Think further about low school grades
We frequently read about the low grades bestowed on Santa Fe Public Schools by the state. They are disheartening at best, but we tend to accept them and act accordingly. Parents may seek to move a student from an F to an A school. Santa Fe may get the reputation of having “bad” schools, which can cause businesses not to relocate here. The grades have serious consequences, because by inference they impugn the teachers and the district.
It is obvious, therefore, that the A-F ratings should reflect accurately the effectiveness of the education provided to the more than 13,000 students attending SFPS. Despite that imperative, they do not come close to achieving that objective.
The first and most obvious reason is the high percentage of students from backgrounds of poverty in the SFPS – 71 percent. That is almost 10,000 individuals, a large number of whom are held back by hunger, health problems, living with a single parent, in an abusive household or homeless.
More than 1,300 kids in the schools will be homeless sometime during the year. It’s not their fault, but they do not have the same opportunity as those who do not suffer from the same handicaps. Students may enter kindergarten never having been read to or played on a playground, unless they have been fortunate enough to attend a preschool on a regular basis, which is difficult if you are homeless or move frequently during the year. It is not their fault.
An article in The New Mexican (“SFPS sees slight gains as state releases school grades,” Aug. 23) reported the clear correlation between poverty and school grades.
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 fair poorly, while those with the lowest rates of economically disadvantaged students achieved As and Bs.
Of the 11 schools in the local district with more than 95 percent of their students enrolled in the federal free and reduced 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 rate, earned an A or B.
Those statistics should be sufficient evidence to raise questions. Beyond Santa Fe, however, there is substantial evidence on a national level that shows the same correlation. For example, a recent study in New York found that of those students who had ever been homeless, 20 percent passed reading and math tests, while 40 percent who had never been homeless passed. That effect is surely true in Santa Fe.
A second major flaw is the use of absolute grade levels on tests to measure effectiveness, rather than student progress. For example, a teacher whose students start and end the year reading at grade level is graded effective — the students advanced a year as expected. On the other hand, if a class started reading two years below grade level, but ended the year one year behind, the teacher would be considered inadequate, even though the students gained two years.
It is highly unlikely that the school grading system will change while Gov. Susana Martinez is in office. Hopefully, it can be changed or abandoned with a new governor. In the meantime, we should recognize the inaccuracies in the system and not be led to believe Santa Fe is filled with “bad” schools. That is not the case. There are certainly problems beyond poverty, but I believe the Santa Fe Public School system is effective in the face of many problems — the primary one of which is the high level of poverty.