We pour far more money per student into the public schools than our grandparents did — even corrected for inflation.<\/p>\n
A small number of bright, hard-working kids, encouraged by parents who put an emphasis on achievement, continue to do well.<\/p>\n
Our trade and career high schools are often another bright spot.<\/p>\n
But at most government-run Las Vegas schools, as in most of urban America, results range from mildly disappointing to deplorable. Too many high-school kids can\u2019t read at anything beyond a fourth or fifth grade level. They can\u2019t count change; they can\u2019t spell; they can\u2019t file things in alphabetical order. You don\u2019t need an advanced degree to figure out such kids aren\u2019t ever likely to master chemistry, trigonometry, or the finer points of American history.<\/p>\n
And we wonder why our political debates degenerate into feel-good sound bites?<\/p>\n
Any good manager knows that before you can draft a solution, you need good measurement tools to figure out where things are going wrong. Given how easily classroom grades can be inflated, that means standardized testing.<\/p>\n
School reformers often talk of \u201craising the bar.\u201d It\u2019s a metaphor borrowed from track & field. Give the young high-jumper confidence by showing him or her how to get over a five-foot bar. Then work on technique and strength training till the athlete can jump the six-foot bar. Keep raising it.<\/p>\n
That was the idea behind the federal education reform called \u201cNo Child Left Behind.\u201d
\nWhen the program first went into effect, the bar was low: Only one third of elementary kids needed to score at grade level in math for a school to \u201cmeet standards\u201d in 2002-03. But then the bar was raised: Requirements gradually increased, until the standards call for 100 percent of students to demonstrate proficiency in math, reading and English by 2013-14.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t work. Remember that part that says \u201cWork on technique and strength training\u201d? Who exactly was going to do that part?<\/p>\n
Without that — if you don\u2019t do anything but raise the bar — eventually you reach the point where most of the kids just knock down the bar. At that point, you\u2019ve established what? The point at which kids without any change in tutoring procedures will knock down the bar — a piece of information you already had, 10 years ago.<\/p>\n
After a decade of easy stuff, \u201cNo Child Left Behind\u201d was finally supposed to start paying off next year. And like the football coach who starts a five-year re-building program and delivers nothing but four losing seasons, the program has now packed its van and is on its way out of town.<\/p>\n
Less than a third of Clark County schools made the grade under No Child Left Behind in the 2011-12 academic year, marking a new low for the country\u2019s fifth-largest district.<\/p>\n
Because the standards were raised every year, results simply got worse every year.
\nIn 2008-09, 190 schools passed No Child Left Behind. It was 151 schools the next year, then 139 schools. Now, 118 out of 385 schools, including charters, \u201cmade it over the federal bar.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor that reason, it\u2019s not a surprise,\u201d says School Board President Linda Young, who ranks academic achievement well down her lists of what schools are supposed to accomplish, anyway.<\/p>\n
(The requirement that 100 percent of students demonstrate proficiency in math, reading and English? No school can achieve that, says Ms. Young, a former school psychologist, Director of Special Education, and Director of Equity and Diversity Education who told me in her first school board endorsement interview here at the paper, a few years back, that \u201cmaking sure a child is well clothed, well-fed, and knows he\u2019s loved\u201d are three more important tasks for the schools than \u201cacademic achievement.\u201d Another former teacher, now running for the state Board of Education, told us last week that Clark County schools with high ratios of poor students have now instituted what she called \u201cwraparound social services,\u201d including not only free food and free haircuts, but also free Christmas presents. She believes those services should be retained.)<\/p>\n
At ant rate, our educrats have now come up with a whole new way to measure student achievement in Nevada.<\/p>\n
Starting this school year, Nevada and 32 other states have been issued a waiver from those \u201ccan\u2019t-be-met\u201d federal standards, and will instead grade schools using their own systems approved by the U.S. Department of Education.<\/p>\n
Nevada\u2019s new requirements use a 100-point \u201cindex\u201d system for measuring student performance, and will award schools with one to five stars — a scheme the Clark County School District initiated last school year.<\/p>\n
The 100-point index will be based on students\u2019 academic growth (If your ninth grader was reading at a third grade level, and by tenth grade he\u2019s reading at a fifth grade level, everybody gets a prize); number of students achieving at grade level; reductions in gaps between commonly struggling students (including those living in poverty and those who speak English as a second language), and \u201cstudent engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan calls the waiver \u201ca big step in the right direction\u201d for Nevada in implementing more rigorous standards.<\/p>\n
Really. He really said that a system that awards points for \u201cstudent engagement\u201d is \u201cmore rigorous.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new system does parallel No Child Left Behind in one way: The state has \u201cset a new bar\u201d that requires the percentage of students with grade-level skills to increase from 50 percent to 90 percent by the 2016-17 school year. To get there, it has adopted a new curriculum, called \u201cCommon Core Standards,\u201d used by all but a few states.<\/p>\n
That means Nevada will abandon its current standardized tests — the primary indicator in No Child Left Behind — for new tests based on the Common Core Standards, tests to be \u201cpiloted\u201d in 2013-14 and implemented in 2014-2015.<\/p>\n
Whoopee! Another \u201cnew curriculum\u201d! How many is this, since we started replacing the old 1930s and 1940s curriculum that made ours one of the best school systems in the world?<\/p>\n
The process was certainly well underway by the time I was in the 10th Grade, back in the 1960s. Parents who would have known instantly whether their kids were as far along as they ought to be in classes with names like \u201ctrigonometry\u201d were suddenly told, \u201cNo, no, Junior is now taking something called \u2018Math IV\u2019 or \u2018Math V.\u2019\u201d You think that sudden wall of opacity, that generational disconnect, was a coincidence? How about dropping all ancient and modern foreign language instruction, about a decade later? Designed to make our graduates more competitive in the world market?<\/p>\n
At any rate, Nevada parents may now wait at least two-and-a-half more years before hoping for a fresh report on what\u2019s being accomplished with their tax money … and the innocent cannon fodder they entrust to the school bus each morning.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, we\u2019re supposed to believe that — the old 12-year \u201cNo Child\u201d plan having been scrapped because after 10 years everyone can see it\u2019s accomplished virtually nothing — the BRAND NEW plan will SURELY result in an 80 percent improvement in kids meeting the pathetically watered-down standard described as \u201cgrade-level performance\u201d … in just five-and-a-half years.<\/p>\n
Now, the bonus question: If the results of this latest \u201cimpose a new set of tests and standards, that\u2019ll fix it!\u201d shell game are supposed to be seen by the spring of 2017, what is the year by which we can expect current Clark County School Superintendent Dwight Jones and current Clark County School Board President Linda Young to have \u201cmoved on,\u201d for all the world like the Duke and the Dauphin slipping out of town just before curtain time for their third night\u2019s performance?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to set the morning line for the summer of 2016. This being Las Vegas, you may of course bet the \u201cover\u201d or the \u201cunder.\u201d Choose correctly, and you, too, may end up hiring or supporting a \u201chigh school graduate\u201d who can\u2019t count change, spell, or file things in alphabetical order.<\/p>\n