Sen. Tim Keller

Last week, while sitting at the Sunport, I picked up a copy of The Economist, and in the United States section, an article leapt off of the page that was much closer to home: “Breaking, and Bad,” a piece about Albuquerque’s struggles with our police force and our floundering economy. As I read the article, I hoped that other readers would believe that these struggles are part of a recent one-off phenomenon that we will move past, because I love this state, where I was born and raised, and am grateful for the opportunity to raise my own family here.

But reflecting on the story, I couldn’t help but recognize that many of our current issues have been with us for a long time…

Over the last few years our state has seen a massive push from the governor’s administration to drive education improvements through an increase in testing in our schools. In isolation, this might seem like results-minded reform, but in conjunction with the testing efforts already in place, the resulting “over-testing” is taking the learning right out of our schools…