Searchlight examined eight education-related claims and promises Martinez made during her two successful campaigns for governor, using publicly available data to learn whether New Mexico has managed to move the needle since then.

A look at the Martinez appointees who head the state's three most important agencies for child well-being.

The state knows relatively little about the people served by its nearly three dozen contracted home visiting providers. Nor is there an answer to how many families the program should serve.

Despite strong evidence that home visiting promotes healthy families and children, state officials have diverted millions of dollars from the program in order to fund child care assistance.

New Mexico tends to wait to deal with problems until they grow overly expensive and challenging to solve, Charles Sallee of the Legislative Finance Committee told a forum on early childhood issues this week.

Problems with school "systems" -- which include everything from broken furnaces to mildewed carpets and shredded electrical wires -- are rampant across the state, according to a Searchlight New Mexico analysis of data collected by the agency charged with awarding money to help keep the public schools running.

A Searchlight investigation finds billions of taxpayer dollars have flowed out of state since 2013 due to government purchases that are not filled — or cannot be filled — by New Mexico companies.

The data don't exist in an easy-to-grasp form, so we decided to create and share it.

Legislators have been pressing the state to clarify where contract dollars flow.

New Mexico Voices for Children awards ‘Raising New Mexico’ project.