Jones defends school reforms but problems remain
Departing Superintendent Dwight Jones constantly praises Western High School as a symbol of his successful reforms.
He extols the struggling school for rising through the ranks, leaping from a worst-possible one-star rating to four stars in just a year. He compared it to the rapid rise of the Clark County School District as a whole during what will be his only complete school year at the helm, the public learned Tuesday.
“Western is just further proof of success,” Jones said during his January State of the District address held at Western. He declared the district was transforming “from the fastest-growing to the fastest-improving district in the nation.”
Despite being touted as a model school and showing some improvement, only 55 percent of Western’s seniors earned diplomas in 2012 .
In addition, just 5 percent of its Algebra I students passed end-of-semester exams in 2011-12. Just 1 percent of Algebra II students passed those exams. About 13 percent of the 144 Western students in pre-algebra — a middle school course — passed the exams. Geometry students had a 21 percent pass rate on the exams.
Students need at least a D, or 60 percent, to pass end-of-semester exams given at high schools.
In other key subjects, less than a third of Western’s sophomores passed the state reading test, a graduation requirement. About 40 percent passed the state science test, also a diploma requirement.
“Parents think their school is doing well when it’s not,” said Jessica Cardichon, director of federal advocacy at the Washington, D.C.-based Alliance for Excellent Education, which promotes school reform that leads to higher graduation rates.
And she’s not just talking about Western.
Zoom out to all Clark County public schools — the fifth-largest public system in the nation. Three-fourths of 328 schools have earned passing grades under Jones’ School Performance Framework, introduced last year. The shocking result in a district with historic poor performance furrowed the brows of national experts, some with the Center on Education Policy and The Education Trust.
Nevada ranks dead last in education due largely to Clark County schools, which are attended by the vast majority of the state’s students, according to the national Kids Count report that compares states’ graduation rates, test results and more.
“Do the math and it doesn’t add up,” said Phillip Lovell, a vice president at the Excellent Education alliance.
At a news conference Wednesday meant to explain his hasty resignation after fulfilling two years of a four-year contract, Jones defended the accuracy and transparency of his system for grading Clark County schools.
“As promised, the system was designed so every parent and taxpayer now gets an honest way to see how their school is doing,” Jones said.
But the district is also writing the rules for this scoring system, the cornerstone of Jones’ now-obsolete improvement plan. Last week, educators and parents were told the nascent system will be shelved, gone before its founder because it directly conflicts with the state’s new school evaluation system.
AN ‘A’ FOR EFFORT
So, how are schools like Western earning so many stars?
Jones’ system, called the School Performance Framework, provides a possible 100 points to each school. The more points earned, the more stars a school can obtain, up to five stars. Stars parallel letter grades, with one or two stars representing failing grades equivalent to a D or F. A three-star rating is passing while five stars is an A.
But schools with more stars don’t necessarily have most of their students earning passing grades.
At Western, near U.S. Highway 95 and Decatur Boulevard, the graduation rate improved from 40 percent in 2010-11 to 55 percent in 2011-12. Normally, a 55 percent graduation rate would earn the school no points, but since it made gains, Western got the maximum points possible under Jones’ system, which places more weight on improvement than grade-level proficiency.
Centennial High School, also a four-star school, had a much better 69 percent graduation rate. But the northwest valley school earned half as many system points for graduation as Western because it didn’t make the same kind of gains.
This A-for-effort allowance runs throughout the scoring system, from the points earned for having credit-sufficient students to the pass rate on the state exam required to graduate. If Western just earned points for where students stand academically, its rating would have gone from one star to two, not the four stars it now has.
“It’s about accounting for growth,” said Ken Turner, special assistant to the superintendent, whom Jones hired for $250,000 a year to build the star system.
He argued, “We’re not trying to make any excuses,” by giving schools the maximum points allowed for showing modest growth.
In defending the district’s system, Turner pointed to the flaws in the federally mandated No Child Left Behind Act, implemented in 2002, which gave schools passing or failing grades solely based on whether they met its standards. It didn’t credit poorly performing schools that showed improvement, such as Western.
This is a common complaint about the federal program, “but the beauty of No Child Left Behind is that it was the same for everyone. It was clear, a blunt instrument. It made it difficult to mask poor performance,” said Maria Ferguson, executive director of the Center on Education Policy at George Washington University.
Under district-created assessment systems, there are “more opportunities for schools to hide things.”
Daria Hall, director of K-12 policy for The Education Trust, agreed with Ferguson.
“Growth shouldn’t be treated the same as high performance,” she said.
The Nevada Department of Education agreed.
STAR WARS
With input from education officials across the state, including Turner, the Nevada Department of Education also created a School Performance Framework that awards schools up to five stars based on many of the same measures in the Clark County system. Turner and Jones have said publicly the two systems are “the same.”
“But in Clark County’s system, growth matters more than anything else,” said state Deputy Superintendent of Evaluative Services Rorie Fitzpatrick, who acknowledges that “growth is tremendously important.”
The state system has a separate category that recognizes growth, but unlike the district system, the state doesn’t allow improvement to obscure where schools really stand.
“We must, at some point, value the bar and not just growth towards the bar,” she said.
For that reason, many Clark County schools, such as Western, stand to lose their district stars under the state’s system.
Jones, whose last day in the district is March 22, insisted Wednesday that his system promoted “exiting every youngster ready for the next grade.”
However, the Clark County School Board unanimously voted the same day to drop his system and use the state system instead. District officials argued it did so because the systems are similar, but it didn’t really have a choice.
Keeping the district system in place would mean confusing parents with conflicting star ratings for schools.
And no entity, not the state or federal departments of education, would give weight to district star rankings. It’s the state system that will dictate school funding and allocation of resources.
“We owe our parents a transparent picture of how our schools are doing,” Fitzpatrick said.
The majority of Clark County high school principals prefer the state system, according to a poll by Turner.
Jones maintains that his costly system wasn’t a waste of time and resources, but helped make the district “one of the most transparent in the country.”
But Jones’ star system is manipulated to “artificially inflate the amount of schools who are rated highly,” complained School Board member Rene Cantu, whose term ended in December.
PUNITIVE VERSUS ACCOUNTABLE
Sixty-four Clark County schools would have lost stars because of declining student performance in 2011-12, but the district disregarded those scores.
Instead, the district allowed schools that declined to keep their 2010-11 rankings for 2011-12.
No Child Left Behind also had a form of a hold harmless rule that required two consecutive years of failing scores before a school’s designation was lowered, Jones said in defense of the district’s system.
However, No Child Left Behind also required schools to meet standards two years in a row before being upgraded. The district raised rankings for improving schools immediately.
Therein lies the problem, Cantu argued.
Then there’s the five bonus points awarded to each school for merely having “focus goals.” The district doesn’t require any goals to be met, so all 328 schools earned these “gimme points,” said Victor Joecks, spokesman for the conservative Nevada Policy Research Institute.
“The idea of the framework is amazing,” Joecks said. “That’s a legacy Jones will leave behind. But he lowered the standards and pretended they were high. That’s the most obstructive thing of all.”
Jones argued that, for the sake of gaining teachers’ and principals’ acceptance of the district system, it couldn’t be “punitive.”
But an accountability system must hold schools accountable, experts say.
It will be up to the state to correct any misperceptions created by Jones’ “misleading” system, said Hall of The Education Trust.
The state’s rankings for Nevada schools will be out this summer, long after Jones has left.
Contact reporter Trevon Milliard at
tmilliard@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279.
