Early College High School

Early College High School is a small public high school serving grades 9–12 with 180 students in Deming, New Mexico, part of Deming Public Schools, a district ranked 72nd of 87 in the state.

Early College is the clear academic standout among the three local high schools. In 2025–26 it ranked 43rd of 132 schools statewide, in the 67th percentile with 3 stars, while Deming High ranked 104th of 132, in the 21st percentile with 1 star, and Deming Cesar Chavez has no recent rank — its last, in 2017–18, was 156th of 182, in the 14th percentile with 1 star. All three serve very high-poverty populations, with free/reduced lunch rates at or near 100%, so the differences are not explained by student demographics alone. Early College also has a better student–teacher ratio (15 to 1) than Deming Cesar Chavez (18 to 1), despite similar enrollment.

Test results tell a similar story. In 11th-grade math, Early College’s proficiency was 35.71%, compared with 6.94% at Deming High, 8.6% districtwide, and 12.72% statewide; Deming Cesar Chavez reports only “under 20%.” In 11th-grade language arts, Early College reached 46.43% versus 25.35% at Deming High and 36.78% statewide. Science is the relative gap at 32.14% — above the district and Deming High but slightly below the state’s 34.02%. Early College’s last reported school-level graduation rate was 90.7% in 2023–24, well above the district and state. One caution: the school fell from 14th of 131 (89th percentile) in 2024–25 to 43rd of 132 (67th percentile) in 2025–26 — still above the state average, but a notable decline. It has also ranked in the top 2–8% of New Mexico schools for its low-income students in multiple years. Note that 10th-grade scores are suppressed by the state, and the 2024–25 school-level graduation rate is not reported, so neither should be read as a zero.