Graduation rates across New Mexico's public schools

The New Mexico Public Education Department (PED) recently announced a state high school graduation rate of 80.6% for Cohort 2025, marking the highest rate in more than a decade and again of 2.4 percentage points over the previous year.

Sections

Statewide snapshot

A decade of four-year cohort graduation data for New Mexico's public schools. Every rate below follows a single cohort from 9th grade through four years of high school.

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Key Takeaways

Five patterns that emerge across twelve cohorts of New Mexico graduation data.

Graduation rates are at an all-time high.

The 2025 cohort graduated at 80.6% — the first time New Mexico has crossed 80%. Ten years ago it was 69.3%. That's a 1.1-point annual gain on average, sustained through a pandemic that disrupted every cohort from 2020 through 2024.

Every major student group has improved since 2015.

Hispanic students are up 11.2 points. Native American students up 11.1 points. Students with Disabilities up 9.2. Economically Disadvantaged students up 10.4. No single group has backslid over the full decade — the rising tide is real and broad.

The spread between districts is wider than the spread between student groups.

The statewide gap between the highest- and lowest-graduating demographic group in 2025 is 14 points. The gap between the highest- and lowest-graduating districts with reportable data exceeds 70 points. Where a student lives — and which school they attend — matters enormously.

Girls graduate, on average, 4 points ahead of boys.

The female graduation rate (82.8%) has outpaced the male rate (78.6%) in every one of the twelve cohorts on record. The gap has stayed remarkably stable — never narrower than 3 points, never wider than 5.

Why are some values not displayed

Data is masked to comply with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which prohibits revealing students' personal information without their consent. New Mexico masks any student group with fewer than 10 members — those appear as "Masked" in this dashboard. The state also masks the top and bottom of percentage ranges (reported as ≥80%, ≥90%, ≥95%, ≥98%, ≤20%, ≤10%, or ≤2%) to prevent identifying students when nearly all members of a group share the same outcome. These conventions protect individual privacy while meeting legal requirements for data transparency.

Source: New Mexico Public Education Department · NMVistas