Nevada gets waiver for No Child Left Behind mandates

Nevada no longer will answer to No Child Left Behind but will use a self-created system for holding its public schools accountable, according to an announcement Wednesday by the Obama administration.

Simply put, the method of grading schools will change, as will standardized tests, consequences for failing schools, rewards for high-performing schools and teacher evaluations.

"Today is a new day for education in Nevada," Gov. Brian Sandoval said.

Nevada joins 32 other states and the District of Columbia in abandoning the top-down federal mandate, No Child Left Behind. But the U.S. Department of Education added one condition for the Silver State. If the condition isn't met by June 2013, Nevada's waiver will expire, and the state must revert to No Child Left Behind's standards in the 2013-14 school year.

Nevada must nail down the details of how its "index" will work. The index is a 100-point system for measuring student performance and is key in the state's new system of ranking schools from one to five stars, something the Clark County School District started last school year. The index also accounts for half of teachers' evaluations. The new method of evaluating teachers will be piloted this school year.

The 100-point index will be based on students' academic growth, the number of students at grade level, reductions in gaps between commonly struggling students, including those living in poverty and those who speak English as a second language, and student engagement.

Despite the condition, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called the waiver "a big step in the right direction" for Nevada in implementing more rigorous standards.

While no Child Left Behind focused on whether students scored at grade level and called for all students to be proficient in math and reading by 2014, Nevada's new system evaluates student-by-student progression.

"The community asked us for a system of accountability that was not one size fits all," said Clark County School District Superintendent Dwight Jones, whose district serves about 308,000 of the state's 430,000 students.

The state has set a new bar that requires the percentage of students with grade-level skills to increase from 50 percent to 90 percent by the 2016-17 school year. To get there, it has adopted a new curriculum, Common Core Standards, used by all but a few states.

Nevada will abandon the state's standardized tests for new ones based on the Common Core Standards. The new tests will be piloted in 2013-14 and implemented the next school year.

The lowest-performing schools will be deemed "priority schools," meaning they will have to implement interventions and turnaround plans with "clear timelines and frequent benchmarks," according to the waiver request.

Schools facing an uphill battle because of large populations of at-risk students will be dubbed "focus schools."

"Nevada joins the growing number of states who can't wait any longer for education reform," said Duncan, noting the Obama administration offered the waivers in September after growing tired of waiting for Congress to reauthorize federal education law, due for reauthorization since 2007.

California, Idaho, Illinois and Iowa are still waiting to hear about their waiver requests, and 13 others haven't applied. Those states are Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont - whose request was withdrawn - West Virginia and Wyoming.

Contact reporter Trevon Milliard at tmilliard@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279.