Education
Invested in mediocrity
Washoe County School District ignores law on education reform
Unfortunately, Nevada's public education runs largely on the same principles as the Soviet Union economy. Central-office bureaucrats ration teachers, books, maps, computers, administrators, janitors, basketballs, light bulbs, etc. — despite inferior knowledge of what resources are needed where and who needs them most. This ineffective use of scarce resources means shortages, waste and large bureaucracies that, predictably, become ends in themselves. Jobs for adults, rather than education for the children, become the priority. The Washoe County School District is no exception.
What ‘Adequate Yearly Progress’ really means
Reports of student achievement are often highly calculated
Did you know that, contrary to popular belief, making Adequate Yearly Progress (more commonly referred to as AYP), does not mean a school's students are actually proficient in reading or math? You'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Every July when Nevada school districts release their test results under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), schools making AYP are thrown into the spotlight and praised for their students' achievement.
When government ignores its own laws
A dubious way around genuine education reform
Imagine if a Nevada business decided not to pay taxes. Supporters of big government would cry that it was "not paying its fair share," and state officials would swoop down upon on the firm like vultures to a carcass. The state would devour all it could and imprison the company's management for violating the law. But what happens when government ignores laws it creates?
Grading empowerment schools
So far, so good
Government-run public education in America has long imposed on schools central bureaucracies that ration key resources, including teachers, textbooks and many more school supplies. Currently, Nevada is attempting to break away from this unworkable system, the primary source of the state's well-known K-12 problems. The new approach — most advanced in the Clark County School District — uses the "empowerment school" model, which creatively exploits the intelligence naturally operating within market processes.
To build or not to build
That is the question for CCSD
Not so long ago the Clark County School District had students enrolling in droves. Families were swarming into the Las Vegas valley faster than communities could handle. And with 4.9 billion taxpayer dollars in its Capital Improvement Program (CIP), CCSD was franticly building schools — on every corner, it seemed. Today, however, the scenario is drastically different. Las Vegas has the highest foreclosure rate in the nation, unemployment in the state is 11 percent, student enrollment in the district has trickled to a mere .8 percent growth rate and the CIP is down to its last $171 million for new schools.
No illusions in Nevada education
The Silver State, to its credit, has tests that actually test
Nevada is well known for entertainment, especially here in Las Vegas. Performing on the streets and in the resorts and concert halls are illusionists, magicians, conjurers and prestidigitators. But such artists of illusion work elsewhere, too. Government bureaucracies and legislatures are often favorite settings. There, on education issues, magic frequently occurs — as entire subgroups of underperforming students vanish right before our very eyes and bureaucratic sorcery produces wondrous improvements in reports of education quality. The power of illusion, whether you perform in Las Vegas or in a legislature, comes from misdirection.
Opportunity missed
Steven Horsford cannot stand up to the NSEA alone
Three months ago, the new majority leader of the Nevada Senate, Steven Horsford, seriously displeased the president of the Nevada State Education Association teacher union. Horsford did so by admitting, indirectly, the long and lethal hostility of that union to virtually each and every effort to reform Nevada public education. "It is about the future and the children who depend upon us in the classroom," said the young majority leader in a debate over the hotel-room-tax increase. "The children are more important to me than any teachers group, than any company who thinks they can decide tax policy."
The right way to measure success
Nevada students need norm-referenced testing
Do Nevada students need to take one more test? They do if we want to know how well they compare to other students across the nation. We hear complaints about "all the tests" that Silver State students have to take, but there's one important test Nevada has suspended that needs to be reinstated.
Power for Nevada education
Empowerment schools offer beacon of hope for serious education reform
By 1989 the Soviet Union's iron curtain had all but collapsed. Though the transition from communism to capitalism was tough, the people were reclaiming freedom in politics and in their private lives. Gone were the days of central planning, where soviet commissars sat on high, issuing production quotas for factories and determining how goods would be rationed among the people. Unfortunately, American public education today is largely run in much the same way that the Soviet Union ran its economy.
Numbers game
Where do education-spending ‘rankings’ come from?
Last week Lynn Warne, president of the Nevada State Education Association, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that "the state is last in the nation in per pupil spending, and already has difficulty attracting and retaining enough qualified teachers to fill classrooms at the start of each school year." What source is she using? Any at all?
