New Mexico Receives Flexibility in Calculating
Special Education Performance for AYP

(Santa Fe, NM) New Mexico Public Education Department received word that they had been granted flexibility in rating individual schools and school districts based on the performance of special education students as they calculate Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). NMPED applied for this flexibility so that the state and districts would have every opportunity available to meet AYP.

AYP results for all New Mexico schools and districts will be announced by the Public Education Department on August 1st.

Before this new, a one-time, one-year flexibility, only 1% of the state’s special education students, who took the alternate assessment, could be counted as proficient. However, NMPED does not anticipate any significant change in the number of schools meeting AYP because of this increase in flexibility.

This new flexibility will allow the NMPED to apply an additional mathematical procedure, specified by the U. S. Department of Education, for schools and districts that did not make AYP based on the performance of the special education subgroup alone.

To qualify for the flexibility, the state was required to have a 95% participation rate on the New Mexico Standards Based Assessment last year. This flexibility will be applied to only elementary and middle schools.