“No Child Left Behind: Federalization, Testing and Accountability in the Public Schools,” is the topic of the University of New Mexico School of Law's Keleher & McLeod lecture on Wednesday, March 31, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. in rm. 2401.
UNM Professor of Law Kip Bobroff, recipient of the Keleher & McLeod Endowed Professorship, will give the lecture, which is free and open to the public.
“This talk arises out my own interest as a parent and from a class I taught last fall on educational equity and the law,” Bobroff said. “I hope parents and people with an interest in our public schools will attend.”
Bobroff became interested in educational equity after gaining firsthand knowledge about an Albuquerque school, East San Jose, which was successful but had been placed on probation – the first step in the New Mexico State Department of Education accountability process that can lead to state takeover. He learned that the state's accountability system is based overwhelmingly on English language tests, even for schools that have the goal of graduating bilingual students.
Bobroff worked with parents and teachers to overturn the state's probationary ranking. Along with another concerned parent and a former teacher, both UNM law students, he designed the educational equity and the law course and introduced it last fall.
“We looked into both finance and accountability issues affecting equity,” Bobroff said. “We learned that New Mexico has one of the most equitable school funding systems in the country when it comes to operating funds, but that it is quite inequitable when it comes to capital funding. And we learned that the accountability system is far from perfect.”
The Law Firm of Keleher and McLeod, P.A, funds the UNM endowed professorship. One of the oldest, largest firms in the state, more than half of its attorneys are UNM law school graduates who often take leadership roles in local, state and national professional associations.
Contact: Laurie Mellas-Ramirez (505) 277-5915
Posted by kwentworth at March 25, 2004 09:45 AM