Parents, students have mixed reaction to law

Thursday, Jan. 8, 2004 | 9:54 a.m.

A day shy of the federal No Child Left Behind Act's second anniversary, Clark County educators, parents and students told Nevada lawmakers Wednesday that the law has been a "mixed bag."

But most of the people who testified before members of the Legislative Committee of Education said they were looking for the upside of the new law while pushing for revisions to aspects they say unfairly penalize some schools.

"We're not going to be the ones who sit around and complain about it," Clark County Schools Superintendent Carlos Garcia said. "We're not going to get caught up in the political aspects ... we should be caught up in the aspects of how we improve instruction for all our students."

The federal education law calls for 100 percent of the nation's students to show proficiency in reading, writing and math by the 2013-14 school year. Schools that do not show progress face increasingly stiff sanctions.

The committee met at Foothill High School in Henderson -- one of the 131 campuses in Clark County that failed to show "adequate yearly progress" on test scores in the last year. A second consecutive year of low test scores and the school will be labeled as "needing improvement."

Foothill made the state's "watch list" solely because of low scores in reading and math by special education students, Principal Sue Daellenbach told the committee.

"(The new law) makes us look at every student, not just the high-achieving ones," Daellenbach told the committee, which had assembled on the stage of the high school's theater. "As a result we've moved kids and changed teachers. We expect to see improvement."

Greg Walton, a senior at Foothill, said he felt it was unfair for his school to be identified as failing to make AYP simply because of low scores by one sub-group of students. The federal education reform focuses too heavily on low-achieving students and not enough on the other end of the spectrum, Walton said.

Carol Lark, principal of C.P. Squires Elementary School, told the committee she was thrilled by the extra scrutiny the new federal law has brought to public schools. In her 26-year career Lark said she has never seen "so much interest shown in education."

If test scores are to improve enough to clear the new federal hurdles, salaries need to be raised to attract veteran teachers to struggling urban campuses like Squires, Lark said.

"It's experience we must pay for and these are not the children we should compromise with," Lark said.

"Most of our teachers live at least 30 minutes away ... It costs them $1,000 a year in gasoline (to commute)," Lark said. "They're losing money to work at our school."

The Legislature during the last session approved retirement credits for teachers at Title I schools and in hard-to-fill specialities. But for younger teachers the boost in salary is a more pressing need, Lark said.

A critical component to the federal No Child Left Behind Act is parental involvement, said D.J. Stutz, president of the Nevada PTA. Stutz told the committee her group is working aggressively to recruit new members and has several programs in place to help single parents become active at their children's schools.

Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson and chairman of the education committee, said he was glad to have the opportunity to hear directly from the community.

"We're identifying the challenges we're going to have in crafting a custom program for Nevada that meets the mandates of No Child Left Behind," Perkins said.

A top priority must be reducing class sizes, Perkins said. The state's two largest school districts -- Clark and Washoe counties -- are required to present class size reduction proposals to the committee during the interim, Perkins said.