In the upcoming weeks, the Legislature will hear continue to hear bills regarding universal full-day kindergarten and school empowerment. During the past month some important details have emerged regarding the effectiveness of such education programs as full-day kindergarten and career and technical education.

The Republican Assembly Caucus' position is that each school district in the state knows how to best educate the students in their district. Likewise, a principal in Summerlin knows what program best suits his students. What is needed most in Elko County may differ from what's needed in Clark County. Each school district needs the flexibility to implement the programs which are best suited for their children. For this reason, we feel that the empowerment program deserves our support. We also feel that there must be more emphasis on career and technical education.

Our caucus position is that we should keep the current pilot kindergarten program and refrain from embracing legislation that supports universal full-day kindergarten until we can be sure that mandatory full-day kindergarten is beneficial to all our children. In fact, for children who are not at risk, some standardized exams show that children who attend full-day kindergarten perform worse in the second grade than those who attend half-day kindergarten.

There seems to be a consensus that at-risk children who attend all-day kindergarten score higher on tests than those who attend half-day kindergarten. The caucus supports continued funding for those high-risk students.

Prior to the past legislative session, full-day kindergarten was paid for with Title I funds from the federal government. In the 2005 legislative session, the policy of the state of Nevada changed. Now funding for full-day kindergarten for at-risk students is provided from the state treasury. There are some schools where parents and guardians of students who aren't at risk can pay for their children to attend full-day kindergarten.

The Republican Assembly Caucus is concerned about all of our students. Particularly worrisome are the high drop-out rate and the decline of test scores from the fourth to the 10th grade. The results of the 2006 Iowa Tests of Basic Skills for Nevada's fourth-grade students are at or above the national norm. The Nevada average for reading, language, math and science, respectively, were 50, 56, 55 and 55 percent. The national norm for all four parts was 50 percent (norm equals 50th percentile). For Nevada students in the seventh grade, the numbers were 40, 44, 46, and 47 percent respectively, with 50 percent remaining the national norm for all parts. The Nevada results show further decline by the 10th grade -- to 41, 42, 43 and 42 percent respectively.

While we shouldn't be satisfied that we score above the national norm in the fourth grade, we should be concerned about the declining test scores in middle and high school and intensify our efforts for those students. These efforts will encourage these students to remain in school and enable them to continue their post-secondary education or enter a meaningful trade after graduation from high school.

The failure to help these students will result in additional burdens to our state. In the State of the Judiciary address given to a joint session of the legislature on March 7, The Honorable A. William Maupin, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Nevada, stated, "There is one common denominator in the criminal justice system -- some 95 percent of criminal defendants have not gone beyond the 11th grade in high school."

The Republican Assembly Caucus feels that the enhancement of programs in the areas of career and technical education will help keep middle and high school students motivated to remain in school and graduate from high school. Almost everyone agrees career and technical education provides tremendous benefits, yet its funding is low when compared with other programs.

Nevada's Career and Technical Education schools provide at least four meaningful goals. First, they help high school students stay in school. (The overall Nevada high school dropout rate in the 2004-05 school year was 5.7 percent. For those attending NCTE schools, it was only 1.6 percent.) Amongst minorities, the benefits were even more pronounced. The dropout rate for African-Americans was 7.3 percent. For blacks enrolled in NCTE schools, the dropout rate was 1.7 percent. For Hispanics, the rates were 7.8 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively.

The students in NCTE schools performed better on all three parts of the proficiency exam -- reading, writing, and mathematics -- when compared with those who didn't enroll in NCTE. This included students in the five ethnic groups, special education students, limited English proficiency students, and low socioeconomic students.

In summary, career and technical education has proved to be successful in improving test scores and increasing the graduation rate. The Republican Assembly Caucus believes the Legislature should focus on helping our middle and high school students through the empowerment and career and technical education programs.

We believe that the flexibility of the empowerment program working in tandem with enhanced career and technical education will greatly improve the education of the students of Nevada. We continue to support the current program for full-day kindergarten for high-risk students, and await the results of the existing pilot program, which will be available over the coming years.

Garn Mabey, R-Las Vegas, is the Nevada Assembly's minority leader.