If we had met, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Teddy's eldest child, would have invited me, as she once invited another, to join her, in long-since-famous words: "If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me." I would have much to say.

Despite persistent poverty, poor education, poor health, poor housing and poor nutrition, New Mexicans are innately conservative because they fear that change, not to mention reform, makes things worse. State and city officials fear to enact legislation to address and alleviate these ills systematically or to anticipate changing circumstances and conditions which, unaddressed, will worsen them.

As things related to the economy and education worsen, the future vigor of New Mexico and Las Cruces comes into question. The news is uniformly bad. As the nation emerges from the Great Recession, New Mexico lags. Its economic growth is about half that of neighboring states. As nationwide housing starts and housing prices slowly increase, New Mexico's remain flat, and Las Cruces' slide. Although more people with advanced degrees are entering than leaving the state, more are leaving than entering the city. Northern New Mexico is standing still; southern New Mexico, with Las Cruces at its center, is slipping.

Education is the state's and the city's paramount problem because it undermines the economy, present and future. By comparison with education in countries with advanced economies, American education continues to be middling overall. For grades K-12, New Mexico's public school system ranks 50th in the nation, and its second largest district, Las Cruces Public School District, ranks mediocre. The LCPS is one of the country's worst districts.

Yet in this state of denial, local leaders tout LCPS's wonderful schools and wonderful teachers. The reality is not wonderful to those facing the facts and their implications. LCPS has a preponderance of teachers ineffective for many reasons, and teachers, principals, and district officials dishonest and dissembling. Oñate, Mayfield and Las Cruces high schools are three of the top five high schools in numbers of graduates needing remedial work in state colleges. Yet, for unworthy purposes, officials promote college for everyone. One, to protect employment in the education industry in the state with the highest number of colleges per capita in the country. Second, to push colleges to teach graduates today what high schools taught graduates 50 years ago.

Rhetorical question: wonderful? Real question: how possible? Answer: diplomas for those who cannot make change or multiply and divide numbers. LCPS wants citizens to believe that students who cannot do arithmetic can pass algebra. Its job: lying to students, parents, the public, and public officials that graduates with "diplomas of excellence" are ready for careers or college.

The state and district, not to mention NMSU's School of Education, and education leaders offer nothing to change this dynamic of deficiencies and deceits in public education. No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and Common Core State Standards education "reforms" have been little more than ideologically driven stunts without substance or success. Even well-intentioned lottery scholarships merely encourage mediocre students to go to mediocre state colleges and delay their difficulty getting decent jobs in the state even if they graduate.

LCPS announces new programs to overcome continuing problems unsolved by similar PR programs similarly ballyhooed a few years earlier. Days ago, the school board voted unanimously to substitute work-arounds for a state standardized test as a graduation requirement. Its decision, a white flag of surrender, admits that the district cannot educate 20 percent of its students well enough to graduate by a state standard, allows it to conceal ineffective teaching, but enables it to placate parents with worthless diplomas that ensure enrollments for per-capita funding.

This bankruptcy of education foretells economic deterioration. Unable to provide a workforce attractive to businesses, state and city offer financial inducements in exchange for low-skill, low-wage jobs requiring little education — which jobs hide their educational failures. By reducing revenues — lowering corporate income and other business tax rates and receiving lower tax revenues from low-income earners — they cannot design, develop, and invest in reforms to educate students well enough to staff or attract companies requiring well-educated, well-paid employees. Thus, state and city perpetuate a cycle of self-impoverishment.

The issues of economics and education come together at LCPS and NMSU. Instead of serving as engines of economic development and educational excellence, they serve as the city's largest employers. Both churn out poorly educated graduates fit mainly for low-skill, low-pay jobs in agriculture and construction, or low-standard positions in law enforcement, business, or education. NMSU's mediocre Arrowhead Business and Research Park has failed to attract high-skilled, innovative entrepreneurs, who confront an unreceptive developer-oriented, Chamber-based bloc, the city's poor schools, and an unready workforce.

State and city officials have no strategy for a different future. Largely dependent on the federal government, New Mexico operates more like a territory than a state. So the Big Picture for state and city is not enchanting. Have I said enough, Alice?
