ANTHONY, N.M. — District academic staff presented an overview of school and statewide proficiency measures Wednesday and urged the board to focus on growth and comparable instruments rather than cross-state raw-score comparisons.

Mrs. Dela Rosa told trustees that national and state assessments measure different things and warned against direct comparisons between New Mexico and neighboring states because of differing standards and assessments. "When you look at those results, you will see whether it's in grade 4 mathematics, or grade 4 reading, or grade 8 math, or grade 8 reading, New Mexico is only is behind every state except Alaska," she said, summarizing NAEP state-level findings in 2024.

Nut graf: The presentation walked trustees through three widely used measures — the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the SAT (used statewide in New Mexico for high-school testing), and the NM Vistas (growth and proficiency reporting used by the state) — and recommended that the district emphasize student growth percentiles as the most appropriate single comparative metric.

Key points: Dela Rosa noted that NAEP samples a nationally representative subset of students in grades 4 and 8 and that New Mexico’s 2024 NAEP results showed improvement in fourth grade math even as many other states declined. She cautioned that the SAT is not administered uniformly across all states and that nationwide SAT comparisons mix voluntary test‑takers and statewide cohorts. For statewide comparisons, the presenter recommended using NM Vistas growth measures because they group students by prior-year performance and track gains against similar peers. District results on growth placed the district around the median (50th percentile) for math and reading growth, she said.

Board questions and follow-up: Trustees asked for district-level breakdowns and for staff to share the sources and links used in the presentation. Board Member Flores requested that staff be available to present the material to outside organizations that request it. Academic staff said the slide deck and source links would be available to trustees and to the public.

Ending: Trustees received the information as an informational item and raised follow-up questions about community presentations and how the data should inform curriculum and intervention prioritization.