New Mexico has spent $2.6 billion on extended learning time in schools since a judge presiding over the landmark Yazzie/Martinez lawsuit in 2018 found the state did not give at-risk students equitable opportunities. Despite that massive investment, schools across the state have “largely failed to increase instructional time,” according to a state report released Wednesday.
The new Legislative Finance Committee report, presented before a panel of state lawmakers in Ruidoso, followed up on a similar 2018 LFC report that found additional learning time could help low-income students close the “achievement gap.” While schools across the state have increased the number or the length of school days in the years since then, LFC analysts write in their new report that chronic absenteeism and teacher absences are the most common sources of “time loss” and threaten to undermine the state’s progress.
“We made an investment in time that hasn’t actually resulted in more time,” Public Education Department Secretary Mariana Padilla said at Wednesday’s hearing.
New Mexico students are required to attend a minimum of 1,140 instructional hours annually — the average absentee student missed about 215 such hours in the 2024-2025 school year, nearly one-fifth of their required learning time, according to the new LFC report. While the chronic absenteeism rate has declined from its recent peak during the COVID-19 pandemic, it still remains above pre-pandemic levels, the report says.
“We really need to make sure that our investments and our strategies in the state for instruction are really paying off for our students,” Padilla said. “The report is very clear that we must utilize instructional time more effectively. We need to limit the amount of class interruptions and we need to reduce the amount of absences for our students and our educators.”
That investment has led to some tangible progress. For example, at-risk students, a group comprised of students from low-income families, English language learners, Native Americans and students with disabilities, now have a faster growth rate in reading and math compared to their peers, though the report acknowledges that most at-risk students are not learning fast enough to “close the achievement gap.”
Students who aren’t considered at-risk also face significant challenges. In fact, most New Mexico students are not learning at a fast enough rate to achieve both reading and math proficiency by the time they complete their K-12 education, according to the report.
The report recommends a number of changes, including implementing more streamlined scheduling across the board, clarifying in state statute what counts as an “instructional day” and specifying the educational purposes of after-school programming in state statute to distinguish it from childcare.
At Wednesday’s meeting, a number of state lawmakers expressed concern over the LFC’s findings. Sen. George Muñoz (D-Gallup), who serves as vice chair of the interim Legislative Finance Committee, said he was disappointed that billions of dollars “haven’t moved the needle one bit.”
“I don’t know what’s going to change education. It ain’t money,” he said.
Rep. Rebecca Dow (R-Truth or Consequences) said she has seen improvements in test scores in her local, rural school district and said she was concerned that Wednesday’s discussion could lead to “one size fits all” policy decisions.
“I don’t know when the time will arrive when we say we’ve adequately funded public education…until we targeted interventions to the kids who need it most,” she said. “The growth of funding into PED and higher education and universal childcare and pre-K and home visiting — all of these things being universal instead of targeted, we’re never going to fully fund anything.”
