Santa Rosa Middle

Santa Rosa Middle is a small public school serving about 94 students in grades 6 through 8 in Santa Rosa, New Mexico — a rural community with no other school within 20 miles, so the most useful comparisons are to its own district and to the state. The school stands out sharply from its district: Santa Rosa Consolidated Schools ranks 77th of 87 districts statewide with 1 star, while Santa Rosa Middle ranks 50th of 191 schools, placing in the 74th percentile with 4 stars — a 63-point gap between the school and its district.

Test scores show where that strength lies. In 2025–2026, 61.8% of students were proficient in English language arts, compared with 36.23% in the district and 44.66% statewide. Eighth-grade ELA reached 72.41%, and 8th-grade science was 51.72%, well above the district's 17.16% and the state's 34.33%. Math is more modest: 29.21% proficient, slightly above the state's 27.85% and far above the district's 12.09%. Math has also been uneven over time, dipping to 10% in 2023–2024 before recovering in the two years since. The state suppressed the school's 8th-grade math result, so that figure simply cannot be evaluated from the available data.

The school is especially effective with students from low-income families, a group whose statewide rank was 6th of 133 — the 95th percentile with 5 stars — and it also performs above average with several other student groups. Class sizes are relatively small, at roughly 11 to 13 students per teacher. After 2-star years in the mid-2010s, the school reached 3 stars in 2021–2022 and has held 4 stars for four consecutive reported years, with top-quartile state rankings each time. One caution: the free/reduced-lunch rate swung between 36.36% and 100% in recent years, which likely reflects reporting or eligibility changes rather than a real shift.