Math failures good news for gaming

The casino industry's new campaign to scare voters away from an initiative to increase the gaming tax increase has gotten a big boost.

The message is being delivered in tax-loathing rural Nevada by two respected northern political figures: former Rep. Barbara Vucanovich, a Republican, and Democrat Joe Dini, the former longtime Assembly speaker. But it's the performance by Clark County schoolchildren that could have a crippling effect on efforts by the teachers union to raise the gross gaming tax 3 percentage points.

How can you, in good conscience, ask for more money for teachers when the students aren't learning basic math?

We know the Clark County School District is good at building schools. And when administrators beg for another bond this November, most voters will realize it's the kind of program that will squeeze every last dollar -- and more -- to renovate and construct campuses.

But the other side to building new schools is knowing what to do inside the bricks and mortar. Now it's evident that the failure of high school algebra and geometry students on a new test wasn't isolated.

Sunday's Review-Journal report on the widespread failure of middle school math students is not a problem easily pinned on underpaid teachers. At some point, there has to be a connection made between what the educator does and how the students perform.

In this school district, students are promoted without understanding the basic underpinnings for "advanced" math. Thank goodness we're not testing trigonometry or calculus -- most high school kids would probably flunk basic fractions.

No Child Left Behind is simply a ruse. Parents believe their schools are good because they achieve things like "adequate yearly progress."

In Clark County, the schools have made significant strides under the No Child apparatus. In theory, that means more kids, particularly those who don't speak English, are learning more.

But part of the American dream holds that this is a country where education is one of the biggest keys to future success. Sen. Barack Obama likes to talk about his "only in America" story, where a single mom and grandmother stressed education. He worked hard, and voila, he's the likely Democratic nominee for president.

In Clark County, meanwhile, the vast anecdotal evidence shows that public school children are by and large able to attain excellent grades without knowing squat.

Parents of salutatorians with straight A's wonder why junior can't pass the High School Proficiency Exam and earn a diploma.

This is precisely what's wrong with math education in Clark County. The kids in elementary school are bumped up to rough-and-tumble middle schools even if they don't know their multiplication tables.

Unfortunately, the school district's capital budget makes it impossible to hold them back. A teacher cannot in good conscience flunk 20 of the 35 or more kids in a fourth-grade class because that would create a dire space need for next year's fourth grade at that school. They've all just got to move on up.

Teachers have also been conditioned, thanks largely to the former teachers who administer the schools, to focus on high-stakes tests. Simple, end-of-semester exams designed to show what students actually learned in the first few months of school aren't taken seriously by anyone because there are no consequences -- no impact on the school, no withholding of a diploma, no nothing.

No Child Left Behind -- the standard to which teachers must teach -- appears to occur in a federally mandated vacuum. How is an algebra teacher supposed to teach the curriculum -- the actual district curriculum aligned to state standards -- when the kids' collective understanding of math is nowhere near the curriculum? The algebra teacher can't explain the concept of X because most kids don't know that the "X" on a calculator is for multiplication.

Up in so-called Gibbons Country, the gaming agenda to instill fear in taxpayers is, dare I say, brilliant. Not only does that kind of talk work there, it strips bare the "One Nevada" rhetoric of that political region's namesake.

The good people of rural Nevada counties will be encouraged to ignore the teachers union petition because those lousy schools in Clark County are just trying to throw good money after bad. "Don't believe us?" they'll ask. "Just look at the tests."

Dini, who owns a beloved rural casino, won't be seen as some cash-gobbling Strip casino executive, or even worse, a cash-grabbing Las Vegas teacher.

Under a new law that organized labor advocated, the teachers union could actually run into problems getting enough valid signatures in one of these counties -- initiative proponents now need to collect signatures in all 17 counties.

District officials should hope there aren't more test results to report. That bond issue will be right around the corner.

Contact Erin Neff at eneff@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2906.