The New Mexico Public Education Department told the Legislative Education Study Committee it will focus agency work on five priority goals—accelerating literacy and math achievement, improving attendance, increasing graduation rates and fostering shared accountability—and said it will expand programs this year to support those aims.

"The strategic plan is very focused. It is intentionally lean and condensed so that we are very clear in terms of our priorities as an agency," the NMPED secretary told the committee, outlining the department’s ‘‘big five’’ goals and program investments, including summer and middle-school interventions.

Key initiatives and funding
The department said this is the second year of a state summer reading program and is aiming to serve 15,000 students this summer after about 6,700 students completed the program in its first year. The summer program uses high-impact small-group tutoring with licensed teachers and will include an AI reading tool called Amira for participating students to use at home for three months.

On math, department officials said the state will expand pilots and professional development. Officials listed funding streams they plan to use: $5 million a year over three years for a numeracy pilot to scale teacher professional development; $6 million in a MathLab pilot to create dedicated math-focused classrooms at elementary schools; $3 million for STEAM initiatives and $3 million to support a STEM network led by New Mexico State University to build regional hubs.

Attendance and graduation priority
The department emphasized attendance interventions, reporting a roughly 10% improvement in chronic absenteeism over one year and participation in an Attendance Works cohort to reduce absenteeism by half. The agency has $6 million per year in funds to support attendance-focused district grants.

On graduation, the department said New Mexico must add roughly 2,400 graduates to meet the national average (87 percent). Officials described transcript audits in low-graduation schools that found 75% of reviewed junior and eleventh-grade transcripts contained errors that could prevent on-time graduation, and highlighted targeted interventions that helped roughly 500 seniors return to a path to graduate.

School accreditation and implementation
The department previewed a new school-accreditation system pilot rooted in existing statutory obligations and described ten areas of focus—board training, financial audits, program plans, enrollment and accountability data, attendance improvement, safety plans, postsecondary planning, caseloads, subjects of instruction and tribal consultation—which will guide collaborative monitoring and technical assistance to low-performing schools.

Why it matters: The plan links classroom instruction, professional development, family engagement and school accountability and identifies specific program investments and pilots meant to raise student outcomes in literacy and math while reducing chronic absenteeism and raising graduation rates.

Queries from lawmakers
Lawmakers asked for disaggregated data on program reach, geographic distribution of the 68 schools identified for transformation work, and whether specific programs (for example, LevelAll next-step planning and educator-fellow pipelines) are available statewide. The secretary offered to provide demonstrations of LevelAll and follow-up data requested by legislators.

Next steps
The department will roll out expanded math professional development next year, continue structured-literacy coaching and summer reading supports, expand MathLab pilots, and work with legislators and local districts to implement accreditation and school-transformation supports.