Three Española School District schools saw an improvement in their grades, four stayed the same, and six were lower than last year, according to the 2017 report cards.
The Public Education Department released the grades, Aug. 22, about two weeks into the school year, which means many parents couldn’t use the data to decide what school their child should attend.
Public Education Department Secretary Christopher Ruszkowski said next year, he hopes to have the grades released in July so parents can use them to make informed school choices.
Abiquiú Elementary School, which was the District’s top-performing school for two consecutive years, had its grade drop from an A to a C, according to the report cards. Abiquiú’s slide leaves the District with only one A school — Los Niños Kindergarten Center.
Abiquiú Principal Fannie Castillo said she believes the declined performance can be attributed to instability, including the fourth grade not having a permanent teacher until later in the school year.
“We changed principals and were missing a few teachers,” she said. “The fourth-graders didn’t have a teacher until the second semester.”
Castillo said the school is currently fully staffed and she believes that it will go a long way in improving the school’s grade. She is working to better educate herself about the report cards because the school did pretty well in many areas, including earning all of the bonus points offered.
“We were 0.017 of a point of from a B,” she said. “I am not very familiar with the grading system I was looking at the different aspects and we have a good number of bonus points and we got a lot of surveys turned in— 246.”
Castillo said she expect Abiquiú’s grade to go up now that her school is fully staffed.
The teachers and staff at Chimayó Elementary School experienced a solid jump, compared to last year. The school grade went from a D to a B. San Juan Elementary School kept the same B they earned during the 2015-2016 School Year.
The administration and staff at Dixon Elementary School and Española Elementary School saw their grades fall from Bs to Cs. Española Valley High School also received a C, which is an improvement from the D it received, for the 2015-2016 School Year.
Sombrillo Elementary School was one of the District’s two D schools, which was an increase over 2016’s F. Fairview was the other D school, which was a decline over 2016’s B grade.
Altogether, the District had four schools earn Fs on the 2017 report cards, compared to the three Fs that were earned on the 2016 report card.
Alcalde Elementary School and Velarde Elementary School joined Española Middle School and Hernandez Elementary in earning Fs.
Española Middle School and Hernandez Elementary earned Fs on the 2016 report cards.
The issues
Current Los Niños Principal LaDonna Phillips was the principal for Alcalde during the 2016-2017 School Year, when the school earned a C. She said many factors go into whether a school passes or fails, and she attributes the failing grade to a combination of things, including her lack of experience and the students’ test scores.
“It was pretty much the test scores,” she said. “I was a new administrator and I started kind of late. It is unfortunate.”
Phillips recognizes that the school leader plays an integral role in the school’s success and believes if she would have stayed at Alcalde this year, she would have been able to implement changes that facilitated growth.
She believes the school would have had a better showing if the District had implemented more resources, such as a practice test or short-cycle assessment, to help students prepare for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC).
She said the practice test would not only give students an opportunity to get familiarized with testing, it would also give educators a much-needed tool for judging student growth.
Phillips said as a new administrator, she also found it difficult to establish peer learning communities that would allow teachers to collaborate and discuss different teaching strategies, with the idea of improving classroom outcomes.
“If we had more strategies, there would have had more time to look over the data and establish Peer Learning Communities (PLC),” she said. “We found it difficult to incorporate PLCs at our school, and we didn’t have a districtwide assessment for higher grades that take the PARCC. It was challenging.”
Española Valley High School Principal Robert Archuleta agrees with Phillips, that a short-cycle assessment is needed as a mechanism for determining a student’s academic shortcomings.
When the grades were released, he said, while the teaching staff does a pretty good job of designing lesson plans and assessments to gauge student progress, a short-cycle assessment is still needed.
Archuleta said he believes the District’s ability to retain certified teachers played a key factor in the school’s grade improvement.
“The school really came together in the spring and talked about the importance of raising its overall achievement and improving the school grade,” according to a press release Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez released in response to the report cards.
Gutierrez said she hopes to turn around the school grades through a continued focus on student attendance and implementing a strategic plan.
She said once all the beginning-of-the-year kinks are worked out, she and her staff will work on implementing a strategic plan. Once established, the plan will serve as a blueprint for professional development and other initiatives aimed at improving classroom outcomes.
With input from teachers, administrators and community members, Gutierrez started drafting the plan, but her progress was derailed when she was forced to resign in May of 2016.
She said the idea behind the plan is to increase academic achievement and improve students’ attitudes about education.
Gutierrez said she believes once educators become more familiar with the Common Core Standards the state adopted to replace its old set of standards, parents and teachers will start seeing improvements.
“Our teachers are struggling to the make the shift from New Mexico State Standards to Common Core State Standards,” she said. “I think we are making that shift. It is a change in the way we deliver education.”
She plans to help teachers become more acclimated to Common Core Standards by offering them a variety of professional development. The idea is to offer “individualized” professional development to better apply their training in the classroom.
Gutierrez said picking up where she left off, with a couple of initiatives, will also improve the District’s overall performance.
Programs and initiatives such as the Freshman Academy and Strategic Plan were not given much attention under the watch of her predecessor, Eric Martinez. However, she believes investing in those efforts will strengthen student outcomes, especially for the Freshman Academy students.
“Everything was placed on hold, like the strategic plan,” she said Tuesday. “The Freshman Academy was placed on hold. There was not attention given to it.”
The Academy would help address many of the changes the freshmen undergo when they make the transition from middle school to high school. She said freshmen require special attention because high school offers more freedom and distractions than a middle school setting.
District instability
Española Parent Willie Williams was a vocal critic of former superintendent Eric Martinez’s decision to shuffle principals around during the second week of October 2016.
Williams, like many others, predicted the uncertainty and disruption the moves caused, would have an adverse impact on the academic outcomes. While there is really no way to gauge what impact the moves had, she said the current report cards represent last year’s chaos.
“The kids and the schools are failing because there is no continuity of education,” she said. “The teachers aren’t staying. The morality of the parents are (sic) low. There are a lot of factors.”
However, Williams said she believes under Gutierrez’s leadership the District will see huge improvements.