So, it appears as though the Board of Regents are holding a special meeting today in Rio Rancho to again discuss President John Counts contract. According to this Daily Press article, several of the Regents realized their hasty decision extending the president’s contract might lead to unintended consequences: namely, Counts could receive a retention bonus [...]

So, looks like the WNMU regents, absent their board president, decided to extend President John Counts’ contract another year. I remember when they gave him an extension in 04-05 (I was reporting for KNFT), great pains were made to indicate it would be the last time. The regents argued they needed to hike Counts’ pay [...]

Richardson continues his Iowa onslaught with a new ad touting his education record in New Mexico, according to The Hill’s blog: Richardson promises he will get rid of No Child Left Behind, create a minimum wage for teachers, make pre-k and kindergarten available to all children and create math and science academies throughout the United [...]

Dana Goldstein writes this week about the issues some second-tier candidates are talking about in their bids to move up with the big boys. She mentions Bill Richardson several times, most notably in his talk of New Mexico’s system of paying teachers: After the debate, leading education blogger Alexander Russo reported that a Santa Fe [...]

I don’t think that standards for schools are necessarily bad. Still, Kevin is on to something here: The question is whether NCLB’s requirement of 100% proficiency by 2014 is achievable, and the answer, as almost everyone in the article acknowledges, is no. 100% isn’t achievable for anything. Everyone knows that. [...] Question: Why would NCLB [...]

Depends on who you ask, and the yardstick you use, apparently: Many New Mexico students start out life behind, enter schools that aren’t well-prepared to help them and receive little support in moving from education to a career, a report said Wednesday. Education Week, in its Quality Counts 2007 report, ranked New Mexico last in [...]

It’s going be a long day today. We’re shorthanded at the office, and the Governor’s Summit on Economic Development really kicks off this morning. The focus this year is on workforce development, and Silver City is the perfect location for that type of discussion. Many of our economic development efforts during the past few years [...]

Last week, I started a series of posts on the Round Up, and issues with hiring practices there (Part 1 and Part 2). Today’s will likely be the last post for the next few days, because some interesting developments have occurred. This morning, the opinion and news editor positions were reposted on the campus jobs [...]

An intereting article over at the Washington Monthly, where Kevin Carey discusses the lack information about how school actually perform: Imagine you’re about to put a chunk of your life savings into a mutual fund. Now imagine you peruse the various “best mutual fund” guides on the news rack, only to find they’re all missing [...]

Yesterday I spoke about hiring practices at the Round Up (and other campus newspapers). One commenter (thanks Mom!) thinks I may be putting my foot in my mouth to suggest individuals with no experience can’t get the job done. I think experience is not necessary, and have not said new Round Up editor Mark Morris [...]

6:07 — Due to the weather, looks like the forum is going to start bit late. Be back when things get underway. 6:15 — Looks like we’re getting things started. 6:19 — Dr. Counts: two purposes of the meeting tonight: information on the university, and what the school was doing, and to plan for the [...]

Looks like it’s going to be a higher education day here on Live from Silver City. Right now, we’re going to head southeast to Las Cruces, for part one in a series of posts on a topic close to my heart: campus newspapers. As many of the Daily Press readers know, Jacqueline Armendariz has been [...]