Mount Taylor Elementary

Mount Taylor Elementary is a PK–6 school at 1607 Del Norte in Grants, New Mexico (Cibola County) serving 347 students, in a community where 94.24% of children qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. It belongs to Grants-Cibola County Schools, a district ranked 64th of 87 in the state. The school itself sits mid-pack statewide — 198th of 346 elementary schools (43rd percentile, 2 stars) in 2025-2026 — which is a meaningful step above its own district's standing and well ahead of the 21st–25th percentile stretch it posted from 2016 to 2018.

Reading is the school's strongest suit. In 2025-2026, 42.64% of students were proficient in Language Arts, essentially level with the state's 43.34% and 8.6 points above the district's 34.03%. Math, at 19.29%, runs about 6 points below the state's 25.54%, and science has come in under 20% against 33.4% statewide for multiple years — a persistent soft spot rather than a one-year dip. That roughly 23-point reading-versus-math gap is the defining feature of this school's academics. Grade by grade, 4th grade (53.85%) and 6th grade (43.64%) beat the state in reading, while 5th grade is the clear outlier: 26.09% in reading and under 20% in both math and science, against state figures of 41.98%, 33.85% and 31.97%. That single cohort accounts for much of this year's overall drag.

Among Grants' three large elementary schools, Mount Taylor leads in reading, beating Milan Elementary by about 4.5 points and Mesa View Elementary by about 13 points, though all three sit below the state line in math. Smaller rural campuses do better in math — Cubero Elementary posts 40.91% — but Bluewater Elementary's poverty rate is 61.9%, far below Mount Taylor's. Staffing is a plus: a 10.3:1 student-teacher ratio, the best of the three town schools. Low-income students rank at the 70th percentile (4 stars), and English Language Learners have climbed from the 31st percentile to the 82nd — signs the headline rank may understate the school's work with its core population.