New Mexico's top education official tells districts he's 'deeply alarmed' by low-performing schools; other officials call for more accountability

After the lackluster gains this year’s standardized assessment results show and the state education department’s tardy reporting of data, New Mexico’s top education official, legislative staff and lawmakers are pushing for more accountability over student achievement.

Across New Mexico, just 38% of tested students were proficient in reading, according to spring standardized assessment results made public earlier this month, and 24% were proficient in math.

Those respectively represented a 4-percentage-point gain and a 1-percentage-point loss from last year’s results, numbers officials have said highlight both the state’s successes thus far as well as its room for improvement.

Further, according to the state Public Education Department, the number of schools in need of state support or intervention has dropped by just more than 30 schools.

Last week, Education Secretary Arsenio Romero sent a letter to the state’s school districts calling for accountability from his own department, district leaders, charter schools, teachers unions as well as families, telling them he was “deeply alarmed by the high number of low-performing schools and what that means for the state, the children who are being educated here, and our future.”

“Far too many of our schools are underperforming. Students statewide have low reading and math proficiencies. This is unacceptable. It is time for accountability,” he wrote. “We owe this accountability to our state’s most precious resource: children.”

Romero said the public schools budget the PED plans to propose — which is due next Thursday — will be focused on holding districts and schools responsible for students’ achievement and growth.

But because that plan still has not been finalized, the department declined to release it ahead of its deadline.

The PED also aims to use proposed new rules, including one establishing an accreditation process for school districts, to enforce accountability from those agencies. That rule would lay out processes for Romero to evaluate the “adequacy and functionality of an educational program.”

If adopted, department spokesman Nate Williams said, accreditation “can be used as an enforcement mechanism for accountability and student achievement.”

If a school district is not approved for accreditation, a review that evaluates districts on such things as student outcomes and districts’ operational effectiveness, the PED could mandate the district create a plan to correct course or even take over direction of that district’s educational and operational planning.

A public hearing for that rule is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Dec. 18 in Mabry Hall, located in the Jerry Apodaca Education Building, 300 Don Gaspar Avenue in Santa Fe.

Some have questioned how the call for accountability would look for certain groups. American Federation of Teachers New Mexico President Whitney Holland, for example, said she was caught flat-footed by the letter, and that it caused some concern among educators.

“I believe wholeheartedly good collective bargaining agreements lead to good student outcomes … I don’t know what being more accountable looks like, other than being a good partner, which is what I felt like we’ve always been,” she said. “We are already facing a vacancy crisis, and when we say things like ‘Be more accountable’ — I think we have to be really careful, because that’s going to disincentivize the profession.”

Legislative analysts also have called out the tardiness with which the PED released assessment results. Last year, the department published that data Sept. 1, and though it promised a quicker turnaround this year, did not release similar data until Nov. 1.

“The results of this year are abnormally late,” Senior Policy Analyst Tim Bedeaux told the Legislative Education Study Committee last week. “The goal would be to get them sooner so that you have enough time to understand whether your investments are working.”

Lawmakers also have criticized the lack of progress New Mexico students have shown, including in graduation rates, which have more or less held steady statewide.

During a Legislative Finance Committee meeting last week, chair Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, directed criticism toward school districts — whose cash balances have grown over recent years as student populations have declined — over lagging student outcomes such as graduation.

“We haven’t moved the needle at all,” he said. “We’re paying more for kids, and we’re still not getting there.”