Advocacy

==JOIN ETAN ** Welcome, NMSTE Advocacy Committee members! Our group now consists of: Pam Lloyd** plloyd@gci.com **, Janice Saxe** Saxeja@Comcast.net **, Katrina Coker katrina@ndnedtech.com, John Griffith** andflywrite@mac.com **, Linda Thompson** **lthomps3@cox.net** **, Trish Maguire** trish.maguire@enmu.edu **, Jason Wolfe Jason.wolfe@state.nm.us, Kurt Steinhaus ksteinhaus@cybermesa.com, Carl Bogardus** cbogardus@gisd.k12.nm.us **, Jim Carlton carltonmeister@gmail.com, Julia Parra** juparra@nmsu.edu **and Ferdi Serim ferdiserim@mac.com

NM Legislative Session Information and Upcoming Hearings**== 2009 update below For complete and up-to-date House and Senate Committee calendar listings, visit: **http://legis.state.nm.us/lcs/agecalendars.asp**

Join ETAN http://www.edtechactionnetwork.org/ [|Join a growing number of educators across the nation who are “Making Their Voice Heard” in support of education technology.] ETAN provides a forum for educators and others to engage in the political process and project a unified voice in support of a common cause – improving teaching and learning through the systemic use of technology. ETAN’s mission is to influence public policy-makers at the federal, state and local levels and to increase public investment in the competitiveness of America's classrooms and students. Did you know Hilary Goldman, ISTE’s Director of Government Affairs, now has a blog? It’s a great way to keep up with the many changes coming up within our US government, ed tech funding, and more. But I would encourage all Affiliates world-wide to stay in touch as well. We always want to reach out to our global network to support each other, learn skills that can make a real difference in any nation or government structure, share ideas, etc. Please bookmark or subscribe to this blog and share it with your members. As always – comments welcome!!
 * Hilary Goldmann’s blog: [] **

New Mexico's state ETAN page http://capwiz.com/edtech/state/main/?lvl=L&state=NM&view=myofficials Email NMSTE contacts to post any additional news items on the webpage and to send out emails to NM ETAN members to contact governmental personnel about events that impact our work and schools!!

Please read the following 2 notes regarding current legislative issues related to Educational Technology in NM and contact your legislators!  We strongly support HIGH QUALITY TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIROMENTS offered through IDEAL-NM and therefore request full funding of this important initiative. This includes $994,400 currently in HB2 (HAFC/H 2, 3, 4, 5 AND 6 - Page 174, item (f)) for the New Mexico cyber academy (i.e. IDEAL-NM). IDEAL-NM resources are made available to all school districts equally. Please make sure that the bill funding does not include amendments that siphons off money from IDEAL-NM. IDEAL-NM supports public, home and charter students as well as all schools in the state. IDEAL-NM is a sustainable and scalable initiative and does not require individual district to apply for extra funding for online learning. We also support NM Higher Education and Public Education Department budget items that provide direct support for IDEAL-NM. The importance of IDEAL-NM for New Mexico cannot be understated. IDEAL-NM is the states primary strategy that provides students in all districts access to quality online courses, and is facilitating broad scale K-12 and higher education collaboration. Sustained support for IDEAL-NM is needed to meet major requirements in the High School Redesign Act (2008), and to prepare students for success in higher education, where eLearning and flex-learning formats are expanding rapidly to address student needs. Some localized initiatives are not financially scalable, essentially renting content and teachers from out of state. IDEAL-NM is the mechanism creating New Mexico owned intellectual property and providing shared resources (e.g. Online curriculum, statewide eLMS & Content Library) which can be leveraged by all educational entities in the state in a variety of ways. Also, IDEAL-NM invests in developing the skills and abilities of New Mexico professional educators, from across the state, to increase the long-term capacity. The need to expand eLearning opportunities is a clear national trend (e.g. National Keeping Pace Report, 2008). If IDEAL-NM does not receive adequate support, then the efforts will be fractured and ineffective in addressing statewide issues. Additionally, the ongoing cost to New Mexico will become unmanageable. IDEAL-NM has already received national recognition and is ranked as the number 6th state-led eLearning program in the country (Center for Digital Education, 2008). The reason is that New Mexico has developed, with IDEAL-NM, an excellent framework of P-20+ collaboration, and resource sharing, that is a national model. Failing to support a program with so much promise for New Mexicos future would be a mistake. Please support IDEAL-NM. ---
 * --Posted March 5th, 2009 --**

Dear RETAzens, ==

Please let our NM legislators know you support the current funding levels for RETA and IDEAL-NM.

Attached are two draft letters that you are welcome to use or adapt as letters and emails, and for phone calls. Perhaps you saved a letter or email from past years that you can update and send.

See attached office_assignments list.

The important point is to speak up, voice your support, and be heard.

If you have already emailed, phoned, or written in support of RETA and IDEAL-NM, thank you.

--Sincerely, Susie B. =;->

 --ATTAIN Act update posted September 11, 2007 -- From: Hilary Goldmann, ISTE Director of Government Affairs Great, news! The ATTAIN Act is included in the House Education and Labor NCLB Reauthorization Draft! To see the draft go to [|**http://edlabor.house.gov/**] and scroll down. Below and attached is an analysis and comparison between the Committee discussion draft and the legislation introduced by Representatives Roybal-Allard, Hinojosa, Biggert and Kind, that was prepared for the Joint ISTE/CoSN Policy Committee by Jon Bernstein.

Late yesterday, the House Education & Labor Committee released on its website a draft of Titles II through IX of its NCLB Reauthorization Bill. The great news is that the ATTAIN bill has been incorporated (as Part F of Title II), with some major modifications, into the draft. The major points of ATTAIN are all in this version: 1) The focuses on professional development and systemic school reform in the formula grant and competitive grant programs respectively. 2) The division of 60% for formula grants and 40% for competitive grants, 3) The preferences in competitive grant awards for LEAs with schools failing to make AYP. 4) The continuation of the goal that all students be technologically literate by the eighth grade. With that said, there are some significant changes that the Committee made to ATTAIN that bear discussion and perhaps negotiation: 1) The NCLB draft does not include a set authorization amount for the program where ATTAIN sought a $1 billion authorization. This may not be a major issue because the bill does not provide authorization levels for any other titles. 2) The NCLB draft restricts funding for state activities and evaluations to 5% of all funds rather than the 7.5% set forth in ATTAIN. 3) The NCLB draft does not specifically declare a LEA minimum allotment of $3000 annually, which ATTAIN did, but only requires that states must provide technical assistance to LEAs that receive under $3000 annual allotments. 4) The NCLB draft does not require states to assess the technology literacy of students at least once by the eighth grade, as ATTAIN requires. Instead, the draft requires states to "carry-out activities to assess the state's progress towards ensuring that its students are technologically literate by the eighth grade." The draft also requires USDE to conduct a national sampling survey for technology literacy. Taken together, these two provisions may entail state assessments of technology literacy but that is not at all clear. 5) The NCLB draft requires that states spend 30% of their formula and competitive grants on professional development and tools. For the formula grants, this is a reduction from ATTAIN's 40% reservation of funds. For the competitive grants, this represents a 5% increase. We will keep you posted.

[|**Join ISTE**]- Advance your career with an ISTE Membership! Application [|member-app.pdf] (to get affiliate discount, mail check made to ISTE to Jill Brown, 1721 Rusty Rd. Alb, NM 87114) Stay tuned for how to join NMSTE as the bylaws get put into place, and as we work towards ISTE Affiliate Statue. ISTE members will get discounts to NMSTE and if/when NMSTE becomes an affiliate, affiliate members can get discounts to join ISTE!