Keeping Pace with the FutureEmbracing Change in Nevada Education

 

Navigating K-12 education is more complicated today than it used to be. Students face more distractions, from social media to family finances. Yet it’s important for students to keep pace with a world that’s rapidly changing. Technology evolves at the speed of thought. Career opportunities grow and shrink with industry changes that reflect economic and workforce development policies. Standardized testing moves online and how to test online becomes a skill that needs to be taught. Schools have to adapt to keep up with all the changes, and so do Nevada’s 500,000 students.

The Future is Now

Today’s students need tomorrow’s education in order to graduate into today’s workforce. “If school still looks the way it did when we were children, then we’re not preparing students for future readiness,” said Roxanne Stansbury, head of school, The Alexander Dawson School. Educators need to consider what constitutes new excellence in education and be willing to make changes so student experiences are rooted in real world expectations. It’s important that students prepare for post-graduation futures before they actually graduate into the real world. They need an idea of where they want to go, and a pathway to get there.

“People don’t care anymore what you know,” said Stansbury. “All they care about is what you can do with what you know.”

Students need a deep understanding of what they’re learning, and the ability to use the knowledge in practical application. School districts need to collaborate with community partners and parents to work problems of poverty, class sizes, teacher shortages and to lift Nevada education higher than 42nd in the nation. So, how fares education in Nevada? Better than expected.

“We saw gains in student proficiency during the 2023-24 school year on the Smarter Balanced assessments, our state’s graduation rate has risen and the chronic absenteeism rate has improved. We are moving in the right direction, and these results are a testament to the hard work and dedication of our students, educators, support staff and families,” said Jhone Ebert, superintendent of public instruction, Nevada Department of Education.

“In our continuing focus on academic growth and achievement, we have increased support for our highest needs schools,” said Joe Ernst, superintendent, Washoe County School District (WCSD). “[We] developed the Insight System to provide immediate intervention for students who are straying from the pathway to graduation. [We also] realigned the English Learner Department to provide equitable distribution of services across our district and better support multi-language learners,” Ernst said. WCSD has expanded access to both extra- and co-curricular clubs and activities matched to student needs in each school’s student community. WCSD pays the fees for students to access advanced coursework, doubled the number of schools offering dual enrollment, and increased those offering Career and Technical Education programs (CTE).

Paying it Forward

Positive things are happening in Nevada’s K-12 education. Public schools have seen better scores in math and reading and higher proficiency skills in schools where students were performing below grade level. Graduation rates are increasing; chronic absenteeism is declining.

The advances are in part due to the $2.6 billion investment in education made by the 2023 Nevada State Legislature, which funded new programs and allowed recruitment of 1,200 new teachers. Nevada’s public education consists of 17 school districts and the Nevada State Public Charter School Authority (SPCSA) which recently became the second largest district in the state, behind Clark County School District (CCSD). CCSD is comprised of 374 schools, 8,000-square-miles and 296 students. That’s a lot of education to fund.

The 2019 Legislature formed the Commission on School Funding which created a new funding formula for public schools for the first time in 54 years.

“The new plan has been in place for four years now and the data I’ve shared shows it has made an impact,” said Ebert. “We need to make sure we continue to invest in our students. There are still naysayers out there saying money is provided and we don’t know how it’s being used and are we getting new outcomes? The fact of the matter is we were funding at the 48th or 49th of the United States and comparing ourselves to everyone else. With the additional funds we’ve moved up, but we are nowhere near the national average in funding for students. We fully expect as we move toward the national [funding] average that we will see more gains by our students in our classrooms.”

Hit the Ground Running

Nevada education doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Students rely on a healthy workforce to join after graduation and a healthy workforce needs new workers. Nevada schools partner with local workforce development boards to connect education and workforce.

Ebert sits on the Workforce Connections board, because part of the role of public education is ensuring there are career choices available to students, a pathway from K-12 either directly into higher education or into the workforce. “In our classrooms, students aren’t waiting until they graduate to make those determinations. They actually start in middle school and high school having those experiences that help them make a [choice],” said Ebert.

Dual enrollment can help students transition from school to work by allowing high school students to earn college credit before graduation, or even graduate with an associate degree.
CTE programs are another option. Data shows students enrolled in CTE have a 96.6 percent graduation rate. CTE courses integrate core academic knowledge with industry education to move students into workforce faster, with the benefit to both students and industries.

CCSD has increased dual enrollment opportunities for every student group, offers more than 100 CTE programs, and advanced placement enrollment for more than 20,000 students.
Graduation rates in general increased 0.2 percent in 2024 and Ebert expects the graduating class of 2025 will see a much higher rate based on the 2023 investment in education. For the last three years the rate has been flat, staying at 86 percent, with seven school districts at 90 percent. A definite improvement over 66 percent in 2011.

Nevada’s population continues to grow statewide, but enrollment in public education varies by school district. Decreases in enrollment are consistent across the country and due to factors from declining birth rates, older populations in those districts, and families choosing educational options other than public schools. WCSD enrollment decreased from approximately 64,000 to 60,000 in the last few years.

It Takes a Community

“The reason why Communities in Schools of Nevada exists is because not every student shows up at the door ready to learn,” said Tami Hance-Lehr, CEO and state director, Communities in Schools (CIS). “We take care of their basic needs, some of their mental health needs, before they can go and pass a math test.”

CIS is a nationwide program that operates on an evidence-based model, placing highly trained, full-time CIS site coordinators directly into schools to work with school administration in removing barriers to attendance and student success.

“Every school that we partner with has a resource room,” said Hance-Lehr. What’s in that room reflects the needs of the school, whether it’s supplemental food and food bags for weekends, or laundry facilities and basic clothes, or school supplies, or all of the above. Seventy percent of Nevada students qualify for free or reduced lunch, meaning 70 percent of Nevada students live at or below poverty level. That’s a huge challenge for students who need to be able to function at their best in order to learn.

CIS works with more than 100 community partners to provide resources like food, dental providers, and mental health support. Many schools working with CIS set attendance goals; 91 percent of those have met or exceeded their goals.

“The [CIS] graduation rate for case-managed seniors was 97 percent last year,” said Hance-Lehr. “These were students who were not on track when we met them, so we’re working very closely with our teachers and educators to not only improve attendance but graduate [students] college and community ready.”

School Choice Charter Schools

Charter schools are public schools that have a bit more leeway to offer specialized focus on areas of learning, like CTE or Montessori schools that offer more individualized teaching and those leaning toward more classical education.

“I think the achievement of charter schools is positive for the state as a whole,” said Gil Lopez, executive director, SPCSA. “We are consistently above the state average when it comes to educational attainment. Our scores on all the testing that’s done, we tend to outperform the state average.”

Recently there’s been significant growth in charter school enrollments as SPCSA absorbed the six CCSD charter schools with their 5,500 students, making SPCSA the second largest school district in Nevada, second to CCSD itself. Because charters are public schools, SPCSA benefitted from the 2023 Legislature’s investment in education and were able to provide raises for teachers and invest in new educational programs.

A proposed moratorium on new charter schools in 2019 evolved into a growth model that stated new charter schools could only open in areas that already have high need populations or disadvantaged Title 1 schools or a demographic that needs a chance to catch up academically. As a result, 79 percent of Nevada charter schools are Title 1 disadvantaged schools that benefit their communities by offering another educational option located within the neighborhood it serves.

Various charters explore CTE programs, like Mater Academy on Las Vegas’ east side which focuses on hospitality, tourism and culinary, allowing students to prepare for in-state careers.

Private Schools

Private schools are another option. Many private institutions are college preparatory, and most offer small class sizes and individualized attention in helping students focus on their future after high school graduation.

Like charter schools, private schools can delve deep into subjects like robotics and artificial intelligence, creating programs and projects students are passionate about.

“When we look at changes in education, the biggest changes happening now are what we’re facing and what schools are facing, things like robotics and taking tests online which isn’t a skill base that’s been built before,” said Ginger Hovenic, head of school, Sage Ridge School, which serves third grade through high school in northern Nevada. “Students need to be able to take college entrance exams online and that’s a skill that needs to be taught.”

Sage Ridge focuses on what students need in a rapidly changing world, offering instruction in robotics, AI, coding, online testing and also penmanship, cursive, and deep dives into the application of knowledge in areas like science and math.

“Sage Ridge is college prep, but another part is community service, community units where students give time, energy and effort in those areas,” said Hovenic. Internships help students develop real world skills the Nevada workforce needs. Seniors write and present a thesis to the school’s board, demonstrating their understanding of what they’re learning. “We look at the kind of skills needed in the workforce, the executive function prioritizing ways in which students need to be able to outline and analyze their work, and work as a team. Being part of a small school allows them to become much more proficient [at a higher level].”

The Alexander Dawson School is an early childhood through eighth grade independent school celebrating its 25th anniversary. It’s a whole child, process driven school.

“Which means we value every aspect of student’s school experience from arts to athletics to the academic core subjects to design thinking with language,” said Stansbury. “We believe that exposure to the entire school [experience] is important.”

Dawson is also a challenge success school with the belief that every student has an individual pathway to success. Helping find that pathway is the school’s job, exposing students to experiences in order to find their interests and passions and learn about themselves in the process.

Though funding is private rather than from the state budget, private schools interact with the Nevada Department of Education in terms of licensure, and in other ways. “Student wellness is definitely a topic that is continuously shared with all schools through the Nevada state resource,” said Stansbury. “We have a liaison who we work with specific just to private schools who is constantly sending us webinars and making us aware of the resources the state has provided for physical wellness of students as well as their emotional wellness.”

For private schools, standardized testing is just one sliver of the whole evaluation of a student’s performance, which means educators can focus on deeper learning, authentic performance on tests so students can exhibit what they understand of what they’ve learned and get feedback on their deep understanding of a concept or skill.

“The world is changing at such a rapid pace, if schools are not being responsive to those world readiness skills that will allow our students to be successful in this ever-changing world, then truly we’re not doing our jobs,” said Stansbury. “That means we need to look at some of the antiquated concepts of how we schedule classroom time and how we look at assessments and make sure we’re truly giving kids those skills that will help them extrapolate their knowledge,” said Stansbury.