Anson Stevens-Bollen
Students in Jaclyn Gonzalez’s kindergarten class at Nava Elementary work with building blocks.
Santa Fe Public Schools’ reading proficiency rate grew from 38% to 40% in the past year, according to new district-level test score data released by SFPS Tuesday morning.
SFPS Superintendent Hilario “Larry” Chavez tells SFR the 2% increase is “a great start.”
“We're grateful for our educators providing high quality instruction, and the students are really doing the hard work inside the classroom to show these results,” Chavez tells SFR.
One factor Chavez attributed the increased reading scores to was the district’s significant increase in attendance rates. Between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, the district’s press release states chronic absenteeism decreased from 50% to 30%. SFR confirmed this data with the state Public Education Department.
“If students aren't in school, they're not learning,” Chavez says. “The more time they're in those seats, the better opportunities students have for better outcomes.”
Chavez credits the district’s Board of Education for adopting attendance initiatives three years ago. That’s when students returned to the classrooms after a year of remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“As we started to explore how we're going to address attendance, specifically chronic absenteeism…attendance coaches, attendance teams at the sites, administrators and others really put forth the effort to address the importance of attendance,” Chavez says.
Other contributors to the increased reading rates, he says, are statewide efforts to implement structured literacy programs, a greater number of students accessing summer programming and the district’s focus on “standards-based instruction.”
Out of the entire district, Nava Elementary School’s scores improved most significantly with 39% of its students deemed proficient in reading, compared to last year’s rate of 17%. Math scores at the school also increased from 11% to 22%, in that time.
Other schools that saw high growth in reading scores include Nina Otero Community School (from 25% to 35% proficient); El Dorado Community School (from 65% to 72%) and Chaparral Elementary School (from 30% to 37%).
Statewide, preliminary data released by the Public Education Department in July showed a flat reading proficiency rate of 38%, and the math proficiency rate dropped from 24% to 22%. SFPS also slid back slightly from a 23% math proficiency rate last year to 22% this year.
While he notes there is still “a lot of room to improve” in math and reading, Chavez notes the 1% decrease still “bucks the state trend” by not decreasing as much as the state has.
Schools other than Nava Elementary that also showed the highest rates improvement in math proficiency include El Dorado Community School (from 53% to 59%); Ramirez Thomas Elementary (from 9% to 15%); Sweeney Elementary (from 5% to 11%) and Carlos Gilbert Elementary (from 58% to 63%).
Chavez says the district plans to present a more in-depth overview of the student test score data in an Oct. 10 school board meeting.
“Not only did we get to celebrate it with a press release today, but we'll go deeper into it in a couple weeks,” he says.
