Nevada’s Poor Educational Ranking Sparks School Choice Debate
Lily Wright looks into the debate into school choice in the Silver State with a new Republican governor and a majority Democratic legislative body.
With the election of Republican Governor Joe Lombardo, school choice advocates are eager for progress in implementing school choice in Nevada.
Lombardo’s proposed bill AB400 would allocate $50 million to the Nevada Educational Choice Scholarship Program to send at-risk children to private schools across Nevada.
The education omnibus bill would also reestablish a previous rule to hold back students who cannot read by third grade. It recently made it past the first hurdle in Nevada’s complex and drawn out legislative process despite opposition from some Democrats who don’t want to see public money fund private institutions.
Nevada is ranked as one of the least educated states in the country, according to a report by Wallethub, based on the number of residents with a high school diploma and level of higher education completed.
Supporters of school choice are optimistic that giving students in Nevada more pathways and opportunities to seek out better education will drastically improve graduation rates and quality of education, leading to higher rankings for public education overall in Nevada.
Diane Nicolet, a former educator and vice president of the Washoe County School District Board of Trustees, believes the poor rankings of Nevada schools can be attributed to the low value of per pupil funding in Nevada of $9,500 per student. Comparatively, Massachusetts, the state with the highest quality of education, spends roughly $17,000 per student. Nicolet is also a supporter of implementing school choice in Nevada.
“I am a product of K-12 schools and I believe every child and every family has the right and responsibility to provide what is best for their child and family,” Nicolet said. “I am definitely for choice.”
Nicolet doesn’t believe school choice is the only solution necessary for improving Nevada’s public education system. Nevada schools are desperate for educators in the midst of a teacher shortage, leaving Nevada with nearly 3,000 unfilled positions statewide. Students have suffered the most from the teacher shortage which has led to a decrease in the quality of teachers being hired to fill these vacant positions.
“We placed teachers in classrooms and teachers weren’t ready,” Nicolet said. “That’s something we had to do to get teachers into classrooms. We have to look at the quality of our teachers, the training of our teachers, and the professional development of our teachers.”
Anna Madden, an educator in Washoe County School District, agrees that the teacher shortage has had a profound negative impact on students and the quality of education in Nevada. Madden disagrees, however, that the issue lies in the quality of new teachers and believes the problem lies instead in the growing turnover rate of new teachers.
“We should have something to encourage young people to come in and stick with it because we have such a low rate of people staying in education. By the fifth year you either stay with it or you get out,” Madden said. “We need them to stay with us because that’s when you really have a deeper understanding of how to teach and teach well.”
Madden has worked in the Washoe County School District since 2001 and has watched Nevada’s public education change as both a teacher and a parent. She says a lack of understanding for teachers from the public and local government has led to little support for teachers or an incentive to increase teacher salaries and benefits.
“People will not go into education because we will not eventually have that monetary benefit. People will say ‘Well, you only work 180 days.’ That’s not true. Teachers put in so many more hours–our salary is what it is– but we put in so much. I didn’t even come home tonight until 7 p.m. I started at 7:30 this morning. That’s a 12-hour day,” Madden said.
Madden believes that while school choice is an opportunity for at-risk students to seek out better education, resources, and opportunities, school choice also presents the issue of parents mistakenly choosing the wrong schools for their children. Madden experienced this firsthand with her children who attended Saint Mary’s kindergarten program and entered first grade considerably behind the other students who attended public kindergartens.
“Private schools can have the administrators be accredited but not all of the teachers will have the same certification that I and every other licensed teacher do. They’re not going to get the same education from a teacher who does not have a license in Nevada,” Madden said.
This is the primary concern of Nevada Democrats who do not support the implementation of school choice. Private schools are not required to follow the same standards as public schools and have a significant amount of freedom in curriculum. When private schools elect not to adhere to the regulations put in place by the school districts, they forfeit the opportunity to benefit from public funds.
Similarly, Nicolet feels that school choice has the potential to harm students if parents make uninformed decisions on where to send their children.
“During COVID, parents wanted to homeschool children, and you can understand why, and yet they weren’t equipped to do it. It was a good choice for health reasons, but it wasn’t the right educational choice. Every kid needs to be in an environment that will help them reach their full potential,” Nicolet said. In addition to providing private schools with increased funding, Lombardo’s education budget also includes $30 million in scholarships for future teachers and a $2,000 increase in per-pupil funding statewide. School choice and education reform was an important part of Lombardo’s campaign for governor and a key influencer in his election. Without the support of Senate Democrats and majority leader Nicole Cannizzaro, Lombardo’s bill may never get a hearing.
