School District to measure its success

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Saturday, Feb. 24, 2007 | 6:53 a.m.

In an effort to both preempt its critics and improve academic achievement, the Clark County School District has devised a new way to measure academic success.

Under the new system, a simple graph chart will show whether the district has met annual goals in such areas as decreasing the dropout rate and closing the achievement gap among minority students. The district will also track employee and parent satisfaction.

The strategy comes as parents and lawmakers clamor for greater accountability in public education, only to face the vagaries of various performance measures.

At the heart of Clark County's self-assessment is the decision to not just be placated by any student improvement, but to set hard targets and then quantify whether those goals were achieved.

"If we are going to ask the taxpayers and the Legislature to fund at a higher level, we are going to have to defend the request with a higher level of performance," Clark County Schools Superintendent Walt Rulffes said. "The framework introduces a quantified level of accountability, a way to verify that people are getting a return on their investment in public education."

This is a first for Clark County, and only a handful of districts nationwide are experimenting with similar accountability methods. The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires districts to show improvement in annual standardized tests, but does not set other success benchmarks, such as graduation rates and student participation in advanced classes.

Clark County's new assessment is a work in progress, Rulffes said. There may be adjustments to how goals are set, as well as to the list of what will be measured.

Bob McCord, an associate professor of educational leadership at UNLV, said the district's latest venture is "not only courageous, it's smart."

McCord, a former district administrator, said the framework will come with a learning curve.

"On the public's side, it will be an understanding of where the district is headed," McCord said. "On the district's side, it will be about whether it's measuring the right things and targeting the appropriate students for help."

In the past, the district's internal evaluations have focused more on qualitative concerns than on quantitative ones. For example, the district had said it wanted more students to pass high school proficiency exams on their first try, but stopped short of setting a specific numeric goal.

By contrast, the new self-assessment, which was introduced to the School Board earlier this week, is based on explicit expectations.

In the 2005-06 academic year, 45 percent of students passed the math portion of the proficiency exam on the first try. Under the new framework, the district pledges to increase the pass rate by between 3 percent and 9 percent over the next two years. An increase of 1 percent for the 2006-07 academic year would be judged adequate growth, 2 percent would be moderate growth and 3 percent would be superior growth.

The self-assessment guidelines will be a key component of the district's ongoing "empowerment schools" experiment, which Rulffes intends to expand from four campuses to as many as 40 by next year. Empowerment schools have greater control over daily operations, including staffing and curriculum, in exchange for stricter accountability. Gov. Jim Gibbons wants to spend $60 million on a statewide empowerment experiment involving 100 schools.

The assessment will also be used to decide how much money schools and regions receive for special programs and services, said Lauren Kohut-Rost, deputy superintendent of curriculum and instruction.

"If we determine resources are not being deployed appropriately, we can adjust the plan, rethink the plan and retarget those students," said Kohut-Rost, who spearheaded the design of the new assessment.

The district took its first steps toward the new assessment under its prior superintendent, Carlos Garcia.

His "A-Plus in Action" plan set down goals, said Karlene McCormick-Lee, an associate superintendent. However, the goals under Garcia "weren't quantifiable," she said. "What we've done now is look back at the last number of years and ask ourselves, 'What is attainable? What is the minimum we can realistically expect? What would be significant achievement?' "

The new system not only eliminates much of the gray area, but also would preempt the district from dickering over what qualifies as adequate achievement.

"The noise you hear is me applauding," said Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, one of the district's more vigorous critics. "In the past, this district has specialized in unaccountability. This is an encouraging step."

But having more specific goals won't matter unless consequences are attached, Beers said.

The School Board holds the superintendent accountable, but the superintendent must have similar authority over his subordinates, Beers said. And that accountability must filter down to the school level, with a mechanism for removing employees who fail to perform, he said.

"One of the dirty little secrets of empowerment schools is that they must have this kind of accountability," Beers said. "To see the district moving that way in advance of a legislative mandate is exciting."