Grants Cibola County Schools Working to Improve NM Vistas Scores

Grants, NM – Each year the New Mexico Public Education Department calculates the overall performance of students across the state. These scores are released in June and reflects the previous school year. Grants High School received a score of 56 and is designated as a traditional school and Laguna-Acoma High School received a score of 52 and is designated as an Additional Targeted Support and Improvement School or ATSI school.

With receiving the designation of Traditional school Grants High School is a school performing below the top 25 percent of schools and not designated for additional supports. With receiving the designation of ATSI school Laguna-Acoma High School is a Targeted Support and Improvement School serving a student group that is performing in the lowest five percent of all schools. In 2022 Grants High School received a NM Vistas score of 44 and Laguna- Acoma High School received a score of 52.

Superintendent of Grants Cibola County Schools Lane Widner spoke about the previous system before the NM Vistas System and the programs to assist schools that are struggling, “When you have an ATSI designation, the Priority Schools Bureau of the New Mexico Public Education Department works with you. So, they provide extra funds for professional development, for teacher training… [NM Vistas] used to be the school grading system, so you would get the test results and your school was an A, B, C. Since Governor Lujan Grisham has been in office we’ve had several secretaries, they went to the continuous school improvement.” While Widner was at Grants High School, it was considered a continuous school improvement school which indicated that it had to better it’s teaching, it’s core subjects, and standards. “A couple of years ago a lot more of our schools were in this continuous school improvement. It’s exciting that we are getting better.”

Director of Educator Success Dr. Delton Martin spoke about the NM Vistas scores and how the schools are working to improve their scores, “The past administrators started working on standard space, learning system which we are still tweaking. The last end of year assessment we actually went up in English and Science, but we went down a little bit in Math.” To improve the scores Martin said that the district is planning on tweaking the dis- trict learning plan over the summer to make sure it has all of the standards included. “Maybe we could have greater progress if all the standards were included in the District Learning Plans and all the standards were actually taught to students.” The district has also purchased more programs to test if students are progressing in standards included in the end of year assessment. “In short what we are doing as a district is putting all the necessary pieces together. For us not only to make sure the students learn what they need to learn, but to test or to gauge whether they are on track to gaining proficiency in those standards that they need to master. On top of that we make sure the right teachers are in the classroom, really endorsing the courses that they teach… Our objective is to fill every classroom with highly qualified teachers and improve on family engagement as well.”

Last year the high schools began to create a more robust Career Technical Education Program. Martin said, “When students are interested in going to school. If you work on improving the interest of students in coming to school that has a positive relationship with how they do in school, because if they don’t want to be there then they will do poorly in school. Our hopes are if the students see the relevance of their schooling to their lives, they will start working better at their academics.” The district is looking at possibly developing a trade school, but that plan is not currently set in stone. Martin also highlighted that the district invested more than half a million dollars in equipment at Laguna-Acoma, their mechatronics lab. “It’s not perfect yet not all the components of it are running yet, but we’re the only K-12 school in the state that has such equipment… We are heavily investing in CTE.”

Martin said that for a long-time education has been traditional and that it’s time that they try to bring education where it should be. “AI is a thing of the future, and we plan on bringing it to the district. We plan on exposing our students and teachers to AI, so when they go out [after they graduate] they aren’t behind. Making education as relevant as possible to everyone.” The district is looking at purchasing a new AI platform for students that will provide virtual tutors to students that will assist students with any subject or standard that they are struggling with, this AI will also inform students if any of their work is plagiarized, or they might be accused of plagiarizing. “If a student needs help with math, the system asks the student first what they know that particular topic then teaches the student after that. It gauges what the students need.”

Martin also spoke about how they work with students who are struggling, “There are four areas that we need to focus on. One is data dives; they have to focus on data. They have to focus on MLSS, Multi-layered systems of support, the teachers need to know it and they have to know the procedure… Examining student work, they need to know what a good answer is and how to teach something… Teachers in the same PLC discuss the District Learning Plan that they are using, find out if things need to be changed, if things need to be added.” MLSS is the system that is used to make sure that they are able to service the needs of every student. According to Martin teachers need to know how to gauge a student learning and have to do every effort to intervene. If a student is struggling in a specific subject teachers must document that and document how they are going to address that student. Teachers also need to document that they are going through every avenue possible to assist any student who is struggling.

The district is also working towards seeing if their students are struggling outside of school and that is leading to poorer performance in school. Martin said, “Sometimes the problem is something else, it might be from home or something like that. So, we bought a survey it’s called PASS. It asks students from K-12 questions and it tells the administrator and the counselors what issues the students are having. It actually tells whether the student likes school, if the student has issues with teachers, if the student feels bullied.” At first the district received push back when requesting that the teachers give out these surveys, but according to Martin these surveys have assisted teachers in teaching their students and giving them more support.