School districts give Nevada star-ratings a failing grade

Changes to the state’s ranking system for public schools will result in many more low ratings, damaging morale among educators and confusing parents, Nevada’s two largest school districts say.

“Schools have been working for two years without an updated ranking, now is not the time to change how these rankings are established,” Nicole Rourke, the Clark County School District’s government affairs director, told the state Board of Education last week at its July meeting.

Rourke was referring to changes made by the state Department of Education to the Nevada School Performance Framework, a rating system that rates schools on a scale of one to five stars, with one star being the lowest.

School rankings, which are based mainly on student testing, are used by parents and communities to judge how well schools perform. They also determine eligibility for state education programs and funding.

New ratings are expected to be released in September for the first time since September 2014. A glitch in state testing in spring 2015 caused a two-year disruption because the system requires testing data from two years as a way to measure whether students are improving year-to-year. September’s ratings will reflect work done in the 2016-17 school year.

In the interim, the state worked with advisory groups to adjust the framework, as part of the state’s plan to comply with the new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act. State officials ignored many of the advisory groups’ recommendations in favor of changes that will make it easier to compare the performance of Nevada’s schools with those in other states.

State Superintendent Steve Canavero said the state is not looking to play the blame game or stigmatize schools, but instead is looking at the schools more broadly.

“We decided to increase, if you will, the rigor. We’re realigning the accountability framework from one that really measures our performance against ourselves to one that measures our performance to be a nationally competitive entity,” he said.

But the districts argue the changes will hurt schools.

“I think our concern primarily is not giving schools enough time to calibrate to the new bar that we’re setting,” said Lindsay Anderson, the Washoe County School District government affairs director. “I think we agree that raising the bar is important for kids, but rolling that out between school years doesn’t give schools a chance to align to the new performance framework.”

Because schools are always working to improve, Rourke said she expects teachers and school officials to feel discouraged by the changes, which will result in many schools being rated one or even two stars lower. Parents who think they sent their children to a good school will feel duped when the school’s ranking suddenly declines, she said.

The state is planning a public relations campaign to explain the changes in August to parents and schools, before the ratings are released in September.

Contact Meghin Delaney at 702-383-0281 or mdelaney@reviewjournal.com. Follow @MeghinDelaney on Twitter.