The Mexico School District's reading and math scores continue to grow.

At the June 16 Board of Education meeting, Assistant Superintendent Julie Lower provided updates on the new elementary math and literacy curriculums that showed improved comprehension in both subjects.

“Our data is trending in the right direction across the board,” Lower said

The Mexico School District introduced a new phonics resource to first through fifth grade classes two years ago, and in kindergarten classrooms last year.

“We’ve had gains in phonetic awareness and phonics across the district from kindergarten through sixth grade,” Lower said.

The 2025-26 school year was the district’s first year using Eureka Math Squared across elementary schools. Through that curriculum and additional professional learning, coaching and classroom support, Lower said kindergarten through fifth grade classes are seeing significant gains in their math scores.

Literacy Scores

According to the iReadyReading diagnostic three-year comparison presented by Lower, 52% of McMillan Early Learning Center students are reading at or above level, while only 15% are reading at a grade level below. Before the new curriculum, those percentages were 36% and 27%, respectively.

The report also shows that 24% of McMillan’s students met their growth goals this past year when only 18% met that goal the year prior. McMillan’s progress to annual typical growth was 59% in the 2025-26 school year, 51% in the 2025-24 school year and 49% in the 2023-24 school year.

“We’ve gone from 39% functioning at kindergarten or above level, up to 54% in just phonics,” Lower said.

At Eugene Field, 22% of students are reading at or above grade level, 16% are Early On Grade Level, 34% are a grade level below, 16% are two grade levels below and 11% are three or more grade levels below. Schoolwide, students who met their growth goal increased from 42% to 49% and improvement was seen across all grade levels except second grade — students were at 35% in the 2023-24 school year, 55% in the 2024-35 school year and 36% this past year.

Lower said while the majority of the scores for Hawthorne were similar to those at Eugene Field, there was a bit of a decrease in schoolwide progress.

In the 2023-24 baseline year, the school’s progress to annual growth was 94%. The score jumped to 96% in the first year of the new curriculum, but dropped to 89% this past school year. Across all grades, the percentage of students who met their growth goals in the 2025-26 school year were lower than or stayed the same as the year prior.

“We’re going to dig down a little bit deeper into Hawthorne,” Lower said.

Last year, 57% of Mexico Middle School students met their reading growth goal. While there was a 1% increase in students who tested at or above grade level, there was also a 1% increase in students who are reading three grade levels or more below — 20% of MMS of students read at or above their grade level and 34% read three or more grade levels below.

Continued reading curriculum improvement

Looking ahead, Lower said the district literacy team identified vocabularies, comprehension, and writing instruction as the next level of area for growth. As a result, Ready Reading, a program focused on reading comprehension, will be added to the first and second grade curricula.

Meanwhile, cognitive overload during writing instruction was identified as an area where students struggled, according to Lower. To combat this, elementary schools will be implementing “The Writing Revolution” Hochman Method for sentence writing in first through fifth grade.

“They will use the text and the comprehension instruction for their writing prompts,” Lower said. “That way, they’ll have less of a cognitive load thinking from one subject to another.”

On the middle school level, a new literacy curriculum will address challenges with reading comprehension — specifically decoding multisyllabic words.

According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as The Nation’s Report Card, only 30% of eighth grade students were proficient in reading.

A 2024 report published by the Educational Testing Service suggests the explanation for stagnant and decreasing scores is related to students’ ability to decode or identify words and understand their meanings. According to researchers, students who do not have adequate word recognition skills often will not improve their reading scores no matter how much comprehension support they receive, and most schools do not routinely assess word recognition skills after third grade.

“We’re trying to address that head-on,” Lower said.

Math scores

Lower said the data for math was even more exciting.

According to the iReady Math Diagnostic two-year comparison, the percentage of students who met their growth goals increased at all three elementary schools — Hawthorne and Eugene Field saw 5% increases to 43% and 42% respectively, while McMillan Early Learning Center saw a 9% increase to 19%.

At the kindergarten level, 50% of students are performing at or above grade level. This past year, 22% of Eugene Field students and 24% of Hawthorne students performed at or above grade level. For the most part, students who performed below grade level decreased across the board except for a 1% increase in students testing at two grade levels or below at Hawthorne.

“Ultimately, I'm really pleased with the data,” Lower said. “Wendy (Lentz) and I had a lot of celebration about the math turning in the right direction, in general, across the board, and we’ve identified the next areas of focus.”