Recent Rankings Ring Well for MAS Charter School

While schools across New Mexico are settling in for the second half of the fall semester, we’ve received word from a number of organizations that MAS Charter School continues to make a noticeable difference in the lives of students, their families, and our local community.

Taking a step back for a moment, as the 2025-2026 school year got underway in August, readers of the Albuquerque Journal, the state’s largest newspaper, ranked MAS the Best Public School in Albuquerque. With a weekly reach of 350,000, and a paid in print circulation of around 50,000 subscribers, as well as 1.6 million monthly visitors online, Journal readers gave us the top honors in the annual survey of the best of Albuquerque.

Other honors entering the 2025-2026 school year included:

• 2025: U.S. News & World Report Best Public Schools
• 2025: U.S. News & World Report Best Public Middle Schools
• 2025: U.S. News & World Report Best Public Elementary Schools
• 2025: New Mexico Public Education Department (NMPED) Spotlight School
• 2025: NMPED Family Income Index School
• 2025: NMPED Designation of Excellence School 

MAS Charter School’s Latest Rankings

More recently, the New Mexico Public Education Department’s (NMPED) Spring 2025 Student Assessment Results Briefing Packet has been released, revealing the following:

• MAS is now ranked among the Top 5 schools in the state of New Mexico for growth in math proficiency rate
• MAS is now ranked among the Top 10 schools in the state of New Mexico for growth in literacy proficiency rates 

The NMPED’s Spring 2025 Student Assessment Results Briefing Packet is the state’s official roll-up of how students performed on required assessments in spring 2025. It explains what was tested, who was tested, and how results have shifted over several years. 

The packet includes school-level “Highest Growth” lists that highlight where proficiency rose the fastest in the last year, broken out by school size. This is where MAS appears, including the Yale campus on the large-school literacy growth list, and both Yale and the Old Coors campus on the large-school math growth list. School districts and families use these public results in accountability decisions and improvement planning, and the state of New Mexico uses them in federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) school designations, which are posted online.

Finally, last week, Niche.com published its 2026 rankings of schools and districts, spanning 93,000 public schools, 30,000 private schools, and 11,000 districts. The Pittsburgh-based site, which aggregates education data and draws on 2.5 million reviews from students, parents, and teachers, ranked us as follows:

MAS Yale Campus

• #1 District with Best Teachers in Albuquerque
• #2 Best Charter School in New Mexico
• #2 Best Charter K-12 School in Albuquerque
• #2 Best Charter K-12 Schools in Bernalillo County
• #3 Best Public K-12 School in New Mexico
• #3 Best Public K-12 School in Bernalillo County

MAS Old Coors Campus

• #5 Best Charter K-8 School in Albuquerque area
• #5 Best Charter K-8 School in Bernalillo County
• #7 Best Public K-8 School in Albuquerque Area
• #7 Best Public K-8 School in Bernalillo County
• #13 Best Charter K-8 School in New Mexico
• #17 Best Public K-8 School in New Mexico

Committed to Improvement

While we’re pleased with these results, we also know that there’s lots of room for improvement. Our goal is to be in the top 10 percent in the state in every academic measure, holding ground with private schools.

Recently, in our effort to equip our team with the tools necessary to get there, our teachers engaged with Teach Like a Champion (TLAC), a national organization that provides schools like ours with a set of techniques, a shared vocabulary, and a framework for practice that equip teachers to achieve dramatic results with their students. Many of the highest-achieving schools in the nation are associated with TLAC.

We’re also continuing with our focus on social-emotional learning (SEL), including using the Choose Love Curriculum, HeartMath, and the teachings of Dr. Joe Dispenza (the neuroscience of change) to help our students reduce their stress and perform better academically. In fact, research spanning more than three decades indicates that children who participate in SEL curricula are more likely to become successful and healthy adults. 

Thank you to all our families, students, teachers, school leaders and community members for believing in our potential. Our belief that every student — regardless of background, income, or past academic performance — deserves access to an exceptional and engaging college-preparatory education wouldn’t be possible without you.