The Public Education Department published its individual school performance grades July 24 and the results appear mixed for a number of school districts in the area.
Española, the district with the largest number of students in Rio Arriba County, improved in some areas, while other schools received lower grades. A plurality of the District’s schools — seven of them — received the same grades as the previous year. Four schools received higher grades, while three experienced declines.
The two schools that showed the greatest improvement in the District, Alcalde Elementary and Hernandez Elementary, improved by three grade levels. Alcalde went from a “D” to an “A,” while Hernandez, a school that was failing its students just one year ago, received a “B” from the state this year.
“I attribute our improvement entirely to our staff and our students,” Hernandez Elementary Principal Ruben Salazar said. “They worked so hard. We had meetings. We spoke with parents often. We really tried to improve our test scores.”
Salazar said he did not believe the grade when he first saw it.
“I thought we were going to receive a ‘C’ at best,” Salazar said. “I was pleasantly surprised when I saw we got a ‘B.’”
Two other schools improved by two grade levels according to the state. Abiquiú Elementary went from a “D” to a “B,” likewise for Fairview Elementary.
“I am very ecstatic about the grades,” District Superintendent Danny Trujillo said. “We had six schools with a ‘B’ grade. We also had a number of schools who improved from last year.”
Trujillo attributed the improvements to several initiatives, the most notable one is the North Central Association accreditation. Trujillo said the accrediting body went onsite to the different schools and investigated the issues. Trujillo said he believes the schools that implemented the accrediting body’s recommendations were the schools that demonstrated marked improvement from the previous year.
However, the news was not all positive. Public Education Department officials gave three of Española’s schools worse grades than the previous year. Chimayó Elementary and Velarde Elementary went from a “C” to a “D,” while Mountain View Elementary went from a “C” to a failing grade — it is the only school in the District to receive an “F.”
“Mountain View is a tough school,” Trujillo said. “It is a consolidated school so three teachers are teaching multiple grade levels, so the instructors have to adjust their teaching method to adapt to the students’ needs, and that is very hard.”
Regardless of the difficulty, Trujillo said he believes both Mountain View and Velarde can be improved and he is looking at different models to enhance student success.
“We are looking at doing different approaches to the consolidated schools,” Trujillo said. “For example, there is one teacher who is very good at teaching mathematics, so she may be the person to teach all of the math classes at the school, instead of using different teachers to teach the same subject.”
Even with the different models, Trujillo said he wants to know exactly what happened to schools that declined.
“I haven’t really looked into the data closely,” Trujillo said. “I want to dig into the classroom data, and we can do this, and I want to know what is going on with those schools.”
Despite the success the District had this year, Trujillo warned next year’s school grades may be worse than this year’s.
“We are going to use a different set of exams next year,” Trujillo said. “We are going to use the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and that is a more difficult test than the one we are currently using. We are going to have a new baseline with that exam.”
Cariños Charter School received the same grade as it had the prior year and Cariños Chancellor, Vernon Jaramillo, is not pleased with his school’s performance.
“Unfortunately, we received a ‘D,’” Jaramillo said. “We need to identify the weaknesses and strive for improvement. Basically, the 25 percent of the population that we have did not show any growth. So we need to identify them and provide more effective instruction for them.”
Jaramillo wants to begin improving the school as soon as he possibly can.
“As soon as we start school, we’ll have a meeting with the teachers, work collectively with them so they can have a full understanding that it’s a team effort,” Jaramillo said.
According to the Public Education Department’s website for high schools and middle schools, almost one-third of their evaluation comes from graduation rates and how ready students are for college or a career.
The remaining criteria comes from student performance on standardized tests. Forty percent of the evaluation comes from the schools’ current standings or baseline measure. The more students who are already proficient in reading and math at a particular school, the higher the school’s baseline measure and the higher the grade. Another 30 percent comes from student improvement on standardized tests over the previous three years. The state will measure student proficiency of the top 75 percent and the lowest 25 percent of students. The higher the level of improvement of those on standardized exams the higher the grade of the school.
For elementary schools, nearly their entire grade is derived from standardized tests. Fifty percent of the grade comes from the growth students demonstrate over the past three years, using the same 75 percent 25 percent formula as the high schools and middle schools. The remaining amount comes from understanding the schools’ baseline level.