US Education Policy

In 2005, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) asked the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI) to assess the effects of NDEA on increasing the nation’s science and technology (S&T) capabilities, with emphasis on its impact in promoting the growth of the college teaching workforce in those areas. STPI limited the scope of its 4-month analysis to 4 of the 10 major provisions of the NDEA:
• Title II. Loans to Students in Institutions of Higher Education
• Title III. Financial Assistance for Strengthening Science, Mathematics, and Modern Foreign Language Instruction
• Title IV. National Defense Fellowships
• Title V. Guidance, Counseling and Testing; Identification and Encouragement of Able Students.

In contemporary education policy, simplified technical accounts of policy problems and solutions are being produced with the use of numeric calculations. These calculations are seen as clear and unbiased, capable of revealing ‘‘what works’’ and identifying ‘‘best practices.’’ In this piece, the authors use resources from the material-semiotic approach of actor-network theory to discuss how calculations have begun to serve as a subtle infrastructure underpinning the way we understand and organise our world. They demonstrate the usefulness of the approach in tracing the technicisation of policy by deploying it to qualitative studies of like-school comparisons in two unexpectedly linked locations—New York City and Australia. The authors reveal how
technical accounts are precarious and need constant maintenance to endure, even as they increasingly become routine, curtailing the policy imagination and limiting the spaces of contestation. It is for this reason, they argue, that a deeper understanding and sustained critique of such accounts is of pressing importance.

K-12 Education in New Mexico since the 2018 Martinez/Yazzie Decision is undergoing a major transition in terms of the historical neglect of Native American, English Language Learners and "At-Risk" students. As the politics of the U.S. has become divisive and Critical Race Theory has become a lightning rod issue in many states including NM. The NM Public Education Department is under pressure to at the same time show that the Martinez/Yazzie Decision is being implemented and after 20 years the social studies curriculum is being updated with culturally and linguistically relevant curriculum, part of the Martinez/Yazzie Decision. NMLESC Senior Policy Analyst and Chicanca and Chicano Studies Adjunct Professor Dr. Joseph J. García provides a brief overview and takes questions about this historical time in NM education history.