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By J. Patrick Coolican (contact) 
, Emily Richmond
Sunday, March 15, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford
Sun Archives
- Teachers union blasts Horsford on education (3-13-2009)
- Gibbons counts on tax increase, but won't sign it (3-11-2009)
- Room tax hike: Sun's winners and losers (3-11-2009)
- Senate passes hotel room tax hike (3-10-2009)
- State Senate delays vote on room taxes (3-9-2009)
- Nevada Assembly OKs bill to raise room tax (2-24-2009)
Boxed In?
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State Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford will propose a sweeping overhaul of Nevada’s education system this week, with reforms that offer a sharp critique of the state’s education establishment, including the Board of Education, the superintendent of public instruction and the teachers union.
“The pattern is clear,” the Las Vegas Democrat said in an interview Friday. “The students are smart enough, but our schools are letting them down, and we’re falling behind the rest of the nation.”
The plan strikes at the foundation of Nevada education, taking on entrenched interests and bureaucracy, and though he would give starting teachers a pay raise, the 30,000-member teachers union is clearly in his sights.
But the proposal is also unsurprising given Horsford’s background. He has pushed for education reform since well before his election to the upper chamber in 2004, and his wife is a postdoctoral fellow in the education department at UNLV.
Horsford’s proposals include an overhaul of the state education apparatus and the way the State Board and superintendent are chosen, as well as performance pay for teachers coupled with tough accountability standards.
Aspects of the plan will likely draw Republican supporters, who have raised some of the same ideas. It also could face opposition from lawmakers, particularly in his own party, influenced in particular by concerns of the teachers union.
Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, has also made education reform a priority, so some legislation seems likely.
One obvious problem: How to pay for the merit raises and the increase for starting teachers when the state faces a $2.36 billion shortfall. Horsford said he would pay for these proposals with changes to the retirement benefits of new employees, but it’s not clear how much money that would save.
Horsford is clearly working off recent data showing that teacher quality is the most important predictor of student achievement, with the best instructors teaching a year and a half of material in a school year, and the worst just a half-year.
“Teachers deserve to be paid more but they should be held accountable for improved results,” he said.
New teacher salaries average about $33,000 in Nevada. Horsford has proposed increasing that to $40,000.
A pay-for-performance system would reward the best teachers, with half the awards determined by quantitatively measured academic achievement of students, and the other half by more subjective measures, such as principal recommendations, parent surveys and participation in professional training.
Although nothing in his proposal would reduce barriers to firing bad teachers, when Horsford was asked if he would support such a measure, he replied, “That should be on the table. We cannot allow bad teachers or those not committed to improving our chances of success” to stand in the way.
Some of these proposals will meet resistance from the teachers union. Last week, union President Lynn Warne questioned Horsford’s commitment to the state’s schoolchildren.
Warne said she hadn’t yet seen the proposed changes and new initiatives.
“I’m disappointed Sen. Horsford chose not to share those details with us beforehand, but that’s his prerogative,” Warne told the Sun, adding that she would work with him.
She said the union would support pay-for-performance, at least in principle.
The education bureaucracy is in for an overhaul if the Horsford proposal passes.
“We need to change the process for selecting education leadership,” he said.
Horsford would change the makeup of the elected, 10-member State Board by reducing it to six, with three elected and three appointed by the governor and legislators.
The State Board has had a history of unopposed incumbents and difficulty filling vacancies. Members often have little or no experience supervising staff, overseeing budgets or shaping public policy.
Horsford wants the governor and Legislature to play a bigger role in the selection of the superintendent of public instruction. In the Horsford plan, the State Board would offer three names to the governor, who would make the selection, though the choice would be subject to confirmation by the state Senate, every two years.
A responsibility of the superintendent, no matter who it is, Horsford said, would be cleaning up the flawed System of Accountability Information in Nevada, a statewide database that traces individual student achievement so the state can comply with the federal No Child Left Behind law.
Horsford said policymakers are too often flying blind, without adequate information as to which students are achieving and which aren’t.
He also wants better coordination between the Nevada System of Higher Education and the K-12 system. The university regents would be allowed to appoint an ex-officio member of the state board, and the universities would have formal partnerships with schools to ensure they are preparing students for college.
Throughout the interview, Horsford offered a brutal assessment of the state of Nevada schools, citing abysmal graduation rates and Iowa standardized test scores in which Nevada fourth graders perform slightly above national averages, only to fall below average in seventh grade and well below average in 10th grade.
“Who should be held accountable for those poor results?” he said. “The Nevada Department of Education, and our role in the Legislature is to hold them accountable for better results.”
Indeed, the Horsford plan would create a commission, drawn from appointments by the Legislature and the governor, to oversee the reforms and report to the 2011 Legislature, all but placing the state Education Department in a state of receivership.
The state’s education establishment viewed the proposals with some skepticism.
John Hawk, who served four years on the State Board of Education before stepping down to open a charter school, said he opposed making the position an appointed office. “The process as it is now gives the power to the public,” said Hawk, who is executive director of Nevada State High School.
The proposed overhaul of the Nevada Education Department struck some as a no-confidence vote in Keith Rheault, the state’s superintendent of public instruction. The State Board hired Rheault in 2004, after he spent 18 years with the department.
“Blaming all of the ills of the world on Keith Rheault” is a mistake, said Joyce Haldeman, associate superintendent for community and government relations of the Clark County School District.
“He does his job and he does it well,” said Haldeman, who had not seen the proposed legislation. “The biggest problem at the Nevada Education Department is a lack of personnel to get things done. I understand the frustration these lawmakers have, because they ask for data and don’t get it quickly. But if the office were fully staffed, there would be few complaints.”
For Clark County Schools Superintendent Walt Rulffes, the central issue is whether the Nevada Education Department has the resources it needs to fully support districts.
“Any reform has to address the practical, day-to-day issues,” Rulffes said.
As for the merit pay proposal, Rulffes noted that Clark County is showing success with a version in its empowerment schools pilot program. Educators share a fresh appetite for discussing different models, Rulffes said.
More complicated is the proposed mandate to increase pay for new teachers. Districts are bound by negotiated agreements when it comes to salaries, and that makes it tricky to reset the bottom of the pay scale, Rulffes said. Problems could arise if first-year teachers are suddenly making more than their colleagues with three, four or even five years experience.
Rheault pointed to his department’s improvement plan already in place, as required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Under the federal education law, every school, district and state education department must annually review its progress, and produce a blueprint for fixing shortfalls.
“If there are additional things that some lawmakers want to see considered as part of that plan, we would certainly take a look at that,” Rheault said.
The statewide student-achievement database that has been in place since 1995 has undergone several major expansions and revisions. Nevada recently received a $7 million federal grant to expand the system’s scope, a project that won’t be finished until early 2010, Rheault said.
CCSD's Haldeman thinks they are "doing their job and doing it well"? To find the answer a student must understand the problem, the problem CCSD identified is "lack of staff"????
Walt's solution is a problem. If we pay more (to new teachers) then the tenure teachers......we have contracts to honor, always behind the curve due to contracts.
The first and only priority is ACCOUNTABILITY! It will take time to MAKE CCSD track and monitor performance on a student to teacher basis, teacher to school & school to administrator basis. But it can be done!!!!
It will not be done with the existing CCSD upper echelon. We need a change. We need to break up CCSD into reasonably sized, large, school districts and reward (merit) the first to improve!
This will take a few years, but it can be done!
LOL........we have a big budget shorfall and Democrats want to increase the size of the government.
Predictable..................
"Horsford said policymakers are too often flying blind, without adequate information as to which students are achieving and which aren't."
Senator Horsford is right; but it's worse than that. The standardized achievement tests in common use are sensitive only to socioeconomic and racial/ethnic differences, not to instructional differences.
There is methodology to resolve the obstacles cited in the article and it's much simpler than the current arcane reporting apparatus.
The methodology is described in papers that can be accessed at
http://ssrn.com/author=1199505
#1 reason students fail: P A R E N T S
#1 reason students suceed: P A R E N T S
Nothing will change in the schools until parents are held accountable.
SUCCEED. sorry. BRIAN; Absolutely right.
The CCSD does not emphasize discipline or responsiblity at any level. Students in classes and schools are wild, disruptive, disrespectful and often DANGEROUS! They are not held accountable for anything including homework, test achievement, etc.
Parents are not made to be responsible for anything but cry loudly and threaten law suits when their child is disciplined, fails a course, does not pass standardized tests and fails to graduate then it becomes all the teacher's fault or fault of schools in general....
Until discipline, and I mean strict discipline, is instilled and demanded in our schools at all levels the government from city to the feds can spend billions per individual student but nothing is ever going to change. When discipline is demanded changes in attitude, effort and achievement will result in dramatic changes.... Discipline results in respect for teachers, administrators, school buildings and learning itself...that is the key to all of this talk of 50 years about improving education.
Students and paraents should be given one warning, told the second time as sternly and seriously as possible and then permanently remvoved from public school immediately upon a third incident. Private schools do not, and never had to put up with the crazy crapolla that goes on in public schools..that is why they are more successful....that is also why charter schools work...the crapolla of appeasing student and parent is eliminated.
I agree with Brian and Gmag.
Sadly, many students have bad parents.
I wish that we have a program of voucher for poor inner city families.
There should be some Federal money.
The other funds can come frome the state. When a child is pulled out then half of the state allocation goes child and the other half stays with the public school.
It is a win-win. The public school gets funds without the burden of the cost of the child. The family will get a try at something that might work for them when the public system is not working.
As long as teachers are treated as indentured servants, the system will fail. Teachers are the LOWEST paid college graduates in ANY field. If education is important, then teachers should be paid as much as any beginning lawyer, doctor, or any other white-collar professional. Since Nevada does NOT wish to do that we will have a system that is steeped in failure. CCEA and CCSD are the problems in this system of education. There is NO way a merit system will succeed if principals without principles are awarding merit pay to the teachers who are "brown-nosers" and lackeys for the administrators and idiots supporting CCEA and its cadre of $100K elite executives like Murillo and Jasonek (who by the way is making over $200K).
Nevada teachers' average salaries are ranked 23rd in the nation.
Clark County average teacher salaries are ranked 18th in the nation.
Nevada has one of the best retirement programs in the nation.
The system of merit pay for teachers is set up to fail. What happens when ALL teachers are deserving high pay because of their performance? Where will they find the money in the budget for this?
I think merit pay could be extended to other professions. Pay police officers only when the crime rate is low. Pay district attorneys only when they get a conviction.
Merit pay will only encourage teachers to cheat. It's a bad idea.
Why should Las Vegas, ranked nationally, at or near the bottom of nearly every category, let alone education, expect to fix the teacher problem by giving them more money? Start by getting rid of the losers, the low performers, the felons, child abusers, alcoholics, porn stars, and drug addicts. The school board obviously has no standards so get rid of them too and start fresh.
Many of my teaching friends that served in combat in Korea, Viet Nam and Iraq have told me that teaching today is in many instances worse than what they experienced in frontline combat. Many are decorated heroes who experienced hand to hand combat with bayonets, knives and grenades against the enemy; a few survived capture and torture by enemy forces. One survived a forced death march and imprisonment in China by the Korean Communists. Those that flew aircraft faced the trauma of trying to survive a damaged plane or helicopter. They indicate that the stress in combat and classroom teaching are not unrelated; the results are similar in having detrimental long term mental and physical effects on the body.
Combat soldiers have their comrades for support while teachers may stand alone against the on slaught of unruly, undisciplined, disruptive, disinterested and often dangerous student behaviors. It is rare that other teachers will unite to assist a colleague in a confrontation with an angry student, disgruntled parent or with a supervisor, preferring to remain silent and uninvolved. Frontline soldiers continually rely on support and backing from their comrades and superiors in combat while teachers may have to courageously fend for themselves as they encounter angry parents frustrated with their lazy, disobedient and rebellious student, or may have to engage in one on one battle with an unreasonable, demanding administrator over harassment tactics or ridiculous policy.
Parents, often accompanied by an attorney, may demand the teacher change policies regarding discipline, attendance and tardies, homework, project work or grading accusing the teacher of incompetence, unprofessionalism, unfairness and personal prejudice. Weak, timid and ineffective administrators will yield to parental pressure and accommodate parents to avoid further confrontations that may involve law suits and interference from district supervisors. It is with this environment that classroom discipline deteriorates and an environment conducive to successful achievement of all students is destroyed; teacher authority to control all factors of classroom management and teaching processes are eliminated thus creating additional stress and frustration for the instructor.
Social accommodation and self-image development have replaced the rule of reason in our educational system. Parents hold schools totally responsible for student safety, behavior and achievement; students are not held accountable for anything and are free to do as they please, as long as they please. Discipline problems in schools spill over into the community as violence and vandalism and we wonder why this happens; only in America is this happening because we are afraid of our children and afraid to discipline them. The old adage: spare the rod and spoil the child has disappeared like dinosaurs of the Mesozoic.
How about competition. We have it in college, and we have taxpayer funds available to college students to attend private, technical, and religious Universities.
Why not in all levels. Give a voucher for each student. Let them, their parents, enroll them in any school they wish. Watch innovation begin and success rates climb. Watch schools compete for the best teachers and most worthwhile programs.
Watch options for University bound students to have more class options and enter college ready to perform. Watch technical high schools that start students in learning crafts to earn an income after high school for those who just are not going to college.
Why have choice be so important for women and then take all choice from them when their fetus turns 5 years old and the state take contol of indoctrinating them in one size fits all. The only losers in this are the poor teachers who will be left in the dust and the teachers union leaders who might lose control of some dues and political power.
Gee. All the usual complaints and solutions in the comments, but no common sense. The two factors that are killing public education are class size and NCLB.
When teachers are facing 35-40 students at a time 6 periods a day or 30 3rd, 4th or 5th graders all day, discipline and individualized instruction is limited. No teacher at any time should be looking at more than 25 faces. This alone would begin to turn around test scores, but it takes money and a commitment to actually improving education to do that.
Second, NCLB and the reliance on bubble tests is killing innovative instruction. Teachers are under the gun to "pass the test." This pressure increases the amount of worksheet drill and kill work and takes time away from activities that foster cooperation and higher level thinking skills. Since the start of NCLB many schools have demonstrated progress on the tests, only to have fewer students entering college with the thinking and planning skills that are required.
Unfortunately, both my solutions require a change in mindset and a true commitment to improving student achievement.
Merit pay could be based on the teacher evaluations...the rubric that was being used five years ago, not sure if it is now...with higher pay given for teachers with a score of 4 in the various categories (4 being highest). If a teacher feels that they have earned a 4 in an area and the principal says no, the teacher should be able to document in writing what they did to meet the requirements to earn a 4 while the principal has to do the same. A person designated to rule on these issues would be the final decider.
The requirements as listed on the evaluations to get a 4 were stringent and a teacher really had to be putting forth a lot of effort to meet those requirements. Those are the teachers who are doing everything they can to reach all the students. I believe it is a better indicator of quality teachers than just relying on test scores.
"If a teacher feels that they have earned a 4 in an area and the principal says no, the teacher should be able to document in writing what they did to meet the requirements to earn a 4 while the principal has to do the same. A person designated to rule on these issues would be the final decider."
And if that final arbiter is an administrator, the teacher will LOSE -- hands down. No administrator will find fault with another administrator and show that the principal was wrong to begin with. So the "Beat Goes On," and the teacher loses. As long as administrators back administrators, the teacher doesn't stand a chance.
Mr. Horsford states that there is a problem that 4th graders do above the national average on ITBS tests then 7th graders do worse and 10th grades do even worse.
Now,lets take a look at the obvious. In Nevada, up until 3rd grade there are class size reduction limits in place. In most cases they are actually followed. Then comes fourth grade where a class size of 35 or higher is not unusual. Those fourth graders still have the same educational needs and need for 1 on 1 interaction between the teacher and the student. Their curriculum hasn't gotten any easier. The student behavior hasn't gotten any better. Now lets go on to middle school and high school. Those class sizes are even bigger. It is not unusual to walk into a middle school science class with 40 students. The behaviors have not improved any, the curriculum has only gotten harder but now there is even less interaction time between student and teacher. HMMMM We wonder why achievement scores get worse. HELLLOOOOO! You get what you pay for.
If it hasn't worked for decades try something new. Try vouchers and see if it succeeds.
ZeddyBear:
The final arbitrator should most definitely not be an administrator.
Why do the Obama girls go to a private school? Only the wealthy can afford private education, which oddly enough, Obama is after the wealthy.
Here's an idea I've never heard before. In our society, people value what they pay for. If it's free they see no value.
Why not charge tuition for all students based on income levels? The payments could be made in cash or via working at their children's school. The funds raised could be split on a per pupil basis to increase teachers salaries. It could not be used for other salaries, only classroom teachers. If there is any left, those funds would be split up to pay for classroom supplies.
If a student is disruptive and has to be expelled, their parents would be required to pay a penalty to return to class. Make the parents be involved in their childs education and you will see immediate improvement.
Bravo! Vsestini hits the nail squarellly on the head!Discipline and he lack thereof in our public education system is the driving force behind all other resultant ills.Yes;there are ineffective teachers,yet I continue to be amused at those whom would suggest that this fact is the issue that needs attention.
Vsestini wrote:
"Discipline problems in schools spill over into the community as violence and vandalism and we wonder why this happens; only in America is this happening because we are afraid of our children and afraid to discipline them. The old adage: spare the rod and spoil the child has disappeared like dinosaurs of the Mesozoic." AND
"Until discipline, and I mean strict discipline, is instilled and demanded in our schools at all levels the government from city to the feds can spend billions per individual student but nothing is ever going to change. When discipline is demanded changes in attitude, effort and achievement will result in dramatic changes.... Discipline results in respect for teachers, administrators, school buildings and learning itself...that is the key to all of this talk of 50 years about improving education."
Sadlly,the sore state of public education has been in a freefall for some decades now.Many of these disaffected "students" are simply destined to be either vagrant subsistence wage-earners or state prison inmates.
"Why do the Obama girls go to a private school? Only the wealthy can afford private education, which oddly enough, Obama is after the wealthy."
In DC there are Federal vouchers for poor kids to go to Obama's private school.
Pelosi and Reid are killing the funding and those kids are getting booted out to the worst school systems in the world...the DC public school even though it has one the of highest funding per student in the world for a public school.
"The students are smart enough, but our schools are letting them down"
Blame the teachers, blame the teachers, blame the teachers.
What does "the students are smart enough" mean? Does this person actually believe that all kids come equipped with the same academic abilities, that all students are "smart"? If so, then on what planet is he living? It's not the same planet on which I work. Is he from Lake Woebegone, where "all the children are above average"? This claptrap needs to be replaced with a reality check. No matter how much mummy and daddy want to believe that all of their little darlings are the next Einstein, it's not that way. Is there any common sense left out there?
Beyond that, how about the students who are LAZY? And believe me, there are many. If anyone believes there is a work ethic left in America, you haven't spent much time in a public school in a long time. This is instilled by parents first, and by the system second. When parents fail to instill a work ethic in their kids, and then the system continues to pass them on when they are below grade level, we get the mess we have. Blaming teachers is not going to help. Charter schools will help some - that includes both teachers and students.
vsestini hit it with his comments. It makes me sick when I see students literally sit and do nothing, then fail each grade and sit and do nothing all over again, and the state keeps paying for it (and for free meals and free babysitting), and blaming teachers for low test scores, to boot.