N.M. students’ reading, math scores inch up

Santa Fe Public Schools still below state averages, though showing improvement

New Mexico saw slight gains this year in overall student proficiency on language and math exams, an improvement driven in part by hefty increases in passing scores at some of the state’s largest public school districts — Farmington, Gadsden, Gallup and Hobbs.

Smaller jumps at Albuquerque Public Schools, which serves more than a quarter of the state’s students, and Santa Fe Public Schools also had an effect, Public Education Secretary-designate Christopher Ruszkowski said in an interview.

“One of the things that we’re seeing in districts that are on the rise,” he said, “… is really a willingness to learn and grow from best practices happening across the state and across the country.”

Still, just over 1 in 5 of the state’s nearly 215,000 students in grades 3-11 passed the PARCC math exam this spring, while 31 percent passed the test in English language arts, according to test results released Thursday.

The increases for both were about 2 percentage points over 2017 test results and more than 4 percentage points over 2015, when the tests were first administered in an effort to measure student proficiency in

a state that consistently ranks at the bottom in public education.

The scores also renewed criticism of an assessment that many educators have called a poor way of evaluating students’ knowledge.

Santa Fe Public Schools, while showing improvement, continued to lag behind state averages. The district’s reading proficiency rate was 29 percent, up 0.7 percent from 2017, and proficiency in math was 17.6 percent, a gain of just over 1 percent.

Santa Fe Superintendent Veronica García said in a statement Thursday, “The sustainable growth for the second year in a row in English Language Arts is a product of the hard work of our staff, and I am confident that we will continue to improve in math.”

But, she said, “it does concern me that we still have a large number of students who are not considered college and career ready according to the PARCC assessment.”

Ruszkowski lauded what he called “modest progress” in Santa Fe.

And he noted that the district’s sole locally chartered school, the Academy for Technology and the Classics, ranked among the top 10 schools in large districts for reading proficiency.

He also pointed to a few state-chartered schools in Santa Fe that fared well: In reading, New Mexico School for the Arts ranked second among charters and the MASTERS Program ranked ninth; in math, Turquoise Trail Charter Elementary School and NMSA both ranked in the top 10.

But Ruszkowski said school officials in Santa Fe could accelerate the district’s progress by visiting some of the highest-performing charter schools and districts across the state and learning from their success.

“I think that there’s a new era where no district lives in isolation,” he said. “No district is an island. Every district needs to be scouring the field for best practices.”

In a phone interview, García said she agreed that districts can learn from one another.

“There’s some things that we’re doing well that other districts can learn from us,” she added.

One obstacle the Santa Fe district and others face, García said, is an inequity in funding from the education department to implement some of its proven initiatives, such as a literacy program called Reads to Lead and the K-3 Plus summer program for young children.

Distribution of funding for these key reforms is something that should be closely examined, she said.

She also raised questions about whether the results of the PARCC tests are a true reflection of New Mexico students’ skills.

“The inordinate number of students identified as not ready for college and career on the PARCC assessment statewide may possibly represent a disconnect between the PARCC assessment and actual college and career readiness,” she said.

New Mexico was one of just four states that solely used the PARCC exams this spring to assess students’ progress at all grade levels through a consortium formally called the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. Two other states used hybrids of the PARCC tests or administered the exams only in grades 3-8.

That compares with two dozen states using the math and language tests in 2010.

The exams test students’ knowledge of the once widely adopted but also fiercely debated Common Core State Standards. Many states have taken steps in recent years to repeal those standards. Even more have backed out of PARCC.

New Mexico’s first round of the exams in the spring of 2015 met with protests. Ahead of the exams, there were student walkouts, and parents of nearly 5,500 students withheld them from testing. Over time, however, the opposition has died down. In 2018, state data show, 866 students refused to take the tests.

While Gov. Susana Martinez has long been a supporter of PARCC, the Republican and Democratic nominees vying to replace her both have said they would seek alternative forms of measuring student achievement. Democratic U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham has called the tests unfair, and her GOP rival, U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, has said they are ineffective.

But Ruszkowski said he got a clear message Thursday from educators who attended a news conference in Albuquerque that many of them want to keep moving forward with PARCC. He heard similar comments on a tour of schools across the state, he said.

Pointing to an upward trajectory in test scores across all grade levels and all demographics — Native American students led the gains with an 8.2 percent growth in reading — Ruszkowski said, “This is what happens when you stay the course.”

The rise in proficiency rates statewide between 2015 and 2018 means 13,000 more kids are reading at grade level and 11,000 more are on par in math, he said.

Stephanie Ly, president of the American Federation of Teachers New Mexico and one of the staunchest critics of the Martinez administration’s education policies, said in a statement, “Secretary Designate Ruszkowski believes higher scores are due to ‘staying the course’, but we know any gains made by students in New Mexico are due to the incredible dedication of our public educators despite the most challenging of environments. …

“The fact is,” she continued, “we still are lagging behind other states.”

Ruszkowski, too, said the state could be doing better, including in the way it administers PARCC.

In a month or so, he said, the Public Education Department will release its plans to implement shorter testing windows, draw more “family engagement” and ensure earlier release of test results — possibly as soon as May.