State gets mixed report card in survey

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2003 | 11 a.m.

Nevada's schools earned a mixed report card in a national education survey, taking home a D+ in overall school climate and a B- in standards and accountability.

Quality Counts 2003, a report released Tuesday by the Washington-based Education Week publication, also gave Nevada a C- in resources adequacy and a B grade for equitable distribution of those resources.

The Clark County School District, the state's largest with more than 255,000 students, won praise for administrators' efforts to give struggling schools the first crack at hiring new teachers when those teachers become available.

But that policy has been on hold during the past academic year because of a shortage of teachers, said George Ann Rice, associate superintendent of human resources for the district.

Nevada's low mark for school climate, which includes class sizes and student-to-teacher ratios, is a direct result of the lack of money available for education, said Agustin Orci, deputy superintendent of instruction for the Clark County School District.

For the past two years the district has faced shortfalls, cutting nearly $90 million from its annual $1.2 billion budget. The cost-saving measures have included upping class sizes in elementary schools.

"Whenever you increase class size, you're decreasing the amount of time a teacher has to spend with individual kids and decreasing the overall quality of the learning experience," Orci said. "We would love to keep every classroom small, or at least manageable, but the dollars need to be there."

Nevada also ranked among the bottom 10 states in the country for per-pupil funding, a situation the state's 17 superintendents say they are determined to change in the coming legislative session. Nevada spent $6,438 per pupil in 2000 -- adjusted for regional cost differences -- compared with the national average of $7,524. West Virginia had the country's highest per-pupil expenditure, with $9,768.

Nevada's C- in improving teacher quality didn't surprise Clark County's teachers' union. With a starting salary around $26,000 -- far below surrounding states -- it's increasingly difficult to recruit and keep qualified teachers, said John Jasonek, executive director of the Clark County Education Association.

"We've been harping on this for five years," Jasonek said. "I'm glad we got a good grade in standards and accountability, because we've all been working hard in that regard. Now it's time to step up to the plate and do right by teachers."

Nevada also doesn't have enough teacher-training institutions to keep up with demand in a state where student enrollment is growing at three times the national average, the report found.

The Silver State's rigorous testing requirements for teachers may also have deterred applicants, but under the new federal mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act other school districts will be required to follow Nevada's lead, the report said.