EDITORIAL: Nevada charters showing up their traditional counterparts

The latest performance metrics for Nevada’s public schools should be an eye-opener to the entrenched interests that fight against charter campuses and other reforms. But don’t count on it.

The state Department of Education released its Nevada Report Card, which reveals progress toward academic goals and lowering absenteeism. In context, the results remain positive but less cheery.

English language arts proficiency among elementary school students increased from 42.2 percent to 45.6 percent for the 2024-2025 school year when compared to the previous year. Middle schools saw a jump from 37.8 percent to 42.9 percent, while high schools rose from 46.6 percent to 48.9 percent. In math, 39.6 percent of elementary school kids were deemed proficient, up from 36.7 percent. The number rose from 24.9 percent to 27.4 percent for middle schoolers and from 19.4 percent to 21.1 percent for high school students.

In addition, chronic absenteeism — when a student misses classes more than 10 percent of his or her classes — declined to 26.9 percent from 31.3 percent.

The improvements mark a step forward. But scores remain below pre-pandemic levels, highlighting again the utter disaster that teachers union school closings inflicted on school-age children.

In addition, it represents a travesty that barely one in five Nevada high school students has acquired adequate math skills, while fewer than half are proficient in English language arts. Meanwhile, more than one-quarter of all students are regularly absent from class. Yet Nevada’s high school graduation rate in 2024 was 81.6 percent. Something does not compute.

But the most remarkable numbers highlight how Nevada charters are delivering on offering families a better academic experience. The data from the 2024-2025 academic calendar reveal that charter schools, on average, outperformed their traditional public school counterparts at all grade levels.

Teachers unions and other defenders of the moribund education establishment often argue that charter schools deliver better results only because they pick and choose their students. That’s a fallacy. “According to multiple studies,” Michael J. Petrilli and David Griffith wrote last year for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, there is scant “evidence that charter schools cream the best students. (Indeed, some research suggests that charters enroll unusually low-performing students.)”

Voters and parents should remember that Nevada’s legislative Democrats in recent years have attempted to limit the number of charter campuses while burdening these alternative schools with more rules and regulations. If they truly had the best interests of the state’s children in mind, they would stop kowtowing to their teacher union benefactors and do the opposite.