Report cards are out — grading schools, not students — and Sante Fe Public Schools did especially well last year in attendance.
In 2022-23, Santa Fe Public Schools reported only 50% of its students attended school 90% of the time. That rate rose sharply in 2023-24 to 71.1% — one of the best attendance boosts in New Mexico. The statewide rate grew only from 62% to 66.1% across the same time span.
Santa Fe Public Schools, with 11,673 students enrolled across 27 public schools and one district charter, also boasted improvement in both reading and science. College and career readiness, though, declined significantly in the district.
The New Mexico Public Education Department delivered the report cards this week to New Mexico school districts after finalizing its per-school and per-district data for the 2023-24 school year.
Statewide performance data for last school year first became available online in late October through early November. The website was updated again Jan. 29 with the release of statewide performance data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
What’s measured?
The state assesses school accountability based on five categories, as outlined by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA. The five categories are academic achievement, academic progress, English language proficiency, college and career readiness, and graduation rate.
ESSA, which was signed into law in 2015 by former President Barack Obama, requires state agencies to standardize education data across those categories.
The state Public Education Department publishes yearly reports using data from national and state assessments, including:
* The New Mexico Measures of Student Success and Achievement test, evaluating third through eighth graders on math and reading
* The New Mexico Assessment of Science Readiness, given to fifth, eighth and 11th graders
* And the SAT, for 11th graders
Those assessments and specialized tests, like the Dynamic Learning Maps test for students with cognitive disabilities — make up two of the five categories mandated by the Every Student Succeeds Act — academic achievement and academic progress.
A special exam called the ACCESS test measures students’ English language proficiency — another metric to be tracked, according to federal law.
The last two metrics, college and career readiness and graduation rate, are based on per-school rates of students’ performance and participation in career-related and college-level courses and — take a guess — the timely graduation rate of schools’ graduating classes.
Private schools don’t report their data to the Public Education Department.
Santa Fe’s public schools
Compared to its 2022-23 results, Santa Fe Public Schools’ districtwide reading proficiency rose from 37% to 40% and science proficiency rose from 30% to 31%. Math proficiency declined one percentage point, from 23% to 22%, in the recent 2023-24 school year results.
Educational outcomes for English language learners in Santa Fe public schools were mixed. The state uses two metrics to track that progress — the number of English learners who score proficient on the ACCESS English test, and “English learner progress,” which tracks the percent of students expected to reach English proficiency within five years, according to their performance on the ACCESS exam.
Santa Fe’s rate of English learners passing the exam declined from 4.8% to 3.7% from 2022-23 to 2023-24, with a parallel decline occurring statewide.
But, Santa Fe’s rate of English learners on track to reach proficiency in five years increased in the same time span — from 11.2% to 13.8%, with a slightly higher growth rate occurring statewide.
College and career readiness declined significantly across the district in the time period.
The rate measures the percent of high school students who have participated in and achieved a passing grade in a college or career course. Santa Fe Public Schools reported a 97% rate of college and career readiness in 2022-23 — the exact same rate reported statewide. Both those rates fell the following year. Statewide, it fell only slightly to 95.6%. But Santa Fe’s rate declined much more steeply to 82.7% of students considered “college and career ready.”
Graduation rates in Santa Fe increased marginally, from 82% to 83.1%, while statewide, those numbers rose from 76% to 76.7%.
School-by-school improvements
The Santa Fe school district was successful in removing the “in need of support” designation from the nine schools that previously held it. Of those schools in the 2023-24 school year, six were designated as in need of additional targeted support and improvement, and three were classified as in need of comprehensive support and improvement.
The shining star of Santa Fe Public Schools’ recent results was Nava Elementary.
Nava reported 11% and 17% of students as math and reading-proficient respectively in 2022-23, but by 2023-24, they more than doubled both of those numbers, reporting 24% and 39% of students as reading and math proficient.
State charter schools in Santa Fe performed rather middle of the road on the state’s metrics. Chief among them, though, was The Masters Program, a high school charter based at Santa Fe Community College centered around providing an early college experience.
It was the only spotlight school among the state charters that, thanks to its integration with the college, reported 100% career and college readiness among its students, along with 17% of students proficient in math and 56% proficient in reading.