EDITORIAL: Revamping Nevada’s school rating system

State education officials are in the process of revamping their public school rating system — and school district officials in Las Vegas and Reno aren’t happy.

The current ranking system — which awards schools from one to five stars — is based primarily on test results. But rankings were scrapped in 2015 thanks to testing issues. The next evaluations are expected in September and will cover the 2016-17 school year.

In the meantime, however, state officials began to adjust the criteria in order to better comply with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. The changes are also intended to make it easier to analyze how Nevada students are doing in comparison with kids in other states.

“We decided to increase, if you will, the rigor,” said Steve Canavero, state superintendent of public instruction. “We’re realigning the framework from one that really measures our performance against ourselves to one that measures our performance to be a nationally competitive entity.”

The likely result? Many schools — including those previously judged to be five-star campuses — will lose a star or two when held up against those in other parts of the country. That, critics argue, could damage “morale among educators” and “confuse parents,” the Review-Journal’s Meghin Delaney reported on Thursday.

“Schools have working for two years without an updated ranking,” Nicole Rourke of the Clark County School District told Ms. Delaney, “now is not the time to change how these rankings are established.”

On the contrary, any delays will only compound the current pathologies.

The issue here isn’t teacher self-esteem or ensuring that everybody receives a shiny, new trophy. It’s how to turn around an educational system that for decades has been churning out too many high school graduates who lack the basic academic skills necessary to succeed and prosper. It’s how to improve and reform policies that produce dismal test results and leave too many students wholly unprepared for the next level.

For too long, state and local officials have preferred to water down standards as a means of disguising failure and mediocrity. The most effective means of attacking a problem involves acknowledging and correctly identifying it. If the new framework provides Nevada parents and taxpayers with a more complete and accurate assessment of how individual campuses are performing, it’s a step forward and long overdue.