Diaz responds well on first bad-news day, and Gadsden schools to be congratulated for progress

Sonia Diaz, the new superintendent of the Las Cruces Public Schools, handled her first bad-news day well.

The school district joined most districts around the state in learning Tuesday that more schools failed to meet federally required levels of progress last school year than the prior year.

13 of the district’s 34 schools met the Adequate Yearly Progress benchmark, according to the Las Cruces Sun-News. 22 failed to meet the requirement. Last year, 21 failed.

As part of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, an unfunded mandate, the bar is raised each year, and the increase in the number of failing schools was expected by many to increase.

Diaz could have joined some other superintendents around the state in making excuses. She could have blamed the controversial federal law, or the need for more funding from the state and federal governments. But the law is the law. This was not the time, and she rightly discerned that.

“I’m not pleased,” Diaz told the Sun-News. “I don’t want to see any school in our district in a downward spiral.”

She pointed out that several schools showed improvements. Overall, about half of elementary schools in Las Cruces failed to meet the standard. All but one middle school and all of the high schools failed.

Booker T. Washington and MacArthur elementaries, which were once among the lowest-rated schools in the district, met the standard. The district is to be congratulated for turning around these schools.

San Andres High School is the only school in Las Cruces that requires immediate corrective action. The others that failed to meet standards have a year or two to improve scores.

Diaz pledged “intensive support” for San Andres this year.

She also promised to look at the data “teacher by teacher, class by class and student by student” to ensure that there is a “sense of balance and equity among the schools,” according to the Sun-News. She also plans to meet individually with each school principal and staff members to gather input.

By contrast, the south-county Gadsden Independent School District somehow rose out of last year’s tumultuous scandals having increased the number of schools that met the passing mark. It was one of only a handful of districts statewide to do that.

It was a year that saw Superintendent Ron Haugen fired, four of five school board members recalled by the public in response, and the appointment of new school board members who reinstated Haugen.

Nine of 20 schools in the Gadsden district made the passing mark, an improvement of one school over last year’s numbers. However, the new Chaparral High School failed to meet the standard.

Like Las Cruces, all high schools in the Gadsden district failed to meet the standard. Why?

Regardless, teachers in both school districts, but especially those in Gadsden, should be congratulated for retaining professionalism and keeping the politics and turmoil that characterized last year out of classrooms.