It’s time (again) to talk about breaking up APS

Year after year, Albuquerque Public Schools has produced poor student proficiency rates for the majority of its 80,000-plus students, and poor graduation rates that give high school students just better than a 50-50 shot at getting a diploma on time. Yes, there have been years when some individual school grades and student grade-level performance results have inched up — giving taxpayers, employers, parents and students the hope that maybe, just maybe, APS has turned a corner.

And then the district hits another brick wall, one it has built itself. And that raises the question of whether APS is too big to ever succeed.

And if it is time to finally break it up.

Last week, the nation’s 31st-largest school district slammed into another dead-end, earning its second consecutive D grade from the state Public Education Department. The district grades, just like school grades and teacher evaluations, are based primarily on student improvement. All APS has to do to score well is ensure its students make academic progress in a school year and leave a grade better than the day they came in.

Other districts do it — this year Los Lunas Public Schools, Capitan Municipal Schools and Melrose Public Schools all worked hard and climbed from D’s to B’s. Animas Public Schools, Cloudcroft Municipal Schools, Corona Municipal Schools, Dora Municipal Schools, Grady Municipal Schools and Texico Municipal Schools all earned A’s.

It is bad enough that APS flatlined from 2012 to 2014, earning a C each of those three years. It is worse yet that the district dropped to a D last year and this year because not enough of its students took the federally mandated/state selected standardized test.

Federal law requires that 95 percent of public school students take an accountability measure aligned to their curriculum — perhaps the most valuable component of the old No Child Left Behind Act that took away the ability for schools to hide the lack of progress among poor, minority, special education or academically challenged students. New Mexico uses the Partnership for Assessment and Readiness for College and Careers, and it adds up to less than two days total of testing per child. Yet last year the district entrusted with educating almost a third of all New Mexico K-12 public school students created an opt-out kit for parents who don’t want their students to take the PARCC.

Begging the question: what doesn’t APS want its parents to know?

Perhaps it’s that things are not improving academically for APS students. Back in 2005-2006, before school letter grades and the PARCC, when students took the Standards-Based Assessment, APS as a district did not make adequate yearly progress. Less than half of the district’s students were at grade level in math and barely half were at grade level in reading.

A new student assessment and new school and district report cards haven’t changed that. This school year barely one fifth of APS students are at grade level in math and less than one-third are at grade level in reading — about the same as last year.

A total of 44 of APS’ 158 schools are struggling so much they earned a special status — “strategic,” “focus” or “priority” — that mandates increased monitoring and assistance from the state, depending on how low their student achievement is. The district has just one school in “reward” status, meaning it is among the top 5 percent of schools in the state.

And what did the APS administration have to say about the abysmal showing? The silence was as disappointing as it was deafening. Despite having 18 people on its “leadership team” as well as three people in its communications office, the day the district grade was released “APS administrators could not be reached for comment on the ratings.”

Days later, APS was vocally bemoaning getting a D because not enough of its students took the PARCC. It’s a lesson in “you reap what you sow,” considering the district handed students and parents an opt-out playbook.

And it’s a lesson in finally not beating your head against a wall that won’t move and trying something different.

In 2002, the New Mexico Legislature passed HB 153, a bill sponsored by then-Rep. James Taylor, a South Valley Democrat, that set up a public vote to break any school district bigger than 35,000 students into at least three smaller districts. It passed the House 56-10 and the Senate 26-14, and was supported by no less than then-Senate Majority Leader Manny Aragon and amended by then-Senate President Pro Tem Richard Romero, both Albuquerque Democrats. Taylor summed it up with “the Legislature has spoken: Albuquerque Public Schools is a mess, it’s too big and it needs to be broken up.”

In the end, then-Gov. Gary Johnson vetoed the bill and voiced a concern about creating “three new layers of bureaucracy” with corresponding costs. But he added in his executive message that “It is clear that the Albuquerque public school system must undergo a major reformation to meet the educational needs of all Albuquerque public school students.”

Similar moves to break up APS have been proposed in subsequent years, and while Rep. David Adkins, R-Albuquerque, had expressed interest in carrying a similar bill in the 2017 session, he is currently in the throes of a recount. It is unlikely new House Majority Leader Sheryl Williams Stapleton — an Albuquerque Democrat who makes $71k a year as APS’ occupational education coordinator — would allow any move against the district to gain traction. Should one be introduced, she needs to finally recognize her 21 years of blatant conflict of interest in voting on legislation that affects her employer and thus her livelihood and recuse herself.

There is cold comfort in the constancy of inaction, lack of accountability and responsiveness, as well as poor student achievement at a district that devours $1.3 billion in tax dollars annually. Yet Johnson made an important point that Albuquerque taxpayers certainly do not need a version of the Las Vegas-West Las Vegas school districts (C and D grades this year, respectively) that amount to community jobs programs.

While bigger isn’t better in the case of APS, more isn’t better in Las Vegas. Any split would need to be thoughtfully and carefully crafted.

Yet APS taxpayers, parents and students do need a district that is not too big to listen, too big to collaborate and too big to succeed. They need an APS administration that’s engaged in improving student outcomes.

And if it takes a break-up to get that, so be it.