From House Minority Office:
(Santa Fe) - Just days after a national report revealed that New Mexico has the second highest percentage of poor students in the nation to pass an Advanced Placement test, Rep. Liz Thomson (D - Bernalillo) stood up on the House floor and stated that New Mexico's poor kids can't learn. "Anyone with any knowledge of anything knows poverty keeps kids from being able to learn," said Thomson. "We're the poorest state so we're not going to change that." Thomson stated that giving poor kids high speed internet would be like giving her a spaceship because they wouldn't know what to do with it.
The report, which also showed Hispanic high school graduates in "the poorest state" ranking number one in the nation compared to Hispanic students in other states for the second year in a row, directly refutes Thomson's philosophy that poor kids have a lesser ability to learn than other students.
Though the report demonstrates the success of Governor Martinez' education initiatives, Thomson and most of her fellow Democrats that day refused to budge on voting to allow only $20 million of a $2.7 billion education budget to go "below the line" to new classroom initiatives.
"The Governor has been in office less than four years and the Democrat majority hasn't been able to achieve that kind of success in more than 50 years of controlling the state's education budget," said Rep. Alonzo Baldonado (R - Valencia).
Baldonado cited Dr. Ben Carson as an example of someone who grew up as a poor minority student and became a great success story. According to realbencarson.com, "Growing up in a single parent home with dire poverty, poor grades, a horrible temper, and low self-esteem appeared to preclude the realization of that dream until his mother, with only a third-grade education, challenged her sons to strive for excellence. Young Ben persevered and today is a full professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and he has directed pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center for over a quarter of a century. He became the inaugural recipient of a professorship dedicated in his name in May, 2008. He is now the Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., M.D. and Dr. Evelyn Spiro, R.N. Professor of Pediatric Neurosurgery."
"I would say Dr. Carson is a somebody who knows something about quite a lot, including poverty," said Baldonado.
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