Governor bears blame for Nevada’s low education rating

Education Week's recent Quality Counts report placed Nevada dead last in education, a direct result of policies coming from Carson City. It is exactly what happens when a state does not invest in classroom education.

Gov. Brian Sandoval's performance with respect to classroom education is a disgrace by anyone's standards. His own budgets are evidence that he supports special interests and those who are politically connected at the expense of classroom instruction — students.

Just follow the funding. During his first budget, when the new math (common core) and English Language Arts standards were introduced, he cut professional development by more than 60 percent. Then he complained when the teachers and their students did not know the new standards and their test scores reflected that ignorance. That funding found its way to special interests.

The Next Generation Science Standards are being introduced across the country. Southern Nevada school districts (Clark, Esmeralda, Lincoln, Mineral and Nye counties) got no additional funding to make teachers aware of the new standards — even though Sandoval knew the current budgets in science and technology are woefully inadequate. But his politically connected friends got funding again. Will he now complain and demand accountability for poor student performance in science in Southern Nevada?

Why do Southern Nevada districts continually get shortchanged in the governor's budgets? Those five counties represent more than 80 percent of the state's student population and received 0 percent of the funding for the new science standards. The governor, former state superintendent Dale Erquiaga and state Board of Education President Elaine Wynn apparently need a class in ratio and proportion.

Nevada has some of the most outrageous class sizes in the country. It's not unusual to see first-year algebra classes with more than 40 students. And many students are taught by multiple substitutes each year, diminishing their educational opportunity. Sandoval, Erquiaga and Wynn did not seem to know about the teacher shortage issue until eight days before the 2015 legislative session ended.

What students want, what parents want and what the community expects are teachers who know their content and the standards students will be tested on; who have acquired instructional and assessment strategies that help their students learn; who know where students typically experience difficulty; who know what was taught in previous classes so they can build on that foundation; and who know what will be taught in subsequent classes, to ensure students are set up for success. That's just common sense.

The community evaluates public education based on their children's classroom experiences and student performance — test scores. Sandoval, Erquiaga and Wynn want you to confuse activity with achievement — sleight of hand. The governor has built quite a resume for himself: Zoom Schools, Victory Schools, Achievement Districts, Educational Savings Accounts, to name a few. But what have those done to ensure your sons and daughters have qualified, experienced teachers in their classrooms who have the professional knowledge to guarantee a great education? The answer: nothing.

The results are in. Not only did our state finish dead last in the Quality Counts study, but Nevada's graduation rate is third from the bottom. African-American graduation rates in Nevada are dead last nationally. Our scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (dubbed the nation's report card) are also near the bottom, and the state could not even administer the Smarter Balanced exams based on the new standards — another failure. And the state didn't have the smarts to purchase test prep materials for students and teachers, as other states did.

Sandoval and his team have subtracted resources from public education and given them to their networking cronies, under the guise of improving student achievement.

What Sandoval and his vastly inexperienced advisers don't seem to understand is, what works is work, and that work happens in the classroom. They would rather we continue to confuse activity with achievement, fund their politically connected friends, build their own resume and come up with catchy phrases and designer programs than address the real work that happens in the classrooms every day. His political agenda has trumped your children's education — again. And Nevada's grade reflects it.

— Educator Bill Hanlon was director of the Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program. He was coordinator of the Clark County School District's Math/Science Institute and served as vice president of the Nevada State Board of Education.