’s kids. But moonshots are risky business. This ruling positions New Mexico to transform its education system in ways that could set a model for the rest of the nation. That is, if lawmakers and education officials can get it right.
Soto, who will graduate from Del Norte High School this week, says even in a border state where most residents still spoke Spanish when it joined the U.S. in 1912, she was not taught about the history and influence of Hispanic culture in New Mexico, and for years had little opportunity to learn about or even hear her first language in school.
“We always just learn about the history of white people, and it makes us seem like we have no role in history,” she said.
Bilingual education, which may seem like an obvious starting point for reaching some at-risk students like Soto, remains controversial. California outlawed bilingual education from 1998 until 2016, and Arizona has had a ban in place since 2000. There, only students who speak English can join a dual-language program, while those who speak Spanish or other languages must enroll in an English-immersion program.
Additionally, there’s a national shortage of bilingual teachers, and few teachers are rising to replace those reaching retirement age. Decades of work to promote English came at the expense of other languages. Some Indigenous languages are dying out altogether.
“I felt so horrible, so worthless in elementary, because I didn’t want to live like this — feeling dumb and like I couldn’t do anything. I knew that I could do things, and I knew I was capable.”
In New Mexico, some programs are attempting to bridge this gap. At a dual-language school in Albuquerque, Rebecca Blum Martínez, director of Latin American Programs in Education at the University of New Mexico, has watched a classroom full of Hispanic kids smile and squirm with delight when their Hispanic teacher referred to each of them by a nickname, as is common in that community. They felt at home, she said.
“When children’s identities are recognized and celebrated and included as an integral part of the curriculum, children will perform much better both in terms of attending classes and in terms of academics — because they feel better about themselves,” she said.
Students who speak a language other than English are often met by low academic expectations, fraught student-teacher relationships, and remedial classwork poorly suited to their needs. These issues can lead to higher dropout rates, increased unemployment, lack of job readiness, and even higher likelihood of incarceration. Furthermore, children who grow up with another language and then attend an English-only classroom often refuse to speak their first language, even at home.
Conversely, “if you have a program where their language is respected and integrated into the culture … there’s nothing the kid has to give up,” Blum Martínez said. “They don’t need to feel ashamed of who their parents are because they don’t speak English.”
Parents, likewise, are more likely to feel comfortable in the school. So they show up more frequently for events, and approach teachers to discuss how their students are doing.
“It’s not just a ripple effect. It’s like a wave being able to bring people together in a common endeavor, which is the well-being of the children,” Blum Martínez said.
Blum Martínez reviews essays written by students seeking a biliterate seal on their high school diploma. “A constant theme in the essays that they write [is] that ‘I’m able to still talk to my family … I’m able to help my people because I speak both languages,’” she said. “As kids are able to go through a full bilingual education, they get the best of both worlds.”
Public education in the U.S. is, in ways beyond language, still feeling the effects of the nation’s historical role in eradicating certain cultures in favor of a more homogenous America. The federal government sought to eliminate Native American cultures through boarding school programs run from the late 1800s into, in some cases, the mid-1900s. These students had their braids cut and clothes confiscated, and were forbidden to use their given names or speak their native languages.
Even now, in most schools, the history of the nation unfolds as a story that moves from East to West with the arrival of British settlers. The Indigenous presence dating back millennia, Spanish and French settlers who predated the British, and the role and treatment of Chinese immigrants and black people in the West are often minimized.
Daniel Benavidez, the superintendent of Zuni Public School District, which is entirely on Zuni Pueblo land, notices this problem in his schools’ textbooks. “[They] talk more about Coronado coming in and looking for the Seven Cities of Gold than the pueblos and Zuni population,” he said. “It doesn’t talk about how native cultures influenced how the outsiders lived in this area. … My wonder is, did they even bother to come and ask for input? Because it doesn’t look like it.”
Incorporating the language and cultures of Native American tribes into public education will demand nuance, sensitivity, and constant vigilance, school administrators say. Some languages aren’t written. Some tribes don’t allow their language to be used in public spaces, which can fetter dual-language or bilingual programs for some Indigenous students. Some don’t permit discussing tribal activities, so students will say only that they’ll miss class tomorrow because they’re “busy.” Cultural sensitivities can impact classroom learning, too. Take a solar eclipse, for example. A teacher might see the event as a chance to engage students in a science project, but some tribes call for remaining indoors during an eclipse.
Teachers also have the thorny task of balancing varying cultural views and ideas. Members of one pueblo will tell state history differently from those of another, and a descendant of a Spanish colonist might lay it out in yet another fashion.
Benavidez thinks there is room in school for all of these historical viewpoints. Lessons from tribal elders, who lead students around the pueblo and discuss how corn was grown and the sanctity of water in the desert, should be embraced, he says. But these ideas are difficult to square with those of politicians who want accountability in the form of textbooks and standardized tests.
Kara Bobroff, one of four deputy secretaries of education appointed by Governor Lujan Grisham and Education Secretary Karen Trujillo to lead the program’s overhaul, says cultural education and improved test scores are not only possible, but go hand in hand.
Bobroff, a Navajo and Lakota woman, founded the Native American Community Academy (NACA) in 2006 in Albuquerque, where she grew up. Inspired by her experience working as a teacher in Marin County, California, and as a principal in Shiprock, in the Navajo Nation, she started talking to Indigenous families about what they’d want to see in a school that incorporated Native American influences. The academy, a public charter school, was the result.
Students at the school represent 60 different tribes, can learn five tribal languages, work in a community garden to develop Indigenous knowledge about the land, and read works by Native authors.
When it comes to incorporating this model into New Mexico’s education system as a whole, Bobroff said the major lesson is to treat cultural identities and linguistic backgrounds in a holistic way. Relegating Indigenous studies courses to just one hour of class time a week, or Navajo language classes to just some schools, can fragment curriculum and isolate students. Culture, like language, can be handled like an immersion program.
“It is a huge overhaul. It’s a complete system change that needs to happen, and that takes time. So we recognize that the state has done some of these things, but I think it has a long way to go in improving the system.”
“In a traditional school that’s kind of siloed, you go to math, and you go to science, and those things are being taught in probably a fine way,” she said. “But it’s not necessarily centered on … meaningful ways of understanding your own identity and culture.”
Bobroff said NACA’s approach to education and culture leads students to make bold inquiries about their own personal development and their connections to their community. She has seen students talking about the idea of tribal sovereignty, and carrying out self-guided research projects on blood-quantum laws, a controversial measure for determining tribal membership.
New Mexico had until April 15 to take immediate measures to help schools better provide for at-risk students. Later this year, the state education department is expected to submit a report on that progress to the court for review. Bobroff said she senses excitement and opportunity surrounding the initial progress on these issues. Next school year, they’ll be in a position to evaluate which programs are doing well, and which need to change.
“The fact that there’s an awareness and desire [to change] is really powerful,” she said. “That’s a huge thing to … know that, as a state, we’re on that trajectory.”
Not everyone is holding their breath. The plaintiffs’ attorneys will wait to see that report and where money goes for the next fiscal year to respond.
“The legislation that did pass only went partway in addressing some of the changes that are necessary for the schools,” Lauren Winkler, an attorney with the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, said. “It is a huge overhaul. It’s a complete system change that needs to happen, and that takes time. So we recognize that the state has done some of these things, but I think it has a long way to go in improving the system.”
Soto found the help she needed to make it through school outside of her classes. A former teacher who attended her church and a classmate’s mother coached Soto through her homework. Students from a bilingual elementary school merged with her middle school classes, so she was able to make friends more easily. Her middle school also included an English as a Second Language program. Catching up at that age was difficult. She didn’t always know what she was reading, but she kept reading anyway. By ninth grade, she’d broken through. She enrolled in honors English, and by her junior year was taking Advanced Placement classes.
While she made strides to catch up, her brother, who is two years older, didn’t. She watched him loop through the same algebra class for three years, unable to find the kind of help she’d tracked down. Eventually, he dropped out. She sees other kids, like one she befriended from a family of refugees from Africa, going through the same struggles she did, trying to do the work, but without a teacher who can help catch them up.
“This kind of makes me mad, because I think they should be putting a focus on kids who need to learn,” Soto said.
Outside of school, Soto works as an education justice fellow with the New Mexico Dream Team, an organization that teaches undocumented immigrants like herself about their rights. On a Friday morning in April, a central table in the organization’s downtown Albuquerque office was filled with teenagers and twenty-somethings on laptops, playing news clips about families separated at the border, and people fenced into living spaces under highway overpasses.
This is where Soto has learned terms like microaggression, implicit bias, and institutional racism, and where she’s learned, finally, to regard where she comes from with a sense of pride.
This week, Soto will graduate with almost a year of college coursework done and her eye on enrolling at the University of New Mexico after a few more semesters at the community college. She thinks maybe she’ll be a lawyer — working in social justice.
As New Mexico’s school system moves toward the kind of change that could have prevented a younger Soto from floundering, many different ideas and people will be involved. Soto, through her work with the Dream Team, will play her own small part. There, at the place that’s been so important to her own education, she’s moving into a role as a teacher herself. She’ll be training other immigrants on their rights, and school teachers about the history of colonialism and institutional racism in schools.
“These are conversations that we need to have, especially if we want to make change,” she said.
Change that Soto knows is imperative for students like her.
