New Mexico House Republican Leadership wrote a letter to the governor on July 29 to request expediting the availability of the results from the New Mexico Measures of Student Success and Achievement (NM-MSSA) testing conducted in May.

The letter was signed by James G. Townsend, Rod Montoya and Rebecca Dow.

“With most New Mexico public schools beginning classes in a few weeks, the inability of the vendor to provide timely release of these test outcomes for the Measures of Student Success and Achievement (MSSA) assessments for grades three through eight regarding reading and math is highly problematic," the letter read. "In fact, it is unacceptable that parents, educators, and taxpayers will not know until late September how our state's public schools are performing in preparing students for the future. With students and teachers being forced to conduct remote learning during most of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is more important than ever that student test results be provided as quickly as possible so educators and policymakers can make informed decisions as to future instructional needs and changes.”

The New Mexico Measures of Student Success and Achievement (NM-MSSA) is the summative assessment in Mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA). It is designed to contribute data to establish a student’s grade level competence and progress toward college and/or career preparation. The test results, held by Cognia Inc., will demonstrate if there was damage to student progress over the past two years due to the closure of public schools, which is key data to put together before schools reopen for fall classes. 

According to the letter, many New Mexico students were already falling behind accepted grade-level benchmarks in a number of categories. Having the results of the MSSA available before classes resume would be a major leap help in compensating for those missteps.