Lawmakers hearprogress report on education

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Thursday, March 21, 2002 | 9:46 a.m.

The Clark County School District needs to improve science instruction, reduce the number of high school graduates who require remedial courses in college and provide more staff development opportunities, according to a progress report presented to legislators Wednesday.

The report's findings, presented to the Legislative Committee on Education at its meeting at the Sawyer State Office Building in Las Vegas, come as no surprise, said Augustin Orci, deputy superintendent of instruction for the Clark County School District.

"I would certainly acknowledge we need to do more as far as science education is concerned, and we're moving toward improving that," Orci said. "As for staff development, it's not cheap. You have to pay people to attend and pay people to run the workshops.

"If we can get more funding from the Legislature we would love to offer more programs."

As part of the 1997 Nevada Education Reform Act, all 17 of the state's school districts are evaluated in several areas, including accountability and reform, student achievement, attendance and use of technology. Schools that perform poorly on the Terra Nova Basic Skills Test, administered each fall, are designated as needing improvement and are monitored by the state Department of Education.

All of the school districts have made a "strong effort" to comply with the 1997 law, said George "Gus" Hill, associate professor of educational leadership at the University of Nevada, Reno and chairman of the panel of educators that prepared the report.

"The accountability process has come a long way," Hill told the legislative committee.

Clark County students lag behind state averages in science at all three levels tested -- fourth, eighth and 10th grades, according to the report, which used data from 1998 through 2001.

But overall student achievement on basic skills exams and Scholastic Achievement Tests are above the national average, even though only 11 states spend less per student on education than Nevada, Orci said.

"We are doing more with less," Orci said. "Think what we could do with more."

About 30 percent of Nevada's high school graduates enroll in remedial courses at state colleges, educators say. At the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 66 remedial classes are offered in English and math each semester and about 35 percent on all freshman enroll, according to university officials.

To combat the high remediation rate, the school district is increasing its offerings of distance learning courses so that students can get extra help on their own time, Orci said. Smaller class sizes where teachers had more time with individual students would also help, but again its an approach that would require more funding, Orci said.