PED presents preliminary 2024 assessment snapshot: ELA roughly flat, math declines; PED urges earlier validated data

Public Education Department staff presented preliminary statewide assessment results to the Legislative Education Study committee, reporting English/language arts proficiency roughly flat and a statewide decline in math proficiency.

The department’s staff and analysts emphasized the preliminary nature of the files received from vendors and said districts are still in an embargoed appeal period. Tim (staff presenter) told the committee the statewide ELA proficiency sits near 38% in the preliminary set, while math has fallen to the low-20s; Lynn Vasquez of the Public Education Department said corrections during the embargo increased the combined tested proficiency figure by about one percentage point in PED’s internal files.

Why it matters: assessment outcomes feed federal accountability measures, school support designations and budget choices. PED officials said they brought preliminary results forward this month so lawmakers could better assess how existing investments are performing before final budget decisions are made.

Key details: PED framed assessments as a balanced system of formative, interim and summative tests. The MASA (grades 3–8) and SAT (grade 11) are the summative measures used for proficiency and federal reporting; vendors provide vendor-level files (Cognia for MASA, College Board for SAT) that PED cleans and distributes to local education agencies for review and appeals. Vasquez warned that New Mexico has only three years of longitudinal data since the pandemic (testing was suspended or limited in 2020–21), which complicates trend interpretation.

On subgroup and cohort trends, PED showed mixed signals: several student subgroups and grade cohorts have improved in ELA while math scores fell in almost every subgroup. PED also highlighted narrowing achievement gaps between economically disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students; for example, Tim showed the English proficiency gap narrowing from about 22 percentage points to about 12 percentage points, driven in part by small declines for higher-performing groups and gains among disadvantaged cohorts.

Data corrections and comparability: Vasquez told the committee that an embargoed district review identified missing records for some English learners who took accommodations or Spanish-language versions of assessments; after PED included several thousand additional EL records the department’s combined proficiency figure rose by roughly one percentage point. Vasquez cautioned that the statewide math rate is sensitive to whether required K–2 interim Istation math results are included for apples-to-apples longitudinal comparisons: PED reported an apples-to-apples three‑year math rate near 23%, but said inclusion of required Istation K–2 data in this year’s file raises that figure to about 27%.

Performance levels and growth: PED distinguished proficiency (performance levels 3 and 4) from growth and said it is moving to a student growth percentile model to credit schools that produce learning gains even if overall proficiency remains low. Vasquez illustrated that some schools with low proficiency on a point-in-time measure nevertheless show high median growth percentiles.

On test design and cut scores, lawmakers asked whether New Mexico would change SAT proficiency cut scores after College Board’s move to a computer-adaptive digital SAT. Vasquez replied that New Mexico will retain its state standard setting and national College Board cut scores and will not lower the benchmark for proficiency, noting that recent legislative changes (House Bill 171) removed a test-based graduation demonstration requirement and that PED stakeholders adopted national cut scores during standard setting.

What’s next: PED said the vendor/LEA validation window remains open (district appeals during an embargo that runs through early October) and that final validated proficiency and accountability results are expected later this fall. PED offered to return with final data and expanded cross-tabs if the committee requests them.

Representative and senator questions during the hearing probed statistical significance of small year-to-year percentage changes, psychometric checks for differential item functioning, the timing of validated data for legislative budgeting, and whether current interim assessments (for example, Istation) reliably predict summative outcomes; PED shared a regression analysis showing a high predictive correlation between Istation and later MSSA results in their internal analysis.

The committee did not take formal action; members indicated interest in earlier validated reporting, stronger statewide SIS/data governance to speed cleaning and continued investment in literacy and targeted math interventions.