Bill aims to overhaul education
A sweeping education reform bill heard by the Legislature Wednesday would reward teachers for better performance, improve their starting salaries and make the state Board of Education a largely appointive rather than elective body.
The bill sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, also seeks to improve the way students are tracked and the way the K-12 education system collaborates with higher education, as well as impose oversight on the reform efforts.
“The fundamental promise of Nevada is about opportunity and faith in our future, and we all know that the future of Nevada rests with our schoolchildren,” Horsford told the Senate Health and Education Committee, which held the first hearing Wednesday on the “Initiative for a World-Class Education in Nevada.”
“I believe that education in Nevada needs reform and that we can do better by our students.”
The 66-page legislation covers a variety of structural reforms that deserve an in-depth debate, but that discussion is not a substitute for parallel efforts to improve the state’s education funding, Horsford said.
Citing a recent speech on education by President Barack Obama, Horsford said teacher quality is the single most important factor in student success. Starting salaries, currently around $33,000, should be increased to $40,000 on average, he said.
He said incentive pay should “reward those who produce results,” but increased accountability to weed out nonperforming teachers also must be part of the bargain. He proposed a system of assessments that would be based 50 percent on student progress and 50 percent on teacher training and feedback from administrators and parents.
A performance pay pilot program was approved by the 2007 Legislature but fell victim to budget cuts before it could be implemented.
To measure student progress, better tracking is needed, Horsford said. For example, one recent study found the state’s high school graduation rate to be 67 percent, while another put it at 45 percent. While both are unacceptably low, it’s telling that the estimates were so widely divergent because there was no good data upon which to base them.
“We simply don’t have the ability to track students from enrollment to graduation,” Horsford said.
The state Board of Education would be reduced from 11 elected members to seven, with three elected regionally — one in each of the state’s three congressional districts — and the others appointed by the governor, Assembly speaker and Senate majority leader. The seventh, nonvoting member would be a representative of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
The state superintendent of education, currently selected by the board, would be selected by the governor from a pool of three candidates approved by the board, then confirmed by the state Senate.
The board is widely viewed as ineffectual. Horsford said he hopes to give it more of a leadership role in developing educational goals for the state and making sure the different parts of the education system work together.
The bill builds in new collaboration mechanisms for K-12 and higher education and creates a six-member reform oversight commission to report on progress to the 2011 Legislature.
Committee members and most of the witnesses who testified at Wednesday’s three-hour hearing said they hadn’t yet read through the bill and weren’t familiar with its specifics.
Several came forward to voice support for the ideas behind the bill, including philanthropist and Wynn Resorts executive Elaine Wynn.
“When you go into teaching, you should not have to take a vow of poverty,” she said. “A slot mechanic at the Wynn makes more than a starting teacher. That is not appropriate in my mind, and that is not to diminish the value of a slot mechanic.”
Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce lobbyist Veronica Meter said the business group has long supported performance measures and accountability and was pleased to see those parts of the bill.
Lynn Warne, president of the state teachers union, also highlighted points of agreement rather than mentioning the problems the union has with parts of the bill.
Anthony Ruggiero, president of the state Board of Education, dissented from the proposals to restructure the board, saying, “There is another side to this story.”
Horsford told the committee that he hoped the bill would be only the beginning of a vigorous discussion. “It will not be easy, it will take time, but if we do it together, it will happen.”
Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919.