APS, PED need to work together for NM’s sake

It was great while it lasted. For around 24 hours, leaders at the state Public Education Department and New Mexico’s largest school district appeared to be on the same page regarding student achievement and a path forward, allowing student needs to bring them together rather than letting adult concerns push them apart.

It is essential for New Mexico’s students, parents and taxpayers that they keep that focus.

It all started with the release of the 2016 Partnership for Assessment and Readiness for College and Careers results. Those revealed that less than a third of our 300,000-plus K-12 public school students can read at grade level, and less than a fifth can do the math. And while high schoolers in Albuquerque Public Schools, which is entrusted with educating around a quarter of the state’s students, outperformed their peers across the state, that isn’t saying much — because just 44.4 percent of APS 11th-graders can read at grade level, and that’s down from 51.3 percent in 2015. (Overall just 27 percent of APS students can read at grade level; 19.7 percent can do the math. Statewide it’s 28.6 percent in English and 19.7 percent in math.)

But while the results weren’t encouraging, the reaction from PED and APS leaders was. Acting PED Secretary Christopher Ruszkowski made it clear APS — with more than 80,000 students — “is a bellwether of how we are doing. We can’t move forward as a state without our largest district on board.” And APS Superintendent Raquel Reedy, instead of dismissing the scores or making excuses, emphasized the 2016 PARCC scores show “the work that needs to be done, and we won’t be satisfied until our students are where they need to be.” She said the district is already working on attacking low tests scores in a five-year academic master plan, with goals and steps to reach them, and a new pre-K-to-graduation approach to education that sounds like it will align with PARCC and the Common Core curriculum to get students ready for college and careers.

And perhaps most heartening, Reedy said APS will continue to work with “other school districts as well as the state, which includes taking advantage of opportunities provided by the Public Education Department when available.” Replicating the success in academic growth that’s happened in districts like Farmington, Gallup, Gadsden and Hobbs only stands to help APS students and teachers, as does participating in PED’s Principals Pursuing Excellence and Teachers Pursuing Excellence, which target lowperforming schools and educators for additional support. Ruszkowski provided data showing schools in the mentorship programs start at lower levels but achieve more student academic growth than schools that don’t engage.

Bask in that collegial glow for a moment, because Thursday and Friday, everything seemed to change.

That’s when APS criticized PED for not providing enough funding to the massive district to participate fully in PED’s professional mentoring and student reading programs — funding the district has lobbied against because it is not in the state formula. And Ruszkowski acknowledged demand for PPE and TPE has outstripped supply — and districts that deliver results get priority, which APS hasn’t.

Now put aside all the hurt feelings and baggage of the past six years and remember that more than 80,000 students need the grown-ups to put them first.

The fact remains districts do not have to be in lockstep with PED for their students to improve. Gadsden, which is data driven but not signed up with all PED programs, has delivered a 10.7-percentage point increase in English language arts and a 6.9 percentage point increase in math since 2015. Charter school Albuquerque Institute of Math and Science, which as an “A” school does not qualify for the mentoring programs, has the second-highest ELA proficiency in the state at 85.7 percent and the highest math proficiency at 83.8 percent. And APS’ own Early College Academy has 73.2 percent of its students proficient in reading — the sixth-highest percentage in the state.

New Mexico needs APS to walk Reedy’s talk and work with these schools, their leaders and others like them to replicate student success — whether that’s participation in specific programs or sharing during teacher development days or simple brown-bag luncheons. APS has acknowledged its sheer size makes it fiscally impossible to get its 100-plus principals in PED’s Principals Pursuing Excellence, but it sure better make sure the ones who make the cut share every scrap of knowledge they glean with their colleagues.

This week APS administrators were reviewing the district’s academic master plan, and Ruszkowski says he plans to sit down with Reedy next month to learn about it — his first meeting with her as acting secretary of education. He cautions that “while I am optimistic about meeting with the educators, the superintendent and the team, the board has to chart a course that puts student learning and academics and college and career readiness front and center.”

Reedy appeared to be doing just that this week — instead of following the board’s anti-data lead of encouraging students to opt out of PARCC and rejecting proven turn-around programs, or the teacher’s unions’ script of spinning poor scores with diatribes against testing. In contrast she said, front and center, that “the truth is there are few scores in the state that we can be proud of.”

She’s right. And her 80,000-plus students and the entire state of New Mexico need APS to walk her talk and take the lead in first making student improvement, and then student achievement, the rule here and not the exception.