By CHARLES D. BRlJNT

Journal Staff Writer

     Quality-improvement techniques used by many businesses are being practiced in about 300 New Mexico schools with impressive results. More than 80 teachers from around the state attended the Quality New Mexico Conference at the Sheraton Old Town to show how the l0-year-old Strengthening Quality in Schools program is helping students read, write, spell and do math better.

     The state's quality schools program was established in 1992 by the Governor's Business Executives for Education, a panel of business and education executives. The goal is to improve education and student performance by applying quality-improvement techniques developed by former U.S. Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige, commonly referred to as the Baldrige Criteria. By applying those standards in the classroom -and involving the students in each step -the schools say they can dramatically improve learning.

      Eighty school displays were set up at the March Conference. Valle Vista Elementary School in Albuquerque's South Valley raised the reading level of 59 percent of its students by two grade levels or more. Overall, the number of students reading at or above grade level went from 24 percent to 41 percent in two years. Georgia O'Keeffe Elementary School in the Far Northeast Heights saw the number of its first-grade students reading at grade level increase from 19 percent in 1996 to 96 percent four years later.  

      At Tohatchi Middle School in Gallup, sixth-graders in a similar program went from "probationary" status to "exceeding standards" in reading, language arts, math and science in just two years. Sixth-grade median math scores rose 27 percent. Local companies impressed by such results have put their support behind the program. Sandia National Laboratories, Lockheed Martin Public Service Company of New Mexico have contributed more than $1.8 million in cash and personnel, said Laurel Moore, state director for Strengthening Quality in Schools Program. Moore works for Sandia but has been on loan to the quality schools program since its inception in 1992.

      The state Legislature, which has provided more than  $1.2 million for the program over the years, approved a $750,000 appropriation in 2001, that was vetoed by Gov. Gary Johnson, Moore said.  The program didn’t get any state funding this year, either. Moore and other program supporters hope to expand the program within individual schools and districts, but she said that a lack of funding and resistance to change stand in the way. “The way that the (educational) system is set up, it’s difficult to find time for planning, for working on the whole school, and for collecting the data” a Strengthening Quality in Schools program requires, Moore said   But once that is done, she said, the results more than justify the effort.