States Ranked: Smartest to Dumbest

[Michael Agar]

Thanks for the kind words about the drug work.

Steve and I are just finishing up an ethno/viz-on-the-way-to-model piece
for the Calif court system that offers a parallel. It could be done for
education, no question. We'd need high level insider political sponsors
to make it happen and give it a chance of having some consequences. Then
we'd need to navigate into some school systems to do the work.
Then--though some pro bono effort would be the right thing for the FRIAM
Nuevomexicanos--it would be a big job and some filthy lucre would have
to come from somewhere.

I'm a one year NM newbie. Anyone out there part of a patron/good old
boy-girl network where a conversation about a project could start, or at
least try to?

Mike

>>> lamcnam at sandia.gov 10/11/05 2:53 PM >>>
Along the lines of 'doing' something about this - has anyone attempted
to develop a model of any of NM school systems? Or any school system,
for that matter (I already know the answer to the NM version of this
question, I think).  I just finished reading the Agar et al piece on the
Redfish website about the ABM they developed to explore illicit drug
diffusion as a consumer product problem, rather than an epidemiological
problem - nice work, guys.  It's a great piece and I'll be citing you in
a paper I'm writing about ethnography and M&S.  

Anyway, perhaps an ethnographically-based model of some aspect of
organizational culture in NM schools might be similarly revealing.  This
certainly qualifies as a wicked problem, in more ways than one.  

If I were contributing to understanding the problem, maybe I'd feel less
cynical about the future of our otherwise wonderful state.

Laura



-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of Raymond Parks
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 12:47 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] States Ranked: Smartest to Dumbest

McNamara, Laura A wrote:
> Well, when California recruited Amy in 1999, she'd had enough and she
> left - for a $50K starting salary and a signing bonus.  When the
> students and parents at SFHS found out that Amy was leaving, they
> started writing letters to the school begging them to keep her. The
> school's response?  They offered her 17K to start.  Amy considered it
> - until she found out that her district had just created a $70K/year
> position for a director of diversity in the SF public schools.

   This is one of the perceived, if not real, problems with NM
education.  Our per capita spending is lower than average, but it
doesn't seem low enough to be the cause of the infrastructure types of
problems Laura mentions.  However, we seem to have a propensity for
highly-paid administrative positions while the teachers and facilities
suffer.  There are frequent scandals in which some administrator
embezzles money from a school district.  Overall, the management of
education in NM seems lacking.  One would expect that voters would
replace school boards that support this type of thing, yet they don't.

   The problem isn't only with K-12 schools.  At one time since I've
been living here, the President of the UNM Board of Regents was a lawyer
whose firm had gone bankrupt.  Not, in my mind, a good qualification for
that responsible a post.

   BTW, one of the ways in which NM leads the nation has not been
mentioned - per capita government employees.  We have more government
(Fed, state, local) employees per capita than any other state (that may
have changed but I'm sure that we're still right near the top).  IMHO,
government employment in NM is a disguised form of welfare.  Oh, we're
also right up there in taxes paid per capita, presumably to pay for all
the government employees.

   I've lived here since 1987 and I wouldn't live anywhere else, but I
realize the warts.  My feeling is that New Mexico government has
inherited from both the Patron system and the Texas good-ole-boy network
and combines the worst of both.

   Another interesting aspect that became evident soon after I moved
here was government-by-lawsuit.  Back in the late '80s, early '90s, the
Supremes decided that states can't tax federal pensions.  Every other
state that was a party to that court case or affected by it agreed to
refund any taxes charged on fed pensions and changed their law.  New
Mexico did stop taxing federal pensions, but the Revenooer's directed
everyone who wanted refunds to join a class action lawsuit run by a
lawyer in Las Vegas.  It might have been coincidence that said lawyer
had family connections to various state officials and legislators and
had a languishing practice.

--
Ray Parks                   rcparks at sandia.gov
IDART Project Lead          Voice:505-844-4024
IORTA Department            Fax:[phone]
http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288


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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9:30a-11:30 at ad hoc locations
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
http://www.friam.org