SFPS sees slight gains as state releases school grades
Number of sites receiving D’s and F’s falls; superintendent says more should be done to help improve performance at campuses with high percentage of low-income students
Santa Fe Public Schools has narrowed the gap between its high-performing and lowperforming schools since last year, when more than half of its schools received D’s and F’s in the state’s annual A-F grading system and less than a quarter earned an A or B.
This year, 36 percent of Santa Fe’s 30 schools earned A’s and B’s and 46 percent received D’s and F’s.
The school grades released Tuesday by the New Mexico Public Education Department under a 5-year-old report card system show a mix of results for the local district, with 11 schools improving their grades from last year, 10 earning the same grade and nine seeing a drop. There was one fewer A this year and two more F’s, but five more B’s and seven fewer D’s.
Amid the fluctuations, one trend has held steady in Santa Fe since 2013, when the state first released school grades under a controversial evaluation system: The schools with the highest rates of low-income students generally fare poorly, while those with the lowest rates of economically disadvantaged students achieve A’s and B’s.
Of the 11 schools in the local district with more than 95 percent of their students enrolled in the free and reduced-price lunch program — a federal indicator of poverty — nine received a D or an F this year. All six Santa Fe schools with 25 percent to 30 percent of their students enrolled in the lunch program — the lowest poverty rates — earned an A or B.
A legislative study in 2016 that examined statewide school data also found a link between a school’s grade and the income levels of the families it serves. The report also said schools with a high percentage of English-language learners and special-education students often get D’s and F’s.
“I believe that there is a correlation,” Santa Fe Superintendent Veronica García said Tuesday of the link between school grades and student poverty levels. “It’s certainly a factor, but it’s not an excuse,” she added. “All of our kids can learn. We have to look at what we can do to help mitigate those impacts.”
This year, like last year, Piñon Elementary School — with more than 60 percent of its students receiving lunch aid and about 16 percent learning English — bucked the trend by achieving an A.
A few of the district’s struggling schools with high rates of low-income students improved by more than two grade levels over last year’s results. Both Amy Biehl Community School and Chaparral Elementary School, for instance, improved from a D to a B.
The gains at Amy Biehl are because of academic growth among its lowest-performing students, the state report card says, while at Chaparral, it was the highest-performing students whose increased achievement led to the higher grade.
Mandela International Magnet School also saw a jump from a D to a B over the past year, in part because its highest-performing students made achievement gains and also because the school, overall, is making academic progress, according to the state report card.
And both of the district’s high schools increased their letter grades: Capital High from a D to a C and Santa Fe High from an F to a C.
“We still have a lot of work to do, but we are on a positive trajectory,” García said.
Of the 14 schools in the district rated D or F, she said, “That’s 14 too many.”
Overall, Santa Fe schools netted four A’s, seven B’s, five C’s, seven D’s and seven F’s — faring slightly worse than the statewide averages. While the local district saw general improvements, however, the state saw an increase in its failing schools, to 16 percent, and no change in its rate of A and B schools — 38 percent, compared to Santa Fe’s 36 percent.
Some New Mexico school districts, including Farmington and Rio Rancho, made significant gains: about 80 percent of Farmington’s schools earned an A or B and not one received an F. More than 70 percent of Rio Rancho schools earned an A or a B.
The Farmington district was one of three that received no F’s this year, according to The Associated Press. The other two were the Gadsden and Alamogordo districts in Southern New Mexico.
Albuquerque, meanwhile, saw more than a third of its schools earn an F this year.
García said her staff performed a preliminary data analysis to see why some Santa Fe schools moved up a grade or two. Both Capital and Santa Fe High scored well in the grading component known as “college and career readiness,” which helped their scores, she said.
But the district needs more time to take a “deep dive” into the data to learn more about how schools can improve, she added.
School leadership can make a difference, García said, especially at a school like Piñon Elementary, which has had the same principal — Janis Devoti — for years. The school has earned an A for the past two years, and a B for the three years prior to that.
The state’s school-grading system comprises a complex range of measures, including student performance on standardized tests, student attendance, graduation rates and parents’ involvement in a school. Advocates argue that it provides a clear picture of how schools are performing and allows communities and the state to help struggling schools, while opponents say it’s too heavily focused on test scores. Many opponents also argue that the formula is too confusing and is an inadequate measure of school quality.
In 2013, a group of retired Los Alamos National Laboratory physicists analyzed the system and said it is so complex that it would take a rocket scientist to understand it all.
“We have to work with the [grading] system we have,” García said. “Whether people agree with or not, it’s our system.”
Gov. Susana Martinez and former Public Education Secretary Hanna Skandera successfully convinced the Legislature to support the school-grading initiative early in Martinez’s first term, and the first results the state released reflected the 201213 school year. At the time, Skandera said parents who wanted to transfer their students out of failing schools and into higher-performing schools could do so.
But the Public Education Department has not kept track of whether any students are transferring out of schools because of poor grades.
And García said Santa Fe Public Schools has seen no evidence that local parents are seeking transfers because their children’s school has received a D or an F.
Gov. Martinez, in a statement issued Tuesday, said, “We need to continue doing everything we can to put our students first so they can receive the high-quality education they deserve and go on to succeed in college, the workforce and life. That includes empowering our parents to see how their local schools are performing compared to others around the state.”
Charles Goodmacher, a spokesman for the National Education Association of New Mexico, called Tuesday’s grades — and the entire grading system — “a disservice to New Mexico’s students, parents and educators.”
“Parents and the community should know the grades assigned to their local school are more of a reflection on a particular set of policy wonk ideas which reduce the many intangibles of education to a single letter score, than it is about what is actually happening in their schools,” he said in email late Tuesday.
He added, “The economic future of NM towns and neighborhoods, as well as communities of students, educators, and the parents who volunteer in the schools, are deeply impacted by these grades.”