In teacher Danielle Mohler’s second-grade class, students crowd together on the floor in front of the classroom’s SmartBoard to read aloud.
“Chad sprang up from the rug,” the students read in unison from the board with Mohler’s guidance on a recent Monday morning. “‘I’ll get it!’ he said as he went to the door.”
Written in blue and purple marker on the whiteboard behind her are the class’s current learning targets. In language arts, it says, students are learning “to describe how characters respond to events and challenges in a story.” Written on an easel are events from the children’s book Stellaluna—charted one plot point at a time, beginning with an owl attacking the story’s titular fruit bat.
In math, students are learning “to use mental strategies to add and subtract within 20,” according to the board. The problem on the board is “8 + 6.” The board advises “making a 10” to simplify the problem when moving into double digits. If 8 + 2 = 10, then 4 is left over, and 10 + 4 = 14.
Learning targets are among several strategies Francis X Nava Elementary School staff use to track and improve student proficiency in reading and math—strategies recent data shows are working.
When Santa Fe Public Schools released its 2023 standardized testing data on Sept. 24, Nava Elementary had much to celebrate. Within just one year, Nava students’ proficiency in reading soared by 22%. Math rates jumped 11%.
Mo Charnot
Second grade teacher Danielle Mohler’s students read aloud together.
Mohler and the rest of the faculty got the good news upon returning from summer break.
“It was really awesome,” she says. “We’ve had shifts in what we do as a staff, in our planning process [with the principal], working together, working with other schools. I think all that just comes together, and it shows how hard everyone—our students, our teachers, our principal—is working, and I think it’s nice to see that hard work paying off.”
Nava Principal Justin Hunter says he is “over the moon” about the increase in reading and math proficiency.
“It’s the kind of growth that I’ve been waiting for and looking for, and it’s just exciting to see where we’re going next,” Hunter says.
Districtwide, reading proficiency rates have improved over the past year, from 38% to 40%, although math scores decreased slightly from 23% to 22%. Superintendent Hilario “Larry” Chavez tells SFR he believes several things factored into this year’s increases in reading proficiency.
“I think it’s a state effort around literacy, specifically structured literacy,” Chavez says, adding that other factors he believe have contributed to this growth include the district’s focus on standards-based instruction to prepare students for standardized testing, significant improvement in attendance rates and a large increase in students enrolling in this year’s summer programming.
Throughout this year, Chavez says the district plans to “double down” on its efforts.
“We really want to show that not only was it a one-year data point, but it’s going to continue as we move forward,” Chavez says. “As a unified front, we are starting to make a difference.”
Chavez calls Nava Elementary “one of many school sites” the district is celebrating for its gains made in reading and math, saying Hunter “has done an amazing job of being an instructional leader, and really being intentional in his efforts around improving student outcomes.”
Mo Charnot
Francis X. Nava Elementary School has been serving students in the Midtown area off Siringo Road for 55 years now.
Nava Elementary, a small school of about 176 students, is in Midtown’s Bellamah neighborhood. At the 55-year-old school, Hunter and his staff use a modern approach. Their strategies for improving reading and math scores include a unique incentive program, data-based reviews of student progress and a strong community built around students, families, and staff.
Last year, Nava’s reading proficiency rate was one of the lowest in the district. At 17%, it was less than half the district’s average rate of 38% in 2023. In pre-COVID years, when individual schools were given report cards by the state to correspond with standardized test scores, Nava often fluctuated. From 2014 to 2018, the school’s overall score moved up and down: D, B, D, C and D.
Before the pandemic rocked student achievement across the state, Nava Elementary was already in an uncertain place. The SFPS Board of Education considered potentially closing Nava Elementary due to shrinking enrollment and aging facilities.
However, none of the proposals passed, in large part due to outcry from parents speaking in support of keeping smaller schools open.
Hunter came to Nava Elementary in 2021, the third principal of the school since Mohler began there. Hunter told SFR at the time, “I only know what I inherited, and what I’m looking to do with what I’ve been given.”
We’re gonna have these high expectations. We’re gonna keep moving our kids and expecting higher, higher expectations of them.
Mohler recalled meeting Hunter: “I remember my first conversation with him was like, ‘We’re gonna have these high expectations. We’re gonna keep moving our kids and expecting higher, higher expectations of them.’ And I think that’s what we’ve done.”
To help boost student progress in reading, Hunter introduced “Nava Kwondo.” Students are awarded with different-colored belts (similar to the system used in taekwondo) for learning to read more words—specifically from the Fry Word List of the 1,000 most-common English words.
Hunter told SFR in January, students who know the Fry Word List theoretically should be able to read standardized tests “with fluency and comprehension.”
“It’s a pretty broad-scoped idea, but the kids start at the earliest age possible,” Hunter says. “With [kindergarteners], we have them focusing on using these words. The goal is that by the end of third grade, they have that list mastered, which accounts for about 90% of the language used in standardized testing.”
Hunter explains that he first got the idea from structured-literacy training that he and his teachers were required to complete by the district. In the training, they were shown a simple math problem:
students’ ability to read and decode words × comprehension = successful reading
“These are our variables,” Hunter told himself. “If I can tease out the decoding of the words and get it where they are, I’ll know they already know the words—it’s going to eliminate the factor in that particular math equation.”
That encouraged Hunter to follow what he says was his thought process all along. “All we have to do once we have the words learned is focus on comprehension strategies.”
Despite only beginning the program last year, Hunter says periodical data the school collects on students has already shown improvement in student reading comprehension. He says at this point in the year, about 85% of kindergarten students are “right where they should be” in learning high-frequency words, and about 95% of first and second grade students are on track as well.
“I attribute it to the Nava Kwondo and to the kids themselves,” Hunter says. “They’re just very excited about it, and they can’t wait to get the next list of words … Some of the kids earned their black belts relatively quickly, and they were very excited about it. And so then, they’re like, ‘Okay, well, what’s next?’ At this juncture, I don’t have what’s next per se, but I do know that we’re talking about extensions for it.”
Anson Stevens-Bollen
Principal Justin Hunter helps one of last year’s second grade students with her class’s online math program during SFR’s January 2024 visit to the school.
But Hunter says he feels programs like this are only “the tip of the iceberg” when it comes to how Nava Elementary staff work to improve student achievement.
“Our district has done a phenomenal job of getting high-quality instructional materials put into the hands of the teachers,” Hunter says. “We’ve had a number of different professional developments for the teachers to ensure that they’re using these materials the way that those materials were intended to be used. So that’s a big component of it.”
To keep up with students’ progress at every grade level, Hunter tends to pull from his prior background in education as a math teacher, both through Nava Kwondo and how he and his staff strategize short-term throughout the year.
Once a week, Hunter meets with every teacher during their planning time to look at interim testing data in each classroom. Second-graders test at least once a month.
“We’re looking at our goals and where our kids are scoring, where they’re struggling the most, where they’re succeeding the most, and make plans to focus on for the next couple weeks,” Mohler says. “I think that’s helpful. It’s not just meaningless data sitting there…we’re analyzing where our kids are and what we need to do to support them, to move them up a little bit each time.”
After reviewing the data, Hunter says, they employ whichever strategies would best serve their chosen area of focus—whether it be words from The Fry List, geometry, base 10 operations— for a set amount of time, usually two or three weeks, and then study the results of the “mini project.” From there, they decide to do one of three things with the strategy: abandon it, adopt it or adapt it.
“Is it going to be a permanent change in the way the class is doing their business, or is it just a temporary thing? Does the data indicate it’s time to move on? It sort of depends,” Hunter says. “But everything we’re doing is data-driven and data-aligned, and I really attribute that to the success…that’s really the key piece there. We choose a strategy that is backed by the efficiency and the efficacy it brings to the classroom.”
As an example, Hunter says, one area he and fourth grade teacher Lisa Romero have been focusing on is helping students understand how to add and subtract multi-digit numbers. A current strategy they are using involves showing students a graphic organizer to help them remember the place values for each digit (such as thousands, hundreds, tens and ones).
Hunter explains that using non-linguistic representations to explain a concept to students—diagrams, pictures, graphic organizers, 3D models and more—is a way they have been delivering the students instruction in a way that “makes it more digestible for them.”
“An 11% gain in math is not an accident,” Hunter says. “It’s not as flashy as a taekwondo belt system or what have you, but it’s the data that we get from the students. There’s nothing in this school that goes down that’s not intentional.”
Most important to delivering that high-quality instruction is the teachers themselves, Hunter says, noting Nava’s strong teacher retention rate as a “source of stability for students.” He lists a number of long-time teachers at Nava, including Jaclyn Gonzales, Jen Kennedy, Laura Mayo-Rodriguez, Victoria Scanlon and more.
“They’re seasoned...there’s just a lot of continuity,” Hunter says. “The kids can come into school and know what to expect on a daily basis, and so we just provide that atmosphere for them. They come to school with a good, can-do positive attitude, and it’s just the sort of culture that I’m looking to create here.”
Mohler, for example, has been teaching full-time since 2017, after originally being hired as an education assistant in 2011. The school’s principal, Justin Hunter, describes her as a “true teacher who inspires,” adding she has “excellent rapport” with students and their families and “a very professional work ethic.”
“There’s a lot of good people all around me, and that’s one of the things that it’s kind of hard to capture,” Hunter tells SFR. “Nava is a special place, because I have nothing but good people that come to school every day for the betterment of these kids. It’s not to say other schools don’t have good people, but I’m in a very blessed situation that we have phenomenal educators all around us.”
Hunter notes that Mohler, in the past few years, has been instrumental in implementing more recent changes from SFPS at Nava, such as the district’s switch to standard-based grading and teaching students to read through a structured literacy approach.
Structured literacy, which is being taught up to fifth grade in Santa Fe’s public schools, is a form of reading instruction that teaches students to read through phonemic awareness (auditory and oral relationships); phonics (relationships between letters and sound); vocabulary; fluency; and comprehension.
Earlier this year, the New Mexico Public Education Department budgeted nearly $60 million in structured literacy initiatives throughout the state, including training for teachers and direct services to students.
To Mohler, as a more recent graduate, learning to teach reading through structured literacy “seemed like second nature.”
“I feel like it’s really emphasizing not just memorizing certain words, and it’s focusing on the foundation of reading, why these sounds are making certain sounds, why the letters and sounds correspond,” Mohler explains. “Those kids, they go in depth into things that I never learned as a kid, and I think it’s really valuable…it’s made me a better teacher at reading.”
Despite having worked at Nava for more than a decade now, Mohler is relatively newer in her career. When she took on her role as an education assistant Mohler says she never intended to become a teacher. Now, responsible for all 20 second-graders attending Nava this year, she says she “can’t leave because I love it here so much.”
“I just feel like it’s a good place to be. Being a small school, we have a lot of families that keep coming back with their kids or students, and then old students bring their kids back,” Mohler says. “We have a little more of a personal relationship with each other, and so we support each other…When our families or our students are struggling, I feel like, as a staff, we go over and beyond.”
In the classroom, Mohler says building relationships with students is her top priority.
“I want to have positive interactions with them, and I will even start now with the first graders, and make sure I say good morning to them and learn their names,” Mohler says. “That’s so important to me…I think that’s where it starts, just knowing your kids.”
Even though Hunter didn’t expect this level of improvement so fast, he’s not tempering his celebrations or predictions.
“In two or three years, you’re going to be knocking down our door because we’re going nowhere but up,” Hunter says. “Nava is going to be a household name here pretty soon. We’re on that kind of trajectory.”
