EDITORIAL: No squaring state test scores with graduation rates

It’s that time of year when education officials reveal the state’s high school graduate rates. This amounts to an exercise of blurring fantasy with reality.

Last week, the state Department of Education announced that 81.6 percent of Nevada’s high school seniors earned a diploma in the 2023-2024 school year. That’s a slight increase of 0.2 points from 2022-2023. Clark County’s graduation rate was 81.5 percent, the same as the previous school year. Four schools in the Clark County School District — Burk Horizon Southwest, Northwest Career and Technical Academy, and College of Southern Nevada East and West — had a 100 percent graduation rate.

“It is premature to claim victory as long as even one student is struggling to graduate,” Jhone Ebert, state superintendent of public instruction, said in a news release. “We applaud the hard work of educators and students. At the same time, we acknowledge that our agenda is unfinished, and work remains.”

That’s an understatement. For what does any of this actually mean when testing consistently reveals that a large number of Nevada students can’t read, write or do basic math at grade level?

Just two months ago, state education officials released standardized test numbers for the 2023-24 school year. The results shock the conscience.

In Clark County, only 36.7 percent of elementary school students scored high enough to be considered proficient in math. That number dropped to 24.9 percent in middle school before plummeting to 19.4 percent in high school. The scores for English were better but still woeful. Just 42.2 percent of elementary school kids, 37.8 of middle school students and 46.6 percent of high school test takers earned a designation of proficient.

The numbers statewide were slightly higher, but not by a significant margin.

These results were reinforced by news that just 20 percent of Clark County’s high school juniors scored high enough on the ACT — a college entrance exam — to be considered proficient in math. The number was 46.3 percent for English language arts. In 2022, Nevada’s ACT scores hit a 30-year low and were the worst in the nation among states that require the test for all juniors.

For years, Democratic lawmakers in Carson City have quashed any effort to hold the state’s public school system accountable for dismal academic results. Meanwhile, Nevada students no longer have to take a high school exit exam and Clark County has implemented a dumb-down grading process that awards points even when kids ignore assignments. The inevitable result is that four out of five high school students lack basic math skills, yet most of them will still be handed a diploma after they’ve served their time. It’s the bigotry of low expectations at work.