ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico school districts now will get student test scores by the end of the school year and will have 15 more days to prepare for statewide exams, according to changes announced by the state's Public Education Department on Tuesday.
State Education Secretary Christopher Ruszkowski said the revisions, adopted immediately, come after he and other education officials received feedback from teachers on New Mexico's required statewide exam — a test that has drawn strong criticism for teachers unions.
Now test results, from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, will be available for school districts by May instead of the summer. The window for school districts to administer the test also will be reduced.
"This will add 15 more days for instruction to the calendar," Ruszkowski said.
Ruszkowski said state officials also hope to shorten the time needed to take PARCC tests by 2020.
The PARCC exams, administered by New Mexico, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey, are designed to show how well schools helped students from third grade to 11th grade meet Common Core standards.
The Public Education Department results show more than 31 percent of students tested this spring are proficient or better in reading and more than 21 percent are proficient or better in math.
Charles Goodmacher, government relations director for the National Education Association in New Mexico, said the announced changes aren't a result of Gov. Susana Martinez administration finally coming around, but because unions and advocates forced education officials to "roll back the harmful testing policies" in the state.
"The PED is not creating more instructional days — they are restoring days which they themselves had taken away with their own over-testing," Goodmacher said.
Goodmacher also said getting test results back in the final couple of weeks of a school year still does not allow educators to refine their instruction.