New school year to bring challenges, changes for Clark County students

This school year will open with more changes than any other in recent memory, and it has principals excited. There's a new superintendent, a new measuring stick for student performance and new curriculum.

ADOPTING COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS

Nevada is joining 44 other states in adopting the Common Core State Standards curriculum.

Common Core offers a more comprehensive approach to subject matter, as explained by Lucy Keaton, principal of Hewetson Elementary School, 701 N. 20th St.

"It's not like you're trying to teach more," said Keaton, "but trying to go deeper with what you're teaching. I like teaching at a true depth where they comprehend the curriculum. It's a lot more fine-tuned, a lot tighter, a lot deeper. As they move through the grade levels, there's deeper understanding of what they're being taught."

Common Core standardized tests require more analytical thinking in English language arts and mathematics. Common Core will be rolled out by grade level and subject starting this year through the 2014-15 school year.

Cynthia Marlowe, principal at Carson Elementary School, 1735 D St., said this is a great change in the long run because it forces students to "do more thinking for themselves."

"The standards are just prone to be more skewed toward a higher level of thinking," Marlowe said.

DEALING WITH BUDGET RESTRICTIONS

Cuts of about 50 percent to some school budgets since last year have principals scrambling for resources.

"It's going to severely impact students at all the schools," Keaton said. "Basically I'm just going to have enough for our basics just to keep the school running."

Keaton said part of her school's success relied greatly on "lunch or dinner with the principal" days and other prizes to motivate students to read books (Hewetson students checked out more books than any other school in the district two years ago). She said she doesn't know how she'll be able to afford such incentives now.

The district had been preparing for $400 million in cuts to its 2011-12 budget before the Nevada Legislature handed down cuts in June of about $150 million.

The district's budget includes per pupil spending of $5,136, a decrease of $44 per pupil from last school year; reductions in school facilitators and specialists by 12.5 percent, saving $7 million; cutting administrative department budgets by 20 percent, or saving $48 million; cutting textbook and supply budgets by 50 percent, saving $25 million; and freezing teachers' pay raises and other concessions, saving $56 million, among other cuts.

The teachers union has not agreed to the concessions, and a settlement is unlikely to be reached by the beginning of school Monday, which may force the district to lay off more than 500 teachers.

Even paper is becoming a rare commodity these days.

Richard Arguello, principal of the Southeast Career and Technical Academy, 5710 Mountain Vista St., said the cuts will force teachers and students to rely less on paper and more on computer technology for student learning than ever before.

"We'll have to make the best of what we have," Arguello said. "There will be significant changes."

SECTA is undergoing a $32 million renovation that will include two new buildings for the 2012-13 school year. Students will be taking most of their classes in portables this year. Renovations were paid for as part of a 1998 capital improvement bond.

GAINING RESOURCES THROUGH NEW PERFORMANCE ZONES

Another change for this school year is the teaming of all elementary, middle and high schools into 14 performance zones, based on location and achievement.

The new model puts between 20 and 30 schools in each zone and relegates fewer schools in zones with the lowest achievement, as well as more oversight.

Lower-achieving schools also are expected to receive preferential access to resources, such as having first opportunity at hiring new teachers and receiving a larger portion of professional development funds.

Conversely, the higher performing zones will have more schools and greater autonomy.

Arguello said the zones will help balance the district.

"We're not all equal," he said, "so funding should go to those schools that need it more than others.

"I think time will tell with the whole process. Like anything, there's going to be positives and negatives. Nothing's perfect when it's first rolled out."

CHANGING DIRECTION: REORGANIZING 'TURNAROUND SCHOOLS'

Chaparral High School, 3850 Annie Oakley Drive, was one of five "turnaround schools" named this year because of consistent low performance. The district hired a new principal, Dave Wilson, formerly of Virgin Valley High School in Mesquite, and he was required to replace at least half the staff.

The school also received about $2 million in renovations, making many of the classrooms, bathrooms, windows and walls of the 40-year-old school look new.

Wilson said he's expecting a "change of culture" at Chaparral and a double-digit increase in the graduation rate, which was about 45 percent last year.

"We want to be where it's not the hope that kids will graduate but the expectation that kids will graduate," he said.

READY BY EXIT: INCREASING
THE GRADUATION RATE

One of Superintendent Dwight Jones' objectives is to reach a graduation rate of 75 percent within five years.

Jones wrote in his Preliminary Reforms Report that his goal is to have all students "ready by exit," meaning "prepared to step into college or other postsecondary opportunities and compete without remediation. Whether students enter college or choose to enter the workforce after high school graduation, what matters most is that they have the knowledge and skills to perform and be successful in either environment."

The district's graduation rate varied from 46 percent to 65 percent in 2008, depending on the method of calculation.

Beginning this year, all states have agreed to use the same standard for calculating graduation rates, making 2012 graduation data comparable nationwide.

Of the more than 20,000 incoming 12th-graders this year, about half are not on track to graduate because of credit deficiency, failure to pass the high school proficiency exam or other factors.

The district provided every high school's principal with a list of these students and has asked them to create individualized plans to help them graduate.

Schools will be able to offer those students online credit recovery, proficiency-focused classes, mentoring and other services.

RETHINKING ADEQUATE YEARLY PROGRESS

The state also is in the process of breaking free from the unpopular Adequate Yearly Progress measurement that resulted from No Child Left Behind.

Nearly two-thirds of the district's 363 schools failed to meet the federal bar.

The standard has been raised every year since the 2002-03 school year and will top out in 2013-14, when 100 percent of students nationwide are expected to be proficient in math, reading and English.

Test scores are broken down into 45 subgroups based on ethnicity, English literacy, economic status, special needs and other factors.

If one subgroup does not pass AYP, the entire school fails.

Clark County School Board Trustee Lorraine Alderman called it "a no-win scenario."

"These reports don't show the gains," Alderman said. "Even when I was a principal, it never showed the accomplishment we had made. Even some of these schools that haven't (made AYP) the whole time have made tremendous gains. There's no way to celebrate that."

The district's AYP statistics were not available at the time of publication, but several principals said they missed AYP by one subgroup and it was special education in most cases.

This year the district will begin focusing on a growth model for future student assessments. The new model would chart a student's growth on an annual basis from the time they enter the district.

The strategy will allow teachers to focus more on students' progress, rather than worrying about AYP.

Deputy Superintendent Pedro Martinez said the old system forced teachers to focus on "bubble kids," those students in the middle of the achievement spectrum, to get just enough of them over the AYP bubble.

"Now we're saying 'no, let's focus on growth,' " Martinez said.

The plan is that any child, at any level, could reach proficiency within three years. Close analysis of data will allow the allocation of resources to be made available to those schools most in need, he said.

Contact View education reporter Jeff Mosier at jmosier@viewnews.com or 224-5524.