Only around a quarter of New Mexico students in grade 3 to 8 met proficiency or better benchmarks for reading and writing on new standardized tests.
And less than 10 percent of the state's 8th graders met expectations or better when it came to math.
Those were the results from spring exams released recently by state Public Education Department officials.
Education Secretary Hanna Skandera says she expected scores to be lower since standards were raised. She called the results an "honest" assessment of how students are doing.
This also marked the first time students in New Mexico and 10 other states had taken the assessments developed by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC.
The tests are designed to show how well schools helped students meet Common Core standards.
More information about the PARCC scores is available at: http://understandthescore.org/
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