New Mexico’s latest round of education reforms focuses on the state’s most stubborn math problem: low proficiency scores. One key reform, Senate Bill 29, focuses heavily on some of the state’s youngest students — those in kindergarten through third grade — to cement the lessons they’ll need to build on a few years down the line when math starts to get harder.

Jawson said he agrees targeting that age range could be beneficial. If kids come into his classroom having mastered basic math, he could spend his time differently.

“I think the students will be more confident,” Jawson said. “And then I think, for us middle school teachers, we will see more opportunity to focus on the nitty-gritty of those elements as opposed to spending some time on students just reminding them how to do ‘borrow math’ or multiplying a two-digit number by a one-digit number.”

The reforms also rely on hitting the math score problem from all angles. The bill, which is awaiting the governor’s signature, emphasizes early intervention, teacher education and parental involvement.

New Mexico students haven’t made the gains in math in recent years that they have in literacy.

Reading scores for students in third through eighth grade jumped 10 percentage points between 2022 and 2025, according to data released in October, while math and science scores stayed largely steady. Twenty-seven percent of those students were proficient in math in 2025 — marking just a 1% increase from 2022.

And SAT scores for 11th grade students paint a bleaker picture: just 12% were proficient in math in 2025, down 4% from 2022.

Sen. Bill Soules, a Las Cruces Democrat who sponsored SB 29, recognized the state’s work on the framework for literacy education during a hearing for the bill. But, he said, “it’s time we start working on math.”

“There certainly is some urgency now to get this done if we truly care about preparing our students for the future,” Soules said.

The K-3 window targeted in the bill is critical for students, New Mexico Education Secretary Mariana Padilla said in an interview.

“If students don’t have those foundational skills in literacy and math by the time they’re in third grade, when content gets much more challenging after third grade, they fall behind very quickly and it’s very difficult for them to get caught up,” she said.

Jawson said he does not think any specific grade is the “end-all, be-all” for students learning math. But, he added, children in grades K-3 are extra excited about learning and being in school.

“That’s where targeting that [age], I think, is a benefit, because natural curiosity,” Jawson said. “And then the students still have natural curiosity as they get older, but of course it starts to be related to TikTok or Fortnite or whatever other sort of things.”

If the bill’s aims succeed in adequately preparing K-3 students, Jawson and other middle school teachers should be able to delve deeper into curriculum standards rather than exclusively filling gaps where kids may be missing foundational knowledge, he said.

Jawson estimated about 5% of his students have “huge” gaps in their foundational math skills but noted those gaps exist all across the country. About 15% or 20% of his sixth graders are at what he described as a third grade math level.

“We would say they’re not at a sixth grade level, which doesn’t mean they haven’t grown and all that sort of stuff, but then, of course, there’s a lot of focus to get them on grade level,” Jawson said.

Math content also becomes much more difficult in middle school and through high school, Padilla said.

“We hear kids as well say, ‘I have a mental block when it comes to math, I just can’t do math,’ ” she said. “And so that’s something that we are really working to address with this bill in a meaningful way.”

SB 29 — sponsored by two Democrats and one Republican — requires people seeking elementary and secondary teaching licenses to complete six hours of mathematics methods courses, beginning July 1, 2028. Current law requires those aspiring teachers to complete only six and three hours, respectively, of reading courses.

“In order to improve instruction, you have to really have a way to address what is happening before teachers come into the classroom,” Padilla said. “… We don’t always update our preparation program in a way that really reflects what’s happening in the classroom.”

The Public Education Department regularly hears from math teachers who say they aren’t comfortable teaching certain grade-level materials because they are not confident in their own abilities, Padilla said.

“It’s one thing to have taken lots of advanced math,” she said. “It’s another thing to actually know how to teach that effectively.”

The Public Education Department will work with New Mexico colleges and universities to delve into best practices and modify courses “to make sure that our teachers come into the classroom as prepared as possible,” Padilla said. This will improve both the quality of education and teacher retention, she said.

Jawson said he thinks nothing can replace getting hands-on experience teaching in a classroom. He has degrees in mathematics and in physics, both with an educational focus.

“Nothing is the same as learning, like, lesson-planning and stuff,” Jawson said. “You don’t learn it the same unless you’re day-to-day doing it. So I support a lot of classes that make you more of an expert in what you’re going to teach.”

Santa Fe Public Schools has already trained K-2 teachers at seven schools to put into practice both math screening assessments and math labs that are “designed to build early foundational math skills through engaging activities,” Executive Director for Curriculum and Instruction Peter McWain wrote in a statement. 

“While our current trajectory in building capacity and ultimately growth in student outcomes for mathematics is strong, the legislation introduces specific statutory requirements that will complement our evidence based tactics,” McWain wrote.

New Mexico policymakers also want to make sure kids’ families are in the loop.

SB 29 further instructs schools to administer a math screening assessment for K-3 students. If a student is found to be struggling in math, schools must notify parents about the results and provide a support plan that identifies the student’s areas of need, outlines interventions and lists strategies parents can use to support their child’s learning.

Schools will also send out progress reports four times per year to the parents of those struggling students.

This component of the bill is designed to make students feel more supported, Padilla said, since parents and schools will be on the same page about a students’ math situation and how parents can help.

“It empowers families, lets them know what’s going on, and then it also provides a way for them to support at home, which is really important,” Padilla said.

This is especially important because parents do not always know when their children are not performing at grade level if they are receiving passing marks, Padilla said.

SB 29 also requires the Public Education Departments’s Math & Science Bureau to develop guidelines for school districts and charter schools to use when developing math professional learning plans, K-3 math assessments, math support plans and math intervention services. The bureau will also give training and technical assistance to school districts and charter schools on those efforts.

The bill goes into effect May 20, though the assessment and intervention components won’t be effective until the beginning of the 2027-28 school year.

SB 29 is just one of several education-related bills that passed during the legislative session this year that the governor plans to sign.

Senate Bill 37, the High Quality Literacy Instruction Act, mirrors the assessment and early intervention provisions of SB 29. It also places literacy coaches at the lowest-performing public elementary schools.

“Senate Bill 37 codifies and strengthens many of the core components already embedded in Santa Fe Public Schools’ Literacy Plan,” McWain wrote. “SFPS is currently implementing high-quality instructional materials for K–3 literacy and K–8 reading interventions that align with structured literacy and the science of reading, meeting the SB-37 requirements for evidence-based instruction.”

The final version of SB 37 added new rules around bilingual and dual-language programs.

Senate Bill 64 officially establishes an Office of Special Education within the Public Education Department and instructs the office to create a uniform system for individualized education programs — commonly referred to as IEPs. And the already-signed House Bill 253 — spurred by a $35 million funding gap that would have harmed public school districts statewide — expands reporting and oversight requirements for virtual schools and directs the state to study them.

SB 37, 29 and 64 first emerged several years ago, said Rep. Joy Garratt, D-Albuquerque, and the vice chair of the House Education Committee. At the time, the committee “analyzed them to death” and decided it needed to go back to the drawing board, she said.

“This session was actually the successful legislation that codified best practices, most of which we’re already doing,” Garratt said. “… It’s not actually new. We’ve been implementing every part of those three bills in the last two years.”

Sometimes kids’ problems with math performance have nothing to do with the classroom.

Jawson said students are continually impacted by big societal or family events — like the COVID-19 pandemic, crackdowns by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or even a divorce.

“It’s the math that we don’t need support in, it’s group psychology or it’s family support or it’s community systems that help kids feel safe,” Jawson said.

While funding may be focused specifically on curriculum, Jawson said he thinks it would help to have psychologists, social workers or counselors come to schools and provide extra hands.

“We have so many wonderful professional math teachers, and whatever route they went, they’re rocking it and they don’t need another book,” he said. “It would help for us to sit in a room with other math teachers and a psychologist to talk about how you motivate a kid who’s dealing with a traumatic thing at home or how you motivate a group of 20 people when 10 of them don’t want to do it.”

Jawson noted he takes education rankings — particularly when New Mexico’s math scores are measured against other states’ — with a grain of salt. New Mexico is multilingual, he said, and for many students, English is not their first or home language.

“If I had to take my math test in Spanish, I would not do as well of some of these kids, where it’s like, they’ve only been in the U.S. for maybe three years, and they have to take the test in English and they score at a fifth grade level for sixth grade,” he said. “If we really were to incorporate that multilingual element, I think we would be at the top of a lot of lists.”