Cram labels Kids Count results ‘an embarrassment’

Terry Webster

Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2000 | 11:28 a.m.

Beset by a barrage of social ills, Nevada ranks 36th in the nation for the overall well-being of children, according to the 2000 Nevada Kids Count Data Book.

The report, released Tuesday, shows Nevada fared poorly in education-related areas, posting the nation's worst school-dropout rate and basic reading levels lower than the national average.

Clark County School District Superintendent Brian Cram said the report, overall, is "an embarrassment."

"We've known for quite some time that the condition of Nevada children is not good," Cram said. "We need more significant support, especially for younger children. And that has to come from the city, the county, the state and the parents."

Areas covered by the report include early child care and education, health care, poverty rates, child abuse, juvenile violent crime arrest rates, teenage suicide and teenage pregnancy.

Nevada's 1996 to 1998 average percentage of high school dropouts was 12.4 percent, according to the report. Clark County's average dropout rate was 14.8 percent over the same three-year period for students in grades 10 through 12. For 1998, Clark County's dropout rate was 15.2 percent.

Cram said the report's figures differ from those previously released by the Nevada Department of Education.

"We've shown a slight improvement in the dropout rate," Cram said.

In December the school district announced the 1998-99 dropout rate was 9 percent, a figure in line with other urban districts. In 1997-98, it was 11.8 percent.

Marlys Morton, coordinator for Nevada Kids Count, is standing by the report, however. She said all of the information contained in it was verified for accuracy by the Nevada Department of Education.

In reading, 47 percent of Nevada's fourth grade pupils scored below the basic level in 1998, or 8 percent more than the 39 percent national average. For eighth graders, 31 percent were below the basic reading level, just 3 percent more than the 28 percent national average.

"You can tell when you look at the report there are a lot of problems," child advocate Louise Helton said.

Helton agrees that many learning problems can be traced to the early years.

Several years ago she started Classroom on Wheels, which provides a free bilingual preschool in a mobile classroom and parenting assistance for at-risk neighborhoods.

"Children are not prepared to learn in the first place," Helton said. "If you look at very early childhood education, our state ranks 50th in providing Head Start (preschool) to eligible children. That's because our state is the only state in the union that doesn't apply one nickel to Head Start. As a result, we've had to come up with alternative programs."

Just last year students started being required to attend kindergarten before going into first grade.

"We're hoping that's going to make a huge difference in children being prepared to learn, so they're not ushered into first grade totally unprepared, without a chance of being successful in a first grade classroom," Helton said.

"I saw that in my own daughter's classroom. There were first grade children who had never held a pair of scissors, never held a crayon and didn't know their shapes, their letters, their numbers."

In Clark County, more than 7,000 children are eligible for Head Start, but the program can serve only about 1,000, Helton said.

"So what happens to those other six-plus thousand children?" she said. "They don't have the same advantage."

As early as first grade, students start realizing they are not doing well at school. Then they start looking for other venues.

"It starts on the elementary campuses," Helton said. "That's where they start turning to drugs or gangs or crime. That just advances as the children get older. Then it manifests itself in the statistics you see in this book."

Another sore spot in the report is health care. Nevada places 45th in the country for the percentage of children under age 18 without health insurance.

The state ranked 46th for the immunization of 2-year-old children.

On the positive side, the report shows improvements are being made in the infant mortality rate and the number of children living with fully employed parents.

Improvements in infant birth weights and infant mortality rates can be directly linked to a program that addresses these two areas through mentoring.

Other figures in the report show that:

The lead agency for the Nevada Kids Count project is the Center for Business and Economic Research at UNLV. Kids Count is a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which conducts a national and state-by-state tracking of children in the United States.

The report's purpose is to identify children's needs by compiling and distributing data. It also serves to educate policy-makers and as an advocacy tool for children.

Terry Webster covers education for the Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-4091 or by e-mail at terry@lasvegassun.com