EDITORIAL: A sustained assault on high expectations

The scourge of low expectations continues to flourish at the Clark County School District. Is it any wonder why Nevada’s academic rankings remain utterly dismal?

On Thursday, the Clark County School Board voted to adopt radical new changes to district grading policy recommended by Superintendent Jesus Jara and his team. Revealingly, the item was put on the consent agenda, so the trustees didn’t even bother to publicly debate the matter.

The changes represent a triumph of mediocrity — and worse. Under the guidelines, students may receive no lower than 50 percent, and missing assignments won’t be calculated for grading purposes. Homework deadlines are a thing of the past, as students may turn in work whenever they feel like it and even take tests repeatedly. Factors such as attendance, participation, disruptive behavior or late work may not be considered in evaluations.

Why it’s Lake Wobegon all over again, where every child is above average.

In fact, the Clark County public school students who take their studies seriously, meet their classroom obligations, bone up for tests and do their homework on time are being played for suckers in an effort to impose this administration’s vision of “equity.” Don’t be surprised if the district eventually moves in the direction of California and other progressive havens and seeks to ban advanced classes for high-achieving students.

The grading reforms may be egregiously misguided, but they’re hardly surprising. In fact, they’re simply the most recent front in a sustained assault, long abetted by Democrats in the Legislature, on accountability in the Clark County district and throughout the state. A few brief examples:

■ In 2013, state lawmakers voted to phase out the high school proficiency exam — which included tests in math, reading, writing and science — after too many Nevada students struggled to achieve passing grades even though the content was at roughly an eighth-grade level. The intent was to replace the tests with four end-of-course assessments to ensure graduating students had mastered basic skills. Four years later, even that proposal was dropped.

■ In 2015, Republican lawmakers — holding a majority in both legislative houses for the first time in a generation — passed the Read by 3 program, which mandated that only third-grade students who met reading proficiency standards would move into fourth grade. The program came under immediate attack by Democrats in Carson City and their allies in the education establishment, and it was eventually diluted beyond recognition.

■ More than a decade ago, lawmakers voted to beef up the state’s teacher evaluation system and to include a 50 percent student achievement component. The previous process had been a farce: Numbers from 2015 revealed that 99 percent of state teachers earned an “effective” or “highly effective” rating. But the evaluation reform fell victim to the bureaucracy and lawmakers, and, when it was first implemented during the 2015-16 school year, student progress was not part of the mix. Since then, teachers have been measured only in small part on student outcomes.

The result of this relentless war on excellence has been precisely what one might expect. Graduation rates have increased as the value of a diploma has decreased. But overall test scores remain abysmal. Prior to the pandemic in 2019, district results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed that just 27 percent of those entering high school were considered proficient in reading, while only 24 percent hit the mark in math. Meanwhile, Nevada’s ACT scores trail the nation — which is borne out by the fact that a majority of state high school graduates who continue their education here must take remedial English or math courses before moving on to college-level work.

These aren’t new problems. They’ve been a blight on the district for decades — despite repeated tax hikes for education and the fact that Nevada per-pupil spending in inflation-adjusted dollars has tripled since 1960, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The road to achievement and excellence may be bumpy, but it is paved with hard work and high expectations. The district’s many capable and outstanding students will move on and prosper regardless of how low the School Board and Mr. Jara drop the bar. But when district officials cynically demand less from students who are unmotivated or struggling, they create a self-fulfilling prophecy that minimizes the potential of the very kids they are professing to help — and they will be rewarded in predictable fashion.