Anecdotal evidence is often used to push an agenda or lobby for legislative action.

And my own family's experience with private full-day kindergarten has been so good, it seemed the "all-day" push by Nevada's school superintendents, teachers union and legislative Democrats was the right thing to do for children.

My 5-year-old son is already reading and doing math and science experiments, so it's easy for me to think that other kids his age would see similar academic gains if they spent six hours in school each day.

So I listened intently as key Clark County School District officials spoke to the Review-Journal's editorial board Tuesday to clear up some misunderstandings about a full-day kindergarten study. Although they said they were not advocating full-day kindergarten per se, they pointed to the research to claim full-day kindergarten was a "promising practice."

Currently, most Nevada elementary schools offer half-day kindergarten. In Clark County, most elementary schools in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods offer full-day kindergarten as part of a pilot program. A few dozen others offer a full-day program to students whose parents are willing to pay $300 per month for a longer school day.

Democratic lawmakers in Carson City, backed by the state's Department of Education and the 17 school districts, have made offering full-day kindergarten at every Nevada elementary school their top priority. They believe it will boost achievement from early grades all the way through high school. Such an expansion would cost nearly $100 million a year and require school districts to hire hundreds more teachers and build hundreds of new classrooms.

I went to the meeting expecting to be even more sold on the program. Instead, I left thinking the school district bolstered the case against all-day kindergarten.

First came the painful bureaucratic description of the difference between a student classified by a test as "at risk" for not meeting literary standards and a student who is classified as "at risk" by the federal government because he receives free or reduced-priced lunches. Never mind that there are students who get free and discounted lunches who are exceptional readers, as well as students who don't get free and reduced-price lunches who are at risk of falling behind in reading.

Then again, we were told, it's not even accurate to say that a student who doesn't receive a "free and reduced-price lunch" is not "at risk" because some students who may qualify for the meal subsidy might not be signed up for the program.

One thing is very clear about the population of students who don't get marked-down lunches, and it has little to do with all-day kindergarten: After three years of district instruction, a full 22 percent of them are still unable to read in the second grade. English-proficient students do only slightly better. Twenty percent of them are "at risk" of having serious literacy problems.

The school district likes to focus on the other end. For example, 60 percent of English-proficient students who went to all-day kindergarten are classified at low risk for illiteracy. That's 6 big percentage points higher than the English-proficient kids who went to half-day kindergarten.

Even though I never went to kindergarten, I can still figure out that 40 percent of the kids are slipping through the cracks.

Some private schools follow a model that suggests parents hold their children back a year before enrolling them in kindergarten. The Clark County School District may want to institute a model that makes students repeat first grade if they can't read by the end of the year.

The district tested 1,233 second-graders who attended either full-day or half-day kindergarten in the 2004-05 school year. Overall, more full-day kids scored in the "low risk" category for illiteracy than did their half-day peers.

This is the game justified in the No Child Left Behind framework. Gains must be made without respect to the giant failure in the corner. So as long as progress is happening, a school is meeting adequate yearly progress even if a full fifth of the kids are at risk for illiteracy.

Clark County School District Superintendent Walt Rulffes has his autonomy zone experiment, which seeks to determine whether a longer class day, incentive pay and more decision-making freedom for principals and teachers will improve performance. But here's how that incentive pay will work: Let's say there are two first-grade teachers. The kids in class one show 25 percent improvement on tests, whereas the kids in the other class show a 2 percent gain.

You'd think teacher one would get the bonus. But district officials informed the editorial board that the "MOU with the CCEA" means that all staff get the raise. (That's bureaucrat-speak for "memorandum of understanding" and "Clark County Education Association.")

Instead of jargon, real people might refer to the "agreement with the teachers union." Real administrators might also realize that full-day kindergarten, despite being a "promising practice," is still failing a fifth of the kids. That amounts to 60,000 kids left behind if lawmakers put every Nevada 5-year-old in the program.

The Legislature can bog down in whichever politics it chooses -- full-day kindergarten versus empowerment or full-day kindergarten versus vocational high schools -- without making a real dent in the problem.

The district celebrates when a school meets the low bar of No Child Left Behind and throws a party when a school exceeds it ever so slightly. Principals and teachers are pushing to juke the statistics and teach to the test instead of teaching how to read or do basic math.

I recently observed a fifth-grade teacher in a medical office waiting room grading math homework. It was the multiplication table for the number 6. The failure rate was unbelievable. Parents need to start questioning why 10-year-olds don't know that 6x4=24.

Where would that leave my eager-to-learn son? Perhaps, at 5, he fits in the second grade. He might get hung up on some math, but I'm sure the district wouldn't notice.

Erin Neff's column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 387-2906, or by e-mail at eneff@reviewjournal.com.