Two of the three Española-area charter schools earned lower grades and the other stayed the same, according to the data recently released by the New Mexico Public Education Department.
McCurdy’s letter grade dropped from 2016’s C, to a D for 2017. McCurdy is the area’s largest charter school.
Their neighbor to the north, La Tierra Montessori School, dropped two whole letter grades, from a B in 2016, to a D this year.
Cariños Charter School’s grade stayed the same — an F for both, 2016 and 2017.
McCurdy Governing Body President Deborah Bennett Anderson said she and her colleagues have been working with the school’s new administration to pinpoint what went wrong.
“The new Director, Michele Lucci, and her dean of students, Donna Wollman, have been working with the Governance Board to assess the causal reasons behind the school’s annual grade,” Anderson wrote in an Aug. 29 email. “The new administration is committed to taking the school to the next level.”
She said the administration plans to use student academic data to tailor a particular student’s instruction in a way that targets areas in need of improvement, like test-taking.
Anderson and Lucci said the school will combine the data analysis with an infusion of technology, in hopes of improving classroom outcomes.
“We are implementing new technology that will let us not only analyze student data, but classroom data, to help us meet the needs of the students in our school,” Lucci said.
McCurdy earned the lower grade a few months after the Governing Body decided to eliminate the principal positions for the school’s elementary and secondary units.
Critics of the decision believe eliminating the positions would eventually lead to diminished classroom support for teachers.
However, Anderson said reducing the number of administrators should not interfere with the teachers’ ability to educate the approximate 570 students.
“The number of administrative staff in a school does not drive student learning,” she wrote. “Rather, student learning is driven through the commitment of qualified staff utilizing research-based tools and resources at their disposal.”
McCurdy parent Amelia Gonzales said she doesn’t mind the school’s grade or the overall student test scores because she is confident her children are getting a quality education.
“There are many factors outside of the classroom that go into the state’s grading system,” she said. “I can see past the lower grade because I know my kids are getting a good education.”
Gonzales said as a heavily-involved parent, she sees the impact the school has on her children.
“I’ve seen first-hand, the quality of education my kids are getting,” she said. “The small class sizes and the close knit environment is phenomenal.”
Montessori school loses ground
La Tierra Montessori School Head Teacher Christie Berg said she is waiting to hear from Public Education Department personnel who may be able to better explain the grading system.
She would like someone to walk her through the grading process because the explanation that accompanies the report card does not go far enough to explain how the regulators arrived at the grade.
The grade shocked her because the students not only made gains in reading, but the school earned the maximum bonus points for family engagement and promoting extracurricular activities.
Berg said she and her staff have implemented initiatives they hope will help students achieve success on this year’s standardized tests — especially in math, which will help improve the school grade.
She said the school’s math teachers will change how they deliver instruction.
“We began a new math program and it was highly rated, nationally, but it didn’t work for us,” she said explaining the students’ math performance. “I am doing away with that particular program and I am starting with the basics, before we move them over to higher-order thinking.”
She is also working on establishing an after-school program so students can get extra math support.
Administrators from the state’s public and charter schools can appeal the letter grade if they don’t agree with it.
Berg said she has to wait to hear from Department personnel, before deciding whether she will appeal the grade.
“I have a call into PED (Public Education Department) to understand better the grading system (sic),” she said. “We made gains in reading, but I think the way they grade it, we didn’t make a large enough growth to garner a good grade. I was flabbergasted with the grade.”
Cariños sees little growth
The area’s other K-8 charter school, Cariños Charter School, retained the F, it got on the 2016 report card.
Former Cariños principal and current Vice Principal Bernice Life said, while she isn’t necessarily pleased with the report card, it does show the school made some progress.
The Cariños School Board removed Life from the principal position, but rehired her to handle key duties like managing special education.
“This year, our overall school improvement is 0.80 — that was substantial,” she said. “I think overall, our school did improve, but we stayed in the same grade range.”
She said Cariños’s grade won’t improve until the school can attract and retain students for multiple years.
“I would like to see us make substantial growth next year,” Life said. “But I think we need to stabilize our enrollment so we can see our students’ growth from one year to the next.”
Enrollment challenges aside, Life and Principal Vernon Jaramillo have a plan to improve the grade and student achievement.
Life said she and her staff will form small student-assistance teams. The teams will map the students’ capabilities and then track and guide their growth.
Members of the Peer Learning Community (PLC) will then use that information to develop academic plans for the school’s 114 students.