Supporting Students Through Community Schools: Lessons From New Mexico

• In Event: How School Districts Can Address the Needs of Students Furthest From Opportunity

Abstract

In New Mexico, students who face barriers to school success—including poverty—are not exceptions, but the norm. Although schools alone cannot “fix” widespread poverty, interventions that provide additional supports and resources can mitigate its disadvantages by reducing gaps in students’ learning opportunities, improve students’ outcomes, create more positive school climates, and foster trusting relationships among adults and children that are crucial for learning.

One such approach is Community Schools, built with four pillars—integrated health and social supports, expanded learning time and opportunities, strong family and community engagement, and collaborative leadership and practice—in a way that meets community needs and uses community assets. When well designed and fully implemented, community schools increase student success and reduce gaps in both opportunity and achievement.

Part of a larger study of education and policy in New Mexico, this paper describes New Mexico’s approach to community schools as an evidence-based approach to improving the educational success of its children. Our methodology involves analyses of student data provided by the New Mexico Public Education Department and a crosswalk of recent state education policies. Two questions guided our work:
1. What is the need for community schools in New Mexico?
2. To what extent has the state met that need?

We found that in 2018, 26% of children under age 18 lived below the federal poverty line, 35% lived in families where no parent had secure employment, and a quarter lived in food-insecure households. These statewide rates mask even higher poverty rates for Native American (41%) and Hispanic children (35%). (Figure 1)

Although students disadvantaged by poverty are found everywhere in the state, 21% of all New Mexico children live in census tracts with poverty rates of 30% or more. Students from low-income families are heavily concentrated in about 46% of public schools. Moreover, large proportions of students in high-poverty schools are not learning at grade level (Figure 2). For example, on average, 40% fewer students were learning at grade level in mathematics in high-poverty schools compared to their peers in low-poverty schools.

Analysis of budgetary and legislative documents show that New Mexico is centering community schools as part of its response. The state amended its Every Student Succeeds Act plan allowing struggling schools to use community schools as part of an evidence-based intervention. It increased the “at-risk” index providing districts with additional funding and specified community schools as an evidence-based service for use of these funds. The state also provided multiple million-dollar investments in grant funding to develop community schools in recent years and established the New Mexico Coalition of Community Schools from key stakeholder organizations.

Using examples from two community school initiatives, we described how community schools serve as a strategy to mitigate the effects of poverty on education in the state. We also describe the implications that follow from this strategy, including the need to blend and braid funds, develop targeted educator professional learning programs, enhance the collection of oversight data, and develop a regional technical assistance infrastructure.

Author

• Daniel Espinoza, Learning Policy Institute
  Presenting Author