ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Thousands of New Mexico students are returning to the classroom with some extra reading skills under their belt.

The Public Education Department invited students all over the state to take part in a summer reading boot camp this year to help boost literacy rates.

PED leaders say they’re still reviewing the testing data to see just how much children improved.

They say the feedback from parents and teachers already shows there’s a lot of optimism for New Mexico’s students.

“When we all come together and we focus on, very intentionally, about what we want to do when it comes to instruction, we can see tremendous impact in a very short amount of time,” said NMPED Secretary Arsenio Romero. 

This summer, parents and teachers all over New Mexico focused on the startling number – 38%. That’s how many New Mexico students are considered proficient readers.

“We knew that this was important, because reading is the cornerstone for all learning. If we can create confident, proficient readers, they’re going to be able to be successful in all the other core areas,” said Romero. 

So state lawmakers chipped in $30 million to get more students back on track before the new school year.

PED leaders say more than 9,500 children participated in structured literacy programs across more than 100 sites this summer. That includes some non-traditional ones like a ranch up in Mora.

“We saw students from the age of 5 years old all the way to about 13, 14 years old, being able to work in very small, structured groups all around the science of reading and structured literacy,” Romero said. 

While the PED is still collecting the hard data, they say all signs point towards a glowing success.

“Talking with instructors, they were so excited and ecstatic with what they saw happening every single day, them telling me that they could see the learning happening right in front of them,” said Romero. “Another family said my student was reading alone at bedtime. They’ve never done that in the past. My child got quicker at reading and participated in the program. My student gained confidence in her reading. So it was just conversations like that, that really reiterated to me that we were doing the right thing, and this was an investment that we needed to make.”

PED leaders say they actually had a surplus of willing instructors this summer, which is a good sign the community wants to help boost those literacy scores.

Officials say they plan on asking state lawmakers for another $30 million for next year, and there’s already conversations about summer boot camps in other subjects like math.

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• NMPED aims to boost child literacy rates with summer reading program