Democrats in New Mexico chose a strong candidate for Governor, Lujan Grisham, a member of Congress who supports teachers. She and her Republican opponent agree on two things: Dump PARCC and scrap the broken test-based teacher evaluation system.

The current Governor Susanna Martinez has been a disaster for public schools and teachers. She hired a non-educator, Hannah Skandera, who had previously worked for Jeb Bush, to impose the “Florida model” of high-stakes Testing for students and teachers and choice. The state remains at the very bottom of NAEP. Skandera’s successor has doubled down and a court injunction has blocked his efforts to penalize teachers for low scores. This in a state with staggeringly high levels of child poverty.

Politico reported on this race:

EDUCATION SPOTLIGHT ON NEW MEXICO GOVERNOR’S RACE: Poor education outcomes, low teacher pay, high unemployment rates and an active education funding lawsuit are just some of the problems facing the next governor in the Land of Enchantment.

— It’s not surprising, then, that education has become a key issue in the race for the governor’s mansion between two sitting members of Congress representing the state: Republican Rep. Steve Pearce and Democratic Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

— Right off the bat, New Mexico’s next governor will become entangled in a legal battle over funding of the state’s public schools. A state district court judge ruled last month that New Mexico’s students are “caught in an inadequate system” in need of improvement — a ruling the state has appealed. As in Washington and Kansas, funding lawsuits often present yearslong challenges for state leaders, who must figure out how to boost funding for schools to the pleasure of the courts. When the parties become caught in appeals, a resolution can take even longer.

— Lujan Grisham has said that should she be become the state’s next governor, she would cut the fight short by “immediately” halting the state’s appeal of the ruling, according to local reports. “New Mexico’s public education system is broken and underfunded,” she said in a statement. Among Lujan Grisham’s campaign promises is a proposal to boost teachers’ starting salaries to $40,000 from the current $36,000.

— Pearce, meanwhile, stopped short of making such a commitment on the school funding case. “This ruling underscores the importance of my plan to reform education. The old way is broken,” Pearce said in statement to Morning Education through a spokesman.

— Among Pearce’s goals is to “diversify” the sources of education funding to make schools less reliable on the oil and gas industries. He also hopes to support an expansion of school choice, including “charter schools, magnet schools, e-schools and homeschooling,” according to his campaign website. He wants to return more “day to day management decisions to the local school districts and/or charter schools,” and institute per-pupil funding.

— Universal preschool and the funding stream for such a program have divided the candidates. Lujan Grisham has made preschool access one of her marquee issues and is proposing to fund its expansion through $285.5 million over five years from the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund, she told the New Mexican . That fund culls fees from the extraction of natural resources from state lands. But Pearce isn’t keen on tapping into those funds and has not made preschool expansion a priority. “I’m very nervous about beginning to dip into that permanent fund until you have solutions,” Pearce told local station KRQE.

— Both candidates are in agreement on two things: teacher evaluations and PARCC. The Common-Core-aligned standardized test was created through a consortium of more than 20 states in 2010. New Mexico remains one in a handful of states to still administer it, but both Pearce and Lujan Grisham want to scrap it. “The PARCC test seems to be especially ineffective,” Pearce told KRQE. “My initial reaction is we should find a better way to measure our students.” Lujan Grisham’s education plan calls for “dropping the PARCC test in favor of less intrusive testing.”

— Both candidates have also said they would overhaul the state’s controversial teacher evaluation system. Lujan Grisham, who has the backing of teachers unions, would reform teacher evaluations “to focus on more holistic measures of progress.” Pearce said recently that after conversations with teachers, local school officials and others, it has become clear that “the current system has crushed the spirit of many talented educators and contributed to our state’s teacher shortage,” according to the AP.