State graduation rate increases a fraction of a percent, but bigger increases are "doable"

A pandemic-era plateau has persisted in the state’s high school graduation rates. The 2023 school year graduation rate is 76.7% — a meager .2 percentage point increase from the previous year.

But there are some bright spots in the preliminary 2023 dataset released by the New Mexico Public Education Department last week, which saw high graduation rates among students involved with career technical programs and improvements among certain student groups since the 2018 Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit was decided.

Graduation rates increased about 8 percentage points between 2015 and 2020. Although the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t decrease graduation rates — in fact, 2020 rates were slightly higher than the year before — state Public Education Secretary Arsenio Romero said the rate stagnated.

For the past four years, the rates have varied by just a fraction of a percentage point.

Growth, not stability, is the goal. Romero said the first priority is bringing the state’s graduation rate up to the national level. In 2022, the national rate was 86.6%.

“That’s going to require that we have about another 2,500 students graduate in New Mexico — but it is something that’s doable,” Romero said. “We can do this.”

Successes and struggles

The Public Education Department highlighted three districts — Bernalillo Public Schools, Gadsden Independent School District and Bloomfield Public Schools — that had higher rates than the state average.

Romero said these districts have one main commonality: “This is a priority for them.” He said this is part of the districts’ schools-wide improvement plans, and they all keep close track of attendance and absenteeism data.

Nicholas Wohlgemuth, director for secondary schools for GISD, said it hit a district-wide four-year graduation rate of 80% in 2014 and hasn’t dipped under that since. This year, the rate was 87.8%.

Wohlgemuth attributed the high rate to consistent staffing and high expectations.

“This is an expectation that is getting driven home to teachers, staff and the community,” Wohlgemuth said. “There’s a lot of trust there, and support, and trying to bring kids back into school that may have left us.”

Although Del Norte High School in Albuquerque still has a lower graduation rate than the state, the community school’s rate surged by 10% between 2022 and 2023, from 55% to 65%. And that isn’t the first time the school has seen a big jump, Principal Edward Bortot said.

“We’re happy with that,” Bortot said. “(But) we’re not where we want to be.”

Bortot said the goal is 72%.

CTE and chronic absenteeism

“Anytime a kid’s not in school, it’s going to become more of a challenge to graduate,” Wohlgemuth said.

Wohlgemuth said Gadsden has optimized state and federal funds to put toward attendance advocates that “work with our families to help investigate the barriers that are causing people not to come to school.”

Romero said last year, the state saw a chronic absenteeism rate of 39%, but some strides have been made this year. Some districts were given money to hire attendance coaches to work with families.

But absenteeism is still an issue.

“That’s got to be top of the list of things we do across New Mexico,” Romero said. “Chronic absenteeism is an issue in every single school district and charter in New Mexico.”

Part of the solution is allowing kids to study what they’re interested in. Wohlgemuth, Bortot and Romero all highlighted career technical education programs, or CTE, as a way to increase student engagement.

And graduation rates reflect that. Seniors who concentrated on CTE had a 95.77% graduation rate in 2023. While economically disadvantaged students graduated at a rate of 69.7%, those students who were involved in CTE had a graduation rate of 97.22%.

Changes to graduation requirements have allowed for additional student choice and flexibility, Romero said, which may be reflected in the coming years.

Del Norte was able to improve its attendance rate and reduce chronic absenteeism by 10%. This year, the school will employ an early warning systems coordinator that will be dedicated to chronic absenteeism.

But “it’s a lot of work,” Bortot said.

“It’s constant contact with our students and our parents,” Bortot said. “It’s constantly getting on the phone and telling the parents, ‘What do you need from us in order to better support you?’”

Yazzie-Martinez

Saturday will be the six-year anniversary of the decision in the consolidated Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit, which determined that Indigenous, economically disadvantaged, disabled and English-learning students were being underserved.

All four “at risk” groups of students had lower graduation rates in 2023 than the statewide average. But there was growth between 2018 and today, especially for Native American students, who graduated at a rate 8 percentage points higher than in 2018.

Bortot called Del Norte a “Yazzie-Martinez school.” Almost all of the students there have free or reduced lunches.

“You have to do things different with your kids,” Bortot said. “... We listen to what their true needs are, and we try to meet those needs.”

GISD outperformed the state with all four groups and narrowed the gaps between students this year. Wohlgemuth said it’s about making curriculums accessible, inclusive and prioritizing what those students need.

Wohlgemuth said some CTE courses prioritize access for students learning English and students with disabilities.

“We know that getting engaged in those courses, those CTE courses, does lead to greater outcomes,” he said.