CCSD explains dismal North Las Vegas graduation rate amid outcry

A week after releasing a report showing a low North Las Vegas high school graduation rate that sparked public outcry, the Clark County School District is providing an explanation.

The district’s quarterly report, presented on June 20 to the Clark County Commission, showed 51.5 percent of students at district schools in the city graduated within four years in the class of 2022.

But the figure is skewed because it includes adult education students from across Clark County — something that wasn’t explained in the report.

Those are students who are assigned to the Desert Rose adult high school campus in North Las Vegas, the district said in a Monday email to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Excluding those students, the 2022 graduation rate in North Las Vegas was 82.3 percent, the district said.

That’s higher than the district’s overall graduation rate of 81.3 percent.

The total adult education enrollment was 2,244 students for the 2022 cohort, the district said. In total, North Las Vegas has more than 40,000 students at district campuses.

Desert Rose Schools includes a high school for those trying to catch up on credits in order to earn a diploma, an adult school and a career technical center, according to its website.

Teachers union response

The Clark County Education Association released a statement the day after the district’s report to the county commission, expressing concerns over graduation and academic proficiency rates.

The teachers union, which has called for Superintendent Jesus Jara’s resignation, said it shows “what is happening in our schools under Jara’s leadership — and it’s nothing short of alarming.”

Last week, a district spokesman questioned the timing of the union calling out proficiency rates as contract negotiations are underway.

The union said in a Tuesday email to the Review-Journal: “The onus is on CCSD to explain why its own reporting of this data may be misleading. What remains indisputable, however, are the alarmingly low proficiency rates of graduates, as well as the huge disparity in the proficiency rates among students in North Las Vegas as a subset of the population.”

“Regardless of how the district wants to frame graduation rates, the bottom line is our students cannot read, write, or do math — and they are not college or career ready upon graduation from CCSD,” the statement says.

Contact Julie Wootton-Greener at jgreener@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2921. Follow @julieswootton on Twitter.