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At Albuquerque Public Schools, the state’s largest school district, around 9,500 students first to third grade were deemed as not proficient in reading last year, the state agency said. But only about 1,000 of those students received the required letters, Ruszkowski said.

By the end of the year, only 103 of those students were retained a grade, according to state numbers.

Meanwhile, Alamogordo Public Schools – a school district that is about 15 times smaller than Albuquerque’s – retained 117 students from first to third grade, state numbers show. Most of the Alamogordo Public Schools struggling students in those grades received the required letters, state officials said.

APS spokeswoman Johanna King said administrators were unavailable Friday to respond to the PED’s numbers.

Ruszkowski said when districts fail to inform parents about the literacy levels of their children, they aren’t giving parents the needed tools to decide if parents should hold a student back a grade. “The district isn’t even giving the parents’ the option,” Ruszkowski said.

The state literacy numbers come as Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican, has urged lawmakers to halt “social promotions” for the state’s third-graders who aren’t proficient in reading. Democrats and teachers unions have resisted the proposal over concerns that retentions don’t solve student underachievement.

Betty Patterson, president of the National Education Association-New New Mexico, said many students were not able to be placed in kindergarten through third-grade reading programs this summer because of budget cuts. Students should not be forced to be retained when the state isn’t fully funding programs to help them, she said.