"The most educated and most prosperous people of the future - and the best paying jobs - may be in places like Malaysia instead of New Mexico if we don't get serious about getting into gear and gaining some major traction." Here are four things our educational system could do right now (and with amazingly little additional money) to turn around our graduation rate. First, stop suspending students.  This practice simply accelerates the process by which students are pushed out (by a system that needs to eliminate bad statistics) as much as they drop out. Instead, require in-school suspension; after-school tutoring and week-end remediation. Second, greatly expand vocational and trade opportunities, relying heavily on the resources of the state’s network of community colleges for concurrent enrollment while students are still in high school. Third, every elementary and middle school should have after-school programming for every student.  This has repeatedly been shown to improve classroom performance, reduce delinquency, increase motivation and enrich the entire experience. Fourth, we need many more charter or alternative schools for high school students who are not doing well in class or who have already dropped out.  Small learning communities with individual attention given to differing learning styles and with supportive services put in place to deal with the family and community barriers to learning have been demonstrated effective in helping kids graduate.  There are many other things that could be done.  If we are serious we will start doing them.  photo by Laurette Alexander   JERRY AND THE GORDON BERNELL CHARTER SCHOOL Jails are often said to be places where people get a first class education in how to be career criminals, as they make mistakes and go back for intensive mentoring by older inmates. Jerry saw that breaking the cycle would require offering educational opportunites inside the lockup facility. Jerry pitched the idea to Bernallilo County and a few years later, the Gordon Bernell Charter School came into being. The first graduate, in the fall of 2008, was a 34 year old inmate at MDC (Bernallilo County Metropolitan Detention Center) who was in for drug related charges. Now, there are 535 students, 400 in the jail and 135 attending at a downtown Albuquerque facility. There is a waiting list. It isn't often that an original idea that could be a game changer comes into being as a result of such a proposal. This could be a model for New Mexico, and even for a national breakthrough, as prison budgets, including financing for new prisons, strain state budgets across America to the breaking point. The Albuquerque Public School System Charter School gets students that drop out. 95% of them have children and they have been out of school from an average of 5 years to as many as 30. For many of these people, this is a chance to grab onto. The school day may end for most students in the afternoon, but these people continue into evening hours and over weekends. For most of them, the expectation that they would ever graduate from anything seemed beyond reach and beyond hope. As they are released from MDC, they continue with courses at the downtown facility. Many students are on community release, wearing ankle bracelets or are on parole. Recidivism not only affects the future of the individual offender, but the next generation as well as the families of inmates fall victim. Education allows whole families to look for a brighter future. For the community, it means worrying about fewer people in jails and prisons that taxpayers pay $30,000 a year to house. It means fewer people who are not productive citizens and wind up as crime statistics instead. “Jerry gets a lot of respect because he is simply genuine. He doesn't do this for his own ego gratification. He’s not playing games. He's real. He is coming from a deep concern about the welfare of people and this state. Also, he’s got a great deal of courage. He will take anybody on. He is just about fearless. He stands his ground and knows what he believes and is on the right side of people oriented issues.” - Greta Roskom, of the New Mexico charter School Coalition, is also Director of Albuquerque's Gordon Bernell Charter School.