APS Math Goal Suffers Setback

District off-track for Goal 2, with economically disadvantaged students showing a decrease in math proficiency, despite growth in other targeted groups.

Over the past year, APS leaders have shared good news about the district’s progress in meeting its five-year academic goals, but on Wednesday, they briefed the board on a setback in the math goal.

The latest state summative assessment shows that math proficiency rates for targeted APS eighth graders actually went down by two percentage points from the prior school year and that “the district is off-track for Goal 2 by 2.3 percentage points.”

“I don’t know how we can make this better, but it’s a serious concern as these kids are entering high school, because they only have four years left to improve those skills,” said board member Ronalda Tome-Warito.

Deputy Superintendent for Operations Antonio Gonzales said one of the things Superintendent Gabriella Blakey has done is lift up schools that are making progress so that struggling schools can learn from them and replicate what they’re doing. Gonzales also noted that while APS didn’t meet its annual target for Martinez-Yazzie students, the district as a whole increased its overall mathematics proficiency rate by 2.3 percentage points from the prior year, its strongest showing to date on this state test.

“The power of this process is showing us that there's specific areas we need to work on,” he added.

In 2023, the APS Board of Education adopted four five-year goals focused on literacy, math, college and career readiness, and skills, habits and mindsets for life success. The first two goals – focused on literacy and math – were geared toward improving academic outcomes for African American students and those identified in the Martinez-Yazzie court decision: Native American students, English language learners, students with disabilities and those who are economically disadvantaged. 

The goal calls for a 10 percentage point increase in grade-level proficiency on the state mathematics summative assessment for eighth-grade students in these groups who have historically struggled academically. Specifically, it calls for an increase from 11.1% in May 2023 to 21.1% in May 2028.

Board members and the administration set annual targets for the five-year goals to gauge whether the district is on track. The 2025 target was 13.1%.

On Wednesday, Chief Academic Officer Sheri Jett, Lead Assistant Superintendent for Middle Schools Chris Sanchez and Chris West, executive director of the Office of Accountability and Reporting, presented the progress monitoring reports for Goal 2. 

They reported that 10.8% of Yazzie-Martinez and African American eighth-graders tested proficient in mathematics on the New Mexico Measures of Student Success and Achievement. That’s 2.3 percentage points lower than the 2025 goal.

There were a few bright spots in the report as several subgroups showed growth.

• 17.3% of African American eighth-grade students were proficient in mathematics, a 9.5 percentage point increase from the 2023-2024 school year.
• 11.9% of Native American eighth-grade students were proficient in mathematics, a 3.8 percentage point increase from the 2023-2024 school year.
• 4.3% of eighth-grade English Learners were proficient in mathematics, a 1.8 percentage point increase from the 2023-2024 school year.
• And 3.8% of eighth-grade students Receiving Special Education Services were proficient in mathematics, a 0.6 percentage point increase from the 2022-2023 school year.

Those gains weren’t enough to offset the decrease in math proficiency among economically disadvantaged eighth-graders – 10.5% of them were proficient in mathematics, a 2.1 percentage point decrease from the 2022-2023 school year. 

A root cause analysis conducted by the Goal 2 team cited several reasons for the district being off track, including:

• Teachers defaulting to remediation or below-grade-level content, preventing students from engaging with the full depth of grade-level standards.
• Schools with the highest concentration of economically disadvantaged students haven’t been receiving the specialized, targeted strategies they need to address academic and non-academic barriers.
• Students aren’t mastering prerequisite math concepts before moving on, creating significant gaps in their knowledge base.
• High-need schools face challenges not adequately addressed by a one-size-fits-all approach.
• Schools not consistently using data to help determine what interventions are needed for specific student subgroups. 
• A fragmented and ineffective support network for students with overlapping needs. 

District leaders said they’re addressing those issues through a variety of strategies, including stronger coaching for teachers and administrators at the district’s lowest-performing schools, anchoring instruction in algebraic thinking and functions, and closely tracking how 6th and 7th graders are doing in learning foundational concepts.