I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
A public hearing to take place tomorrow in the Alamogordo Public Schools Board of Education Meeting Room will give residents another chance to learn more about the state’s newly formed school letter-grading system.
Beginning Nov. 30, all schools in New Mexico will be judged by a letter grade on the “A through F model,” replacing a measure called “Adequate Yearly Progress” that the state used previously as part of the oversight requirements established by No Child Left Behind.
The system has been implemented in other states. In Louisiana, letter grades were rolled out this year, with roughly 44 percent of schools receiving a D or an F. Acting state superintendent of Louisiana public schools said at the time, “We predicted a significant increase in the number of schools that would initially fail to meet the minimum standard … but I have no doubt that we will see schools quickly overcome this status, given the history of our districts and schools in responding to tougher standards.”
New Mexico’s new school assessments will be based on a wide swath of measurements, including student performance on standardized tests and a pupil’s growth in reading and math skills. Some of the judged standards include: the number of 9th graders that graduated from high school (known as the four-year cohort graduation rate), graduation levels, and performance on college readiness exams like the PSAT, ACT, and AP. All schools will be rated by how much students performing in the bottom 25 percentile improve their scores.
The law, which is sweeping in the new evaluation system, orders the state to post the letter grades annually.
For students enrolled in schools that receive a failing grade two consecutive years, the following options will be made available:
Transfer into a nearby school that is not failing, provided the adjacent district or charter school doesn’t exclude students from schools marked with an F
Put the student through distance learning paid for by the failing school
A student that transfers into a new district is not guaranteed transportation, but moving to a new school within the same district does not compromise the bus service that takes the student to school
Lawmakers also assigned a points system to the grading scale, placing most of the weight on state standardized tests. Below is a breakdown of the points system according to the legislation:
For elementary and middle schools, the indicators shall be weighted by assigning up to a maximum of 100 points as follows:
(1) 40 points for student performance, including achievement on the New Mexico standards-based assessments
(2) 20 points for student growth in reading and mathematics
(3) 20 points for student growth of the lowest twenty-fifth percentile of students in the public school in reading and mathematics
(4) 10 points for school growth in reading and mathematics
(5) 5 points for school attendance;
(6) 5 points for results of an opportunity to learn survey
While the previously used Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) scores did not take into account the rate of improvement students post — one of the main points of frustration for educators — and base scores on whether schools met national performance benchmarks, New Mexico schools during the No Child Left Behind era on the whole performed poorly. 2011 AYP scores for the state show 86 percent of schools did not meet federal performance targets, while elementary and middle schools missed the cut over 90 percent of the time.
