Grad rates up for area schools

Clovis and Portales public school graduation rates improved in 2021 and both had higher rates than the state average. That’s according to statistics released this week by the New Mexico Public Education Department.

In Clovis, the four-year graduation rate among high school seniors was 77.9% in 2021, compared to 70.4% in 2020.

In Portales, the rate improved to 82.1% from 78.3%.

Texico, Melrose and Floyd also saw rate increases. Grady, Elida and Dora rates decreased slightly, but all remained well above the statewide average.

A CMS news release stated Clovis schools saw the greatest increase in graduation rates among the state’s 10 largest districts – a 7.5% increase from the year before.

CMS Superintendent Renee Russ said she is “so proud of the way Clovis Municipal Schools answered to many of the challenges presented to us during the pandemic.

“(T)he high school administrative staff and counselors created new strategies to better identify and target students in jeopardy of not meeting graduation requirements. Then, struggling students received new levels of intense focus and support through the collective efforts of staff, administrators, counselors, and Family Services workers,” she wrote in an email in response to questions.

“The CHS staff put new practices in place that will benefit all current and future students from this point forward.”

Portales Superintendent Johnnie Cain said improved numbers can be traced to efforts that began three years ago.

“(O)ver the past several years, the high school has worked hard to maintain good attendance and has worked with students to meet their needs to keep them in school,” he wrote in an email.

“About three years ago, they dedicated afternoon classes in credit recovery to help students to catch-up who found themselves with credit deficits. The afterschool program also helped students to catch-up on credits if they were behind. Last year they were able to get some students who were eligible to graduate on graduation day to finish some online classes that provided them with the credits they needed to get a diploma.”

Statewide, there was little change in the averaged 2021 four-year graduation rate among high school seniors when compared with numbers for spring of 2020, according to the state Public Education Department.

The 2021 graduation rate of 76.8% was a statistically insignificant decrease of one-tenth of a percentage point from the 76.9% rate recorded in spring of 2020, and that was a nearly 2 percentage point increase over 2019's rate of 75%, the report said.

New Mexico's five-year graduation rate for the 2020 cohort improved 3.4 points to 81.7%.

State Public Education Secretary Kurt Steinhaus said it was reassuring that despite students dealing with the ongoing COVID pandemic, they graduated at about the same rate they did in 2020, and many groups even saw improvements.

"We're grateful to students, families and educators for the hard work it took to achieve that," he said in the report. "Over the next year, we will be working on focused strategies with the goal of improving graduation rates and other student achievement metrics in math and English language arts."

The Albuquerque Journal contributed to this report.