Education bill would have big impact in county

Benjamin Grove

Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2001 | 9:45 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- An education reform bill ready for a vote in Congress would have wide-ranging implications for the Clark County School District and districts nationwide.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., is on a panel of 39 House and Senate education negotiators that on Tuesday finalized the bill after reaching bipartisan compromises on a variety of issues from testing to school accountability.

The bill is Congress' revised version of President Bush's education goals announced earlier this year.

The House and Senate are likely to vote on the bill later this week, and Bush is expected to sign it. The bill authorized spending $26.5 billion next year for K-12 nationwide, about $8 billion more than this year.

School districts with high percentages of poor students may expect increases in what is known as Title I, which is money dedicated to helping districts with financially disadvantaged students. Clark County got almost $22 million in Title I money last year, a small piece of its $1.2 billion budget.

Here are a few of the bill's key provisions:

* Standardized math and reading testing would be required nationwide in grades three through eight, and schools would have 12 years to get every student in those grades passing minimum standards.

Clark County Schools administer a national test called TerraNova in grades four, eight and 10. Next year the district plans to use a new national test in grades three through eight in anticipation of the new federal law, Clark County testing director Judy Costa said.

"I don't think this is something we'll have a hard time living with," Costa said.

The state of Nevada, however, could face implementing new tests in fourth, sixth and seventh grades in some districts that do not already administer the tests, said deputy state superintendent of public instruction Keith Rheault.

"We hope this isn't an unfunded mandate," Rheault said. "There is some money in the bill for testing, but we don't know whether it will cover all the costs."

* Children in failing schools could transfer to a better public school or be eligible for private tutoring -- paid for with federal money set aside by the district. Subsidies could amount to $500 to $1,000 per child, according to one congressional estimate. State education officials are analyzing how the provision would affect Nevada districts, but it could have a "fairly significant impact" on education budgets, Rheault said.

The provision would be tricky to implement in the state: many students in rural Nevada districts only have one school to choose from, and urban Clark and Washoe County schools are too crowded for transferring, Rheault said.

"There's no place to transfer to -- that's the problem," Rheault said.

* Failing schools that don't make quick improvements could face shake-ups, including whole new teaching staffs. This measure likely would not bring sweeping changes to Nevada -- the state already has a similar mechanism in place for schools identified as failing or "inadequate," officials said.

Since that law was passed four years ago, only one school has been stuck on the list four years in a row and is under watch by a state panel: Fitzgerald Elementary School in Las Vegas.

Threatening major shake-ups and special scrutiny at failing schools has put the schools under a hot spotlight, creating effective pressures to improve, Rheault said. -- Every school would be required to have a "highly qualified" teacher in every classroom. This could be a huge problem for states like California that rely heavily on emergency licensed teachers.

But most Nevada teachers are certified in the subjects they teach, Rheault said. Last year, only about 130 of roughly 18,000 teachers statewide were teaching outside their field, he said.

Much of the controversy over the education bill has centered on funding for special education programs, and in the end, lawmakers did not approve massive new expenditures as many educators had hoped.

Congress in 1975 enacted watershed legislation that committed the federal government to pay 40 percent of the costs of teaching students with a wide variety of disabilities. But lawmakers have never come close to the goal; this year the federal government paid about 16 percent, or $6.3 billion. States and school districts have been saddled with most of the skyrocketing costs of special education.

Special education students in Clark County -- roughly 10 percent of students in the district -- account for $221 million of the district's $1.2 billion budget.

Lawmakers who hammered out the education bill compromise did not agree to increase special education funding this year, but may discuss the issue again next year.

Several irked lawmakers, including Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., said they could not support the bill because it did not contain special education funding increases.