The latest achievement gap results announced by the state Public Education Department were both positive and negative.

 

The achievement gap, of course, refers to the difference between the academic performance of the majority of students compared with racial, ethnic as well as a few other subgroups.

The PED reported some positives such as a continued increase in the reading scores of disadvantaged students and an increase of more than 12 percent of Hispanic eighth-grade students scoring proficient and above on state standardized tests. Also math scores improced by 15 percent for Native American students over the last four years.

Sounds good, no?

But dip a little deeper into the achievement gap findings and there’s this statement from the PED: "Despite incredible gains for (English Language Learners), Hispanic, Native American, and Economically Disadvantaged students, the achievement gap in both math and reading continues to widen for all sub-groups in all grades statewide."

The explanation for the continued bad news on the achievement gap front is because, as minority students perform better, so are Caucasian students. That’s still a good thing. This isn’t a fight to the finish between minorities and non-minorities. The common goal is improved education, said PED Secretary Veronica Garcia.

"As we approach our goal of 100 percent proficiency (on federal and state standardized tests) for all students, the natural outcome will be the closing of the gap," she said.

 

Nationwide, the achievement gap continues to widen as well, according to The Education Commission of the United States.

 

New Mexico’s achievement gap results were announced Friday in conjunction with the results of the state’s Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) report. The AYP findings also came with a mixed message. On the one hand, only about one third of state public schools met AYP designation as defined by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. But overall student scores in reading and math were up about 12 percent on average.

 

But that still was not enough to keep up with NCLB’s measurable objectives of meeting 100 percent proficiency for all students by 2014. This year, schools were expected to show increases of about 14 percent in math and reading. If meeting AYP is this difficult imagine the task of narrowing the achievement gap.

It’s getting more and more difficult for educators and others concerned with closing the achievement gap to wait, however. Garcia said a look at the trends should give them hope that it is possible. Garcia said the continuing trend overall for New Mexican students has been a steady increase in math of 6.2 percent over the last four years. The trend is modestly increasing for reading posting a 3 percent gain over the last four years