Lovington - EdTribune NM - New Mexico Education Data

One in Six New Mexico Students Is an English Learner

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT

New Mexico lost 36,778 students between 2019 and 2026, an 11% decline that touched nearly every district in the state. English learner enrollment moved in the opposite direction. The state counted 53,149 ELL students in 2025-26, up 2,197 from 50,952 seven years earlier. That 4.3% gain against an 11% total loss produced a 15.3 percentage point divergence: the students learning English grew while the system around them shrank.

The gap is not abstract. It means 33 districts now have English learner shares above 20%. It means Hatch Valley^↗, a small district on the southern border, enrolls more ELL students than non-ELL. It means Carlsbad^↗, deep in Permian Basin oil country, saw its ELL population more than double in six years. And it means New Mexico's $4.4 billion K-12 system faces a structural mismatch: declining headcounts that reduce per-pupil funding and rising service demands that increase per-pupil costs.

The divergence in numbers

Between 2019 and 2026, non-ELL enrollment fell by 38,975 students, a 13.7% decline. ELL enrollment added 2,197 students. The effect on share was steady: English learners rose from 15.2% of total enrollment in 2019 to a peak of 18.2% in 2024-25, before dipping slightly to 17.8% in 2025-26.

That trajectory puts New Mexico well above the national average. Nationally, about 10.6% of public school students were English learners as of fall 2021, the most recent federal figure. New Mexico's 17.8% rate is nearly double that.

The year-over-year pattern reveals two distinct phases. From 2021 through 2023, ELL enrollment surged, adding 4,252 students in 2022 alone, a post-COVID rebound that exceeded the pre-pandemic baseline. Growth then plateaued: the 2025 count of 55,798 was only 83 students above 2023. In 2026, the trend reversed. ELL enrollment fell by 2,649 students, a 4.7% drop, the largest single-year decline in the dataset.

Where the growth is coming from

ELL enrollment can rise for two distinct reasons: new students arriving who speak a language other than English, or existing students being identified as English learners through screening. The data cannot distinguish between the two, but geographic patterns offer clues.

The strongest ELL growth is concentrated in southeastern New Mexico's Permian Basin, where oil and gas extraction has drawn thousands of immigrant workers and their families. Carlsbad^↗ went from 595 ELL students in 2019 (7.4% of enrollment) to 1,337 in 2026 (17.8%), a 125% increase. Hobbs^↗ grew from 1,889 to 2,347, a 24% gain that pushed its ELL share to 23.5%. Lovington^↗ rose from 933 to 1,030, reaching 31.2%.

This pattern is consistent with arrival-driven growth. The Permian Basin has experienced sustained labor migration, particularly from Mexico and Central America, as oil production expanded. In Lea County, where Hobbs and Lovington are located, Hispanics and Latinos now account for as much as 70% of the population, compared with 40% two decades ago.

The border region tells a different story. Gadsden^↗, Deming^↗, and Hatch Valley^↗ have always had high ELL concentrations, reflecting longstanding cross-border communities. Hatch Valley's share rose from 43.5% to 52.3%, but its absolute ELL count grew by just 25 students. The share increase is largely a denominator effect: total enrollment fell while ELL enrollment held steady.

Improved identification may also be at work. The 2018 Yazzie/Martinez ruling found that New Mexico had failed to meet its obligations to English learners under the Bilingual Multicultural Education Act and federal civil rights requirements. The court ordered the state to address these failures, and subsequent reforms expanded screening and identification efforts. Districts that had previously under-identified ELL students may have begun counting them more systematically, inflating apparent growth.

Both forces are probably at work. Oil country growth is primarily arrival-driven. The statewide share increase, particularly in districts without obvious immigration drivers, likely reflects expanded screening.

The funding equation

New Mexico's legislature recognized the structural tension this year. HB 63, signed into law in 2025, creates a standalone English Learner Program Unit in the state's funding formula. Previously, ELL students were bundled into the broader "at-risk" funding category, diluting resources among multiple populations with different needs.

"By having it as its own category, I feel that this will help to ensure that we're being equitable." — Michael Rodriguez, executive director of Dual Language Education of New Mexico, quoted in the Los Alamos Daily Post

The new formula uses a three-year average ELL rate multiplied by a 0.33 factor to generate additional program units. For districts like Hatch Valley and Deming, where more than four in ten students are English learners, the standalone multiplier could deliver meaningful new revenue. For districts like Rio Rancho^↗, where ELL share is 5.8%, the impact will be smaller.

But funding is only half the constraint. The state faces a bilingual teacher retention problem. A Legislative Finance Committee program evaluation found 4,055 teachers in New Mexico hold bilingual endorsements, but only about 20% actually teach in bilingual programs. The gap is not supply but willingness: bilingual-endorsed teachers report being asked to translate materials and interpret at meetings without additional compensation, creating a disincentive to work in the programs that need them most.

Where concentration is highest

Thirty-three districts had ELL shares above 20% in 2025-26. The geography splits into three clusters.

The border corridor, from Gadsden (42.4%) through Deming (44.0%) to Hatch Valley (52.3%), has maintained high ELL shares for decades. These are communities where Spanish is the predominant home language and cross-border enrollment is common.

The Permian Basin, including Hobbs (23.5%), Lovington (31.2%), and Carlsbad (17.8%), represents the fastest growth. Carlsbad's ELL share was 7.4% in 2019. It has more than doubled.

Albuquerque^↗ anchors the system. With 14,624 ELL students, it accounts for 27.5% of the state's entire ELL population. Its ELL share crossed 20% in 2024-25 and held at 20.2% in 2025-26. One in five APS students is an English learner.

The 2026 reversal

The 2,649-student ELL decline in 2026 broke a four-year growth streak and deserves scrutiny. Albuquerque alone lost 841 ELL students, accounting for nearly a third of the statewide drop. Gallup^↗ lost 477. Gadsden lost 355. Las Cruces^↗ lost 315.

Several explanations are plausible. Reclassification: students who reached proficiency thresholds on the ACCESS assessment exited ELL status, and the exit cohort exceeded the entry cohort for the first time since the pandemic. Immigration enforcement: increased federal enforcement activity in 2025-26 may have deterred enrollment among immigrant families. Total enrollment decline: a shrinking denominator means fewer new kindergartners entering the pipeline, including fewer who qualify as ELL.

The data cannot isolate a single cause. What it does show is that ELL growth in New Mexico is not a one-way escalator. The 2021 COVID dip and the 2026 reversal both demonstrate that external forces, from pandemic disruption to federal policy, can shift the trajectory sharply in a single year.

A system built for decline, serving growth

New Mexico's education system is shrinking. Total enrollment has fallen nearly every year since 2019 and now sits at 298,353, its lowest point in the data. The state lost 36,778 students in seven years. Within that contraction, English learner enrollment grew by 2,197, special education enrollment grew by 7,779 (to 20.5% of all students), and the instructional programs these students receive carry higher per-pupil costs than general education.

The budget pressure is direct. Declining headcounts reduce total funding. Rising shares of students in specialized programs increase average costs. HB 63 begins to address the ELL piece, but whether new formula units translate into bilingual classrooms, trained teachers, and effective programming depends on districts' ability to recruit and retain bilingual educators, something the state has struggled with for years.

Hatch Valley now has more English learners than non-English learners. Carlsbad's ELL population more than doubled in six years. In Hobbs, nearly one in four students is learning English. These are not districts that can wait for policy to catch up. They need bilingual teachers now, in buildings that are losing general education students, in a state where 80% of bilingual-endorsed teachers do not teach in bilingual programs. The 53,149 English learners enrolled in 2025-26 are not going anywhere. The system around them keeps shrinking.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Carlsbad Gained 2,156 Students in Five Years, Then Lost 1,719 in Two

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In a state where 87 of 132 districts lost enrollment over the past decade, Carlsbad^↗ stands alone among large traditional school districts. It gained 836 students between 2016 and 2026, a 12.5% increase, while the state as a whole shed 41,260 students (12.1%). The only other large traditional district in New Mexico that can claim any net gain at all is Hobbs^↗, 90 miles to the east, which added 41 students over the same period. That is not a typo.

But Carlsbad's 11-year trajectory is anything but a steady climb. It is a roller coaster powered by Permian Basin crude, and the ride has left the district building schools it may not fill, recruiting teachers it cannot house, and serving a student body that looks nothing like the one that entered the boom.

Five years up, two years down

The acceleration was swift. Carlsbad added 168 students in 2017, then 473, then 705, then 635. At its 2019 peak growth rate of 9.6% in a single year, the district was gaining students faster than most New Mexico districts have ever grown. By 2021, enrollment had reached 8,847, up 32.2% from 6,691 just five years earlier.

The gains tracked the oil. Between 2019 and 2024, Eddy and Lea counties accounted for 52% of all U.S. oil production growth, producing nearly 1 million additional barrels per day. Workers flooded into Carlsbad. The city's population ballooned past 52,000, straining housing, roads, and classrooms.

Then it reversed. Carlsbad lost 12 students in 2022, a tremor. In 2023, it lost 1,707, a 19.3% collapse in a single year. That single-year drop was larger than the entire decade-long enrollment loss at many mid-size New Mexico districts.

What oil gives, oil takes

The 2023 crash lines up with a familiar pattern in resource-extraction communities: the transient workforce that inflated the boom departed when the economics shifted. During the oil surge, many workers lived in RV parks and corporate housing. Monthly rents in Carlsbad climbed to $2,000 to $3,000, pricing out teachers and other public-sector workers.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reported that the district started the 2019-20 year short 15 teachers and resorted to hiring 24 international educators on work visas:

"We still probably have half of those needing to show up and we don't have housing for them." — Superintendent Gerry Washburn, Santa Fe New Mexican

When the bust hit, the district faced a different problem: the infrastructure it had built for 8,800 students now served 7,100. Carlsbad voters approved an $80 million bond in 2019 to expand capacity. That construction program, including the reopening of Riverside Elementary and expansions at Ocotillo and Desert Willow, was designed for a district that no longer exists at that size.

Three years into recovery, the district has clawed back 399 of the 1,719 students it lost, roughly 23%. Growth has slowed each year: 158 students in 2024, 179 in 2025, 62 in 2026. Whether this is a plateau or a pause depends on where oil prices and drilling activity go next.

A different kind of oil town

Carlsbad's experience diverges sharply from Hobbs^↗, the state's other major Permian Basin school district. Hobbs sits in Lea County, adjacent to Eddy County, and draws from the same oil economy. But Hobbs never boomed the same way. It peaked at 10,661 in 2020, lost 831 during COVID, and has since recovered to essentially flat. Over 11 years, Hobbs gained 41 students, a 0.4% change.

Carlsbad sits directly above the most active drilling zone in the New Mexico Permian. In 2022, Eddy County led the nation with 53 active drilling rigs. Hobbs, while also oil-dependent, has a more diversified employment base and did not experience the same in-migration surge.

Smaller Eddy County districts tell a grimmer version of the same story. Artesia^↗ peaked in 2016 at 3,961 and has declined steadily to 3,703, a loss of 258 students. Lovington^↗ fell from 3,832 to 3,300. The oil boom concentrated its enrollment gains in one district while leaving its neighbors flat or declining.

The students who stayed are different

The boom brought workers. The bust took many of them back. But the demographic composition of Carlsbad's student body shifted permanently in between.

In 2019, Hispanic students made up 56.1% of Carlsbad's enrollment. By 2026, that share had risen to 69.3%. White enrollment fell from 39.4% to 27.1% over the same period, a drop of 1,122 students in absolute terms even as Hispanic enrollment grew by 707.

The shift is visible in another metric. In 2019, 595 Carlsbad students were classified as English learners, 7.4% of the student body. By 2026, that number had reached 1,337, or 17.8%. Nearly one in five Carlsbad students now receives English language services, more than double the share seven years ago.

Whether the ELL surge reflects new arrivals drawn by oil-field work or expanded identification of students already in the district is not possible to determine from enrollment data alone. The Permian Basin has long attracted Spanish-speaking workers from both sides of the border. What is clear is that the instructional profile of the district has changed substantially: programs serving English learners carry higher per-pupil costs for staffing, materials, and compliance, and Carlsbad's ELL population more than doubled while the district was simultaneously navigating a 19% enrollment crash.

Rich county, struggling schools

Carlsbad's fiscal position is unusual for a district this volatile. New Mexico's oil and gas tax receipts totaled $11.3 billion in the 12 months ending June 2024, and a substantial share flows to public schools through the state's Land Grant Permanent Fund, which distributes over $1.3 billion annually to K-12 and higher education. The district that produces the oil also benefits from the revenue it generates statewide.

But per-pupil funding follows students. When Carlsbad lost 1,719 students in two years, the revenue dropped with them, even as the fixed costs of newly built facilities did not. The district is now operating schools designed for its 2021 peak while serving 15% fewer students.

Waiting for the next barrel

Carlsbad is adapting. It launched an Energy and Natural Resources Pathway at Carlsbad High School in 2023 with 54 students in its inaugural class, tying the curriculum directly to the industry that drives the local economy. It has invested in teacher housing to buffer against the rental spikes that accompany each oil cycle.

The 62 students Carlsbad added in 2026 suggest the recovery is decelerating. The $80 million in new schools will stay, whether the rigs do or not. So will the ELL programs that did not exist five years ago and the 1,337 English learners who need them. The boom reshaped Carlsbad's schools in ways the bust cannot undo.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.