By JOAN PATTERSON

It was all there in black and white: a list of every high school in the Clark County School District ranked from one to five stars based on a new accountability system called the School Performance Framework. Yet, considering its scope, barely a ripple ensued.

The list was released during a special meeting at Cimarron-Memorial High School in May, about three months after the elementary and middle school rankings were announced. The 49 high schools were put in categories of one to five stars based on their performance, with five being the highest.

Taking into account everything from proficiency rates to school climate, the reality of the rating system would seem to be the kind of wake-up call that would stir strong reaction among parents, the media, even the schools themselves - but the response was, frankly, surprisingly calm.

"I think (the high school principals) were pretty pleased that the elementary and middle folks led the way and pleasantly surprised with the reception by the community, from business people to newspapers to parents, legislators," said Ken Turner, special assistant to Superintendent Dwight Jones, who helped implement the framework.

The initially positive reception may make it that much easier for the district to move forward with its goal of using the framework not to point a finger at struggling schools, but to help everyone rise to the top.

"(The framework) provides a more rounded view of what it means to be successful as a school," Turner said. "It doesn't dilute accountability; what it does is it says the goal is still there ... it says every child will be ready not just to graduate but to be successful in college or career. That's a huge piece. No Child Left Behind did not state that; it simply said do well on a state test without regard for whether a child was ready for college or career."

The new framework uses data from the Nevada Growth Model, created after the 2009 state Legislature called for a better way to measure student success beyond simply looking at test performance. The model is geared toward looking at how individual students are progressing from year to year. This assessment of student growth is key, according to administrators.

The Clark County School District framework organizes the data in a way that sheds light on issues that have been deemed important to the success of every school in the district.

The framework was created after input from, among others, administrators, parents, teachers, university professors and rural Nevada superintendents. The district, for instance, had a focus group of about 18 high school principals and received survey responses from 5,000 members of the community, Turner said.

There were also teacher focus groups and a 33-member technical advisory panel that included everyone from parents to members of the Nevada Department of Education.

Based on the input, the framework looks at issues such as students' college and career readiness by taking into account data such as enrollment in Advanced Placement classes, and the amount of math and lab-science credits received. Other issues that are considered include graduation and high school proficiency rates, and school climate based on issues such as attendance and responses to student and staff surveys.

As Monte Bay, principal of West Career and Technical Academy, pointed out, a lot of the information is not necessarily new, but what the framework does is bring it together in a comprehensive form that puts the pieces of the puzzle together.

"The data was always there, we always handed it out in chunks, you know, but all in one-stop-shopping kind of thing, it's all right there, and you kind of have a defined picture of where you are and where you need to go," he said.

The rating system also allows the district to assign certain benefits to the lower-performing schools. In fact, even though the high school ratings were just released in May, changes are already taking place.

One- and two-star schools, for example, are allowed to put more teachers in professional development training, are getting first crack at choosing from the teachers available for hiring and will be buffered more than the higher-performing schools from layoffs, Turner said.

But just as important is the idea that this framework will increase collaboration among schools so that they can share information about what works in terms of student success. It also is about getting the conversation going, not just at the schools but within the community, or else "it's just one more way to sort things and who really cares," Turner said.

"This is about we all get better together," he added. "Nobody has everything they need to be completely successful, so learning from each other ... it begins with getting over ourselves and not being defensive, by being open about where we are, so symbolically we're striving to say, 'Look, it is what it is, and we're just gonna put it out there and say we acknowledge it and we're moving onward, so let's get on with it.' So that's been healthy, I think."

The 14 schools that received the five-star rating were mostly magnet and technical schools, with a handful of small-population rural schools such as Indian Springs. But Turner pointed out that some of the four-star comprehensive schools - comprehensive meaning they do not have any kind of student-selection process but are open to all students in their geographical area - were very close to five stars but hampered by, for example, the Average Yearly Progress requirements of No Child Left Behind.

This may change. Ironically, the U.S. Department of Education announced in October, after the district's framework was already in the works, that states can apply for a waiver to No Child Left Behind, Turner said. The requirement was that a state come up with a new assessment tool taking into account student growth from year to year and include a classification system broken down into five tiers - essentially what the district is already doing.

Nevada applied for the waiver with about 20 other states back in February. If the waiver is approved, based on Nevada's application, the district could receive more high school Title I funding, which is designed to help increase academic achievement for students in low-income households, Turner added.

Of course, while the framework helps determine where the "time, people and money" need to be concentrated to bring struggling schools up to the top, it also sheds a light on innovations that are already in place.

For example, at West Career and Technical Academy, which is in the five-star category, the student population is 1,350, which is relatively small compared to comprehensive schools. The school, which emphasizes medical science and environmental, engineering and technical disciplines, is further broken down into two "houses" so that the students and teachers are divided into two separate groups. This way the students regularly see the same teachers and it feels like attending a school that has a population closer to 700, Bay said.

There is also a lot of project-based learning and collaboration with members of the community, including experts from the Bureau of Land Management, for example, and area hospitals, as well as emphasis on issues such as oral and written communication, collaboration and leadership.

But Bay noted that even with the current programs in place, the framework shed some light on where the school can improve. For example, in order to improve its pass rate in Advanced Placement classes, West Career and Technical Academy will be implementing a study hall for Advanced Placement students "so kids can take an extra period to collaborate, to work together," he said.

What the framework will hopefully do, he added, is imbed career- and college-oriented strategies into all the high schools as it looks closer and closer at students' own individual potential.

"It's looking at individual students very specifically and where they are, where are you taking them, in a variety of different data points. It's a good thing," he said.