Report: State poverty, education rates improve slightly

The recently released 2015 Kids Count Data Book showed New Mexico rates have improved in regards to poverty and education but not by much.

The study showed 31 percent of New Mexico children live in poverty while fourth-grade reading proficiency in students is 44 percent.

Roosevelt County showed a 31 percent poverty rate while Curry County showed a 27 percent poverty rate.

With fourth-grade reading proficiency, Clovis schools were rated at 48 percent and Texico Schools at 40 percent while Portales schools were rated at 59 percent and Floyd schools at 38 percent. The Elida and Grady school districts scored the highest at 71 percent and 100 percent.

According to local experts and Kids Count officials, it’s a vicious circle. Poverty hurts educational achievement, but those living in poverty remain there without education.

“If you are not going to finish high school or go to college, your financial path is pretty narrow, whether you have children or not,” said Sharon Kayne, communications director for New Mexico Voices for Children, the organization which provides the grant for the Kids Count study.

“The idea of going to college may not be something you would consider or may not be possible for you,” she said. “It’s not just the financial; there are a lot of barriers you have to overcome to go to college, such as taking the tests and so on. It’s scary.”

Kayne said people with college degrees have lower unemployment rates than those who do not have degrees.

“If you don’t get a college degree or at least some level of post-secondary education, your (job) options are so limited,” she said. “We feel that every child deserves to have the opportunities that will allow them to meet their unique potential. Unfortunately, people who grow up in poverty don’t get those opportunities.”

Chelsea Starr, assistant professor of sociology at Eastern New Mexico University, agreed but she said many factors play into the lack of education in low income households.

“It’s not that lower income people do not value higher education; it’s just that the cost is out of their needs,” Starr said. “Every crisis is financially driven. They’re working minimum wage jobs trying to provide for a family.”

Starr said people living in poverty have immediate needs, such as paying the water bill, so future solutions, such as their child having a college degree in four years, does not help them economically right now.

Starr said in Roosevelt County, the home of ENMU, only 13 percent of citizens have a bachelor’s degree, and in Curry County only 28 percent do.

Kayne said children from low-income families also usually start school behind other children and are less likely to be read to at home and have other educational activities at home.

She said 80 percent of brain development occurs during a person’s first five years of life.

“Low-income parents are often working multiple jobs and often working odd hours, which makes it hard to maintain certain structures in the home,” Kayne said.

“Most kids are in child care for extended periods of time,” she added. “Child care should be a time when children are engaged and are being read to and learning shapes and colors and learning how to share toys and get along and to follow instructions. It should be a time for children to learn these valuable things. But unfortunately, child care is expensive and high quality (child care) is even more expensive.”

Kayne and Starr agreed that the biggest factor that could help with this continuous cycle is the state placing more funding into education.

Kayne said more funding needs to go towards early childhood education while Starr said both early childhood and higher education need to be better funded.

Kayne said the second part of that solution would be for the state to provide more programs to educate parents.

Kayne said there are non-profit organizations that do provide programs that assist in educating parents and helping parents with high quality daycare and pre-kindergarten, but most of these programs are not offered in rural areas like Curry and Roosevelt counties.

“It’s really up to the state to step in. We spend almost no public money to nurture those early years of development,” Kayne said, adding that the home visiting program to educate parents on how to help with their children’s’ educations costs $1,000 per year while incarceration costs $34,000.

“We spend a lot more money on the back end of things when we could be spending money on the front end to make sure these things don’t happen, Kayne said.