NM school efforts to improve graduation rates

By Stephanie Muñiz

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    ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (KOAT) — The 2022 graduating class had a 76% graduation rate — a less than 1% decrease from the year before.

Santa Fe Public Schools and Albuquerque Public Schools are focusing on students’ mental health.

SFPS added four social-emotional learning days for students. These are days for students and teachers to build positive relationships.

“We saw it did accelerate that relationship building between students in the classroom and their teachers. And so now they’re more comfortable asking questions, getting involved in the lesson,” said Hilario Chavez, the SFPS superintendent.

For the 2022 school year, Santa Fe schools saw an 82% graduation rate — their goal is to reach 85%.

According to the New Mexico Public Education Department, APS had a 75.7% graduation rate in 2021.

In 2022, the APS graduation rate dipped to 69%

According to APS, there are a few factors: online learning, more lenient grading and more students leaving.

“We saw a lot of kids leave, whether they dropped out to get their GED or whether they moved on to a private school or home school or all those count against the graduation rate if they’re not reported as graduates, we may have had kids leave the state that didn’t get reported,” said Scott Elder, the APS superintendent.

Attendance is one of the things both school districts say has been a challenge.

“One of the big impacts of the pandemic was students kind of got out of the habit of attending school, and that’s a major impact on learning. You can’t learn if you’re not here,” Elder said.

SFPS has a similar problem that is slowly getting better.

“We’ve seen over the last three years that attendance has improved and chronic absenteeism has dropped for our high school-age students,” Chavez said.

Elder said the main thing APS is doing to try and improve graduation rates is getting parents more involved.

“I really think the biggest intervention, though, is going to be involving the families, making sure parents know what’s going on, making sure that parents understand whether the kid’s on track or not, and making sure we’re communicating well with everyone involved in the student’s life,” Elder said.

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