Albuquerque Public Schools
APS Third Graders Exceed ELA Targets, Outperforming 2026 Goal
Yazzie-Martinez and African American students show gains in English/Language Arts proficiency.
Last year’s Albuquerque Public Schools Yazzie-Martinez and African American third graders didn’t just meet their annual English Language Arts targets on the state’s end-of-year test. They actually improved on the previous year’s results by 6.4 percentage points and exceeded the 2026 target, according to preliminary state data.
“It’s pretty incredible what’s happening here,” said board member Crystal Tapia-Romero. “I attribute it to us being intentional about the goal and being very strategic about where we’re headed and not getting sidetracked.”
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 English/Language Arts summative assessment for third-grade students in these groups who have historically struggled academically. Specifically, it calls for an increase from 27.3% in May 2023 to 37.3% 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 29.3%, and the 2026 goal is 31.3%.
On Wednesday, Superintendent Gabriella Blakey, Deputy Superintendent Randy Mahlerwein, Chief Academic Officer Sheri Jett and Assistant Superintendent Anna Chavez presented the progress monitoring report for Goal 1.
They noted that, based on preliminary state data, 31.7 percent of Yazzie-Martinez and African American third-graders tested proficient in English/Language arts on the New Mexico Measures of Student Success and Achievement. That’s 2.4 percentage points higher than the 2025 goal and 0.4 percentage points higher than the 2026 goal.
“All of the student groups identified in the Yazzie/Martinez Decision, plus African American students, showed higher rates of ELA proficiency in 2024-2025 compared to the previous year,” the report states.
Among the highlights:
- 24% of Native American third-grade students were proficient in ELA, a 12.1 percentage point increase from the prior year.
- 31.8% of economically disadvantaged third-grade students were proficient in ELA, a 6.9 percentage point increase from the prior year.
- 31.2% of African American third-grade students were proficient in ELA, a 7.9 percentage point increase from the prior year.
- 18.4% of third-grade English learners were proficient in ELA, a 3.3 percentage point increase from the prior year.
- 10.7% of third-grade students receiving special education services were proficient in ELA, a 3.8 percentage point increase from the prior school year.
“I want to recognize the consistent hard work of the administration and the teachers and the staff, and most importantly, the students … because we see how hard everybody is working, and I want to thank you for that and offer kudos all around,” board member Heather Benavidez said.
APS administrators made it clear that despite the gains, there’s still work to be done.
“We're excited about where we are, but by no means do we think we're done…,” Mahlerwein said. “The team is working intensely. They're being very reflective on what they did, and they're looking at what next steps they can do differently to continue to improve.”
They plan to focus on a series of actions in the coming months to keep the momentum going.
That includes establishing a clear instructional focus on the most impactful standards for students to master and providing timely feedback to teachers to help build their capacity in structured literacy practices. Implementing rigorous beginning-of-year and middle-of-year progress monitoring for third graders to ensure there’s no delay in identifying and addressing literacy gaps is also on the to-do list, as is distributing appropriate resources to second-grade students in priority schools so they can practice at home.