Next year’s high school freshmen will see different graduation requirements due to a bill signed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Feb. 9.
The new requirements seek to increase school attendance and graduation rates by giving students more choices in the classes they take, according to Lujan Grisham’s press release.
“High school should be about preparing students for the real world while providing more opportunities to pursue their unique interests and future careers,” Lujan Grisham said in the press release.
Under House Bill 171, the number of credits students need to graduate will remain at 24, but certain career and technical education (CTE) electives can replace required math, science and English credits. CTE classes can vary between local school boards and districts.
Students must take four units of math, which can be fulfilled by units such as financial literacy and some CTE electives, per the new requirements. Algebra II will no longer be required, but must still be available for students who wish to take it.
East Mountain High School, a charter school near Albuquerque, began offering computer science and wildlife management, two non-traditional CTE classes that have been incredibly popular, according to Trey Smith, Executive Director and Head Administrator.
“The bill also asks that schools offer financial literacy, and we've always had one section of financial literacy, but it also feels like legislators want to just offer more of it. I think we could probably expand how many sections of financial literacy we're currently offering as well,” Smith said.
Students must complete four years of social studies classes and a half-unit of health that focuses on sexual assault and abuse prevention and awareness training, according to the new legislation.
Students who obtain an industry certificate or degree can use it to be weighted in the calculation of their grade point average (GPA), according to the legislation. Industry certificates and degrees are awarded to students who have fulfilled the standardized credentials and passed the accepted exam for the industry in which they are pursuing, according to the New Mexico Public Education Department.
The procedure for which industry certificate or degree can be used will be established by Dec. 31, according to the law.
One of the bill's sponsors, Rep. G. Andrés Romero (D), hopes the new requirements will better engage students and increase graduation rates, according to Lujan Grisham’s press release.
For the 2021-22 school year, New Mexico had the lowest graduation rate of any state in the Nation, according to U.S. News & World Report. That school year, almost a quarter of all high school students did not graduate.
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In the 2022 school year, about 30% of students qualified as chronically absent, according to the New Mexico Public Education Department.
While COVID-19 is to blame for many of these absences, chronic absence rates have not fully rebounded to pre-COVID-19 levels, Smith said. The increased flexibility given to students to choose their classes could lead to greater attendance rates.
“(New graduation requirements are) going to allow us to offer more engaging types of classes that students want to be in so they don't feel like they're forced into a more traditional path and can take some more electives. We always find the students who are in more electives tend to be more engaged with school as a whole,” Smith said.
While Smith is supportive of the increased flexibility of the bill, he said he is cautious of reducing graduation requirements. In the 2023 legislative sessions, Romero introduced a bill that would have reduced the credit hours required to graduate to 22. The bill passed in the House and Senate, but was vetoed, and the required 24 credit hours were maintained.
The new requirements will be in effect starting for incoming ninth graders in the 2025-2026 school year. All students in high school now will follow the previous graduation requirements.
“I would be interested in continuing to make flexible pathways to meet the varying needs of our students. But for now, I think (the new graduation requirements are) pretty good.” Smith said.
Nate Bernard is a beat reporter with the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @DailyLobo
