EDITORIAL: The dismal status quo

Nevada’s legislative Democrats have for decades been wedded to an education establishment that has steered the state to the bottom of the national rankings in terms of test scores and graduate rates. Now it appears that the happy couple will renew their vows.

Let’s hope parents — and voters — are watching.

On Tuesday, Mo Denis, the Las Vegas Democrat who will run the Senate Education Committee in Carson City, announced that he’ll seek to repeal a modest reform allowing the state to turn a small number of struggling Clark County schools into charter campuses in an effort to boost achievement levels.

The measure emerged from the 2015 Legislature — which was under GOP control — as part of a comprehensive education package that also included tax hikes and a school choice program. The latter has also been under attack by Democratic lawmakers.

“At this point I don’t know if it is needed,” Sen. Denis said of the charter school initiative, set to go into effect in September. “It might be premature.”

Let’s remember that we’re talking about a maximum of only six schools — barely 1.6 percent of the 357 campuses in the Clark County School District — that may be converted as part of the state’s new Achievement School District. Student proficiency levels at the middle and elementary schools currently under consideration are as low as 7.5 percent in math and 14 percent in reading.

These numbers are embarrassing and disgraceful.

Exactly when is bold and urgent action “needed”? When the fifth graders who have actually learned and absorbed basic math concepts can fit in the janitor’s closet? When only one or two students per class are capable of reading and comprehending basic text?

How about when 57 percent of district high school graduates who go on to attend a Nevada institution of higher learning require remedial math or English? Might some changes be “needed” or should we turn a blind eye until the figure hits 75 or 80 percent?

To scuttle the achievement district concept under the guise that it is “premature” is to accept and embrace failure while consigning hundreds of children to foundering neighborhood schools that are perpetrating a massive fraud by only pretending to educate kids.

“The Democrats want to take us backwards,” said Senate Minority Leader Michael Roberson, a Henderson Republican, “and we will be standing united against that way of thinking.”

Good. Sen. Denis’s scheme won’t survive a veto by GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval, who must send a clear message that the current state of affairs is unacceptable regardless of how tightly legislative Democrats cling to the dismal status quo.