Clovis Municipal Schools leads in graduation rates

Clovis Municipal Schools led the state’s 10 largest districts with the biggest year-over-year improvement in four-year graduation rate between 2020 and 2021, according to a New Mexico Public Education Department news release.

The district’s 2021 graduation rate of 77.9% was 7.5 points higher than the rate of 70.4% in 2020, despite the difficulties of remote learning and isolation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite the COVID-19 difficulties most school systems in Clovis and Curry counties were able to maintain or improve four-year graduation rates.

The four-year graduation rate is the percentage of students who graduate from high school within four years after they started high school.%

Statewide, New Mexico’s graduation rate dropped by one-tenth of a percentage point, from 76.9% to 76.8%, compared to 2020’s graduation rates.

Under the difficult conditions made necessary by COVID-19 restrictions, however, the New Mexico Public Education Department celebrated better-than-expected results with a news conference on Thursday.

“It’s reassuring that even amid the pandemic’s second year, New Mexico’s overall graduation rate held steady, with many groups seeing improvement,” Public Education Secretary Kurt Steinhaus said. “We’re grateful to students, families and educators for the hard work it took to achieve that.“

While the states’ 2021 four-year graduation rate was 76.8%, one-tenth of a percentage point lower than the 76.9% rate in spring 2020, PED officials expected significant drops in graduation rates after a year and half of COVID-19 related reliance on remote learning and the resulting isolation.

Among Curry and Roosevelt county school districts, Texico achieved a graduation rate of 93.6% in 2021, improving its rate more than four percentage points from 89.4% in 2020. Floyd’s graduation rate improved to 92.7 in 2021 from 88.7% in 2020.

Portales schools’ graduation rate improved by nearly four percentage points, from 78.3% in 2020 to 82.1% in 2021.

Floyd schools achieved a 92.7% rate in 2021, up four percentage points from their 2020 showing of 88.7%.

Three districts noted declines. Elida schools saw their graduation rate drop to 88.6% from 100% in 2020. Dora schools scored a graduation rate of 91.9% in 2021, down from a 99.4% rate in 2020. Grady schools were scored as at or above 95% after scoring 100% in 2020.

Melrose schools also received an indefinite score of at or above 95% in 2021, but that was an improvement over the 92% rate recorded in 2020.

Clovis High School Principal Jay Brady was among the speakers at Thursday’s PED news conference, which included representatives of several districts who talked about success in raising four-year graduation rates in 2021.

The key to Clovis’ success, Brady said, was “networking with the students.”

“We did not lower the bar for the kids” during the remote learning periods, he said, but teachers and others learned how to spot emotional distress, and the district hired substitute teachers trained in social-emotional learning to “reach out to students and families.”

They kept logs “religiously” to record contacts with students and families, Brady said. “It was a team effort across the board.”

In 2021 he said, “we had 400 students walk across the stage” to receive diplomas, despite the pandemic difficulties. “It’s incredible to see what the community can do when we come together.”

Brady’s testimonials to teachers, students, administrators and even school bus drivers who pitched in to make remote learning work better than expected were repeated by leaders from small districts like Cuba and the Gadsden district in opposite corners of the state, and larger districts like Farmington and Las Cruces.

State officials also credited statewide systems like “equitable grading” and widening “alternative demonstrations of competency” for testing the knowledge of potential high school graduates, according to PED deputy secretary Gwen Perea Warniment. .

Equitable grading, she said, bases grades on the “technical skills and knowledge they learn,” instead of focusing on homework turned in or grades on tests.

Alternative demonstrations of competency, she said, allow students who don’t do well on the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) test, the state’s standard achievement test, to show their achievement through another equally rigorous test, like th ACT, SAT, PSAT and the military’s ASVAB tests.

When schools were able to welcome students back to in-person learning, “It was hard not to look away as they hugged each other,” said Victoria Lopez, principal of Gadsden High School. “It was incredible to see how happy they were to come back.”

But, she said, it was even more important to remember that even in the most difficult times of remote learning, “We never gave up.”