CCSD students show gains but half fall short on math, reading exams

By Hillary Davis (contact)

Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022 | 2 a.m.

Younger students in the Clark County School District showed signs of recovery with their proficiency in math and reading while CCSD high-schoolers slid slightly in the first full year back in physical classrooms after more than a year of pandemic interruptions, according to recently released testing data from the Nevada Department of Education.

Students weren’t back to pre-pandemic achievement in English language arts and math on the annual state assessments, which are given each spring. And half of them aren’t considered proficient overall — a common result statewide.

Yet, several local schools showed marked improvement: 133 of CCSD’s 374 schools saw an increase in their index scores from 2019 to 2022, officials said. Index scores take into account student proficiency and growth in academics, performance gaps between student groups, English language-learner acquisition, graduation and college and career readiness.

The annual data release from the 2022 Nevada School Performance Framework — the statewide accountability system— was posted this month. Let’s take a look:

The basics

The year-to-year changes were positive among CCSD’s elementary- and middle-schoolers between 2021 — which students spent mostly in distance learning — and 2022, which was back in person full-time. Elementary students’ proficiency in English language arts, or reading, ticked up by 5.2 percentage points and by 9.3 points in math. Middle-schoolers improved by 2.5 points in reading and 1.7 points in math.

High-schoolers lost half a percentage point in reading and 1.6 points in math.

Overall, here is how CCSD students fared last year:

• Elementary school English language arts (reading): 41.1% proficient

• Elementary school math: 31.4%

• Middle school English language arts: 41.9%

• Middle school math: 22.2%

• High school English language arts: 44%

• High school math: 19.7%

“Over the past year and a half, CCSD has focused on high-quality instruction as students returned to face-to-face learning, and the data shows positive results for those efforts,” CCSD Superintendent Jesus Jara said in a statement. “While student scores rebounded over the last year, we still have more work to do to help students fully recover and we are exponentially accelerating our work to further improve outcomes.”

CCSD is touting its investment in instructional materials for elementary schools as part of the effort, saying those materials “have allowed for consistency across district schools and professional learning for educators, which is a factor in increased mathematics success.”

Those materials were selected by staff and include basic textbooks, supplemental books to reinforce instruction, library resources and electronic media.

Then and now

The Nevada Department of Education did not report academic proficiency for the 2019-20 school year, which swung to distance learning statewide in March 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

The department resumed its reports with tests taken in 2020-2021, even though CCSD, which represents close to two-thirds of Nevada’s schoolchildren, was largely still conducting its classes online. According to state data, about 60% of CCSD students whose test scores count toward state accountability metrics — students in grades 3-8 and 11 — tested in 2020-21, compared to at least 95% last year and in 2018-2019.

Compared to 2018-19, CCSD students are between 2.5 percentage points behind their high school language arts proficiency and 10.2 percentage points off their elementary math proficiency, with other results falling in between.

CCSD vs. the state

CCSD’s proficiency rates were moderately below the state’s as a whole but comparable to, or better, than most of Nevada’s other school districts.

Here is how Nevada students performed combined:

• Elementary school English language arts: 44.1% proficient

• Elementary school math: 36%

• Middle school English language arts: 45.1%

• Middle school math: 25.6%

• High school English language arts: 45.7%

• High school math: 21.2%

Among Nevada’s 18 public school districts, including the statewide State Public Charter School Authority, CCSD consistently ranked in the middle of the pack.

The results

Career and technical high schools generally scored well above district and state averages. — for example, Advanced Technologies Academy scored 94.1% proficient in reading and 68.9% in math. The schools with the lowest proficiencies were typically in the urban core.

The top-scoring comprehensive high schools in CCSD were Coronado (69.7% reading, 43.3% math) and Boulder City (74.2% reading, 37.4% math). For middle schools it was Sig Rogich (73.2% reading, 51.2% math) and Bob Miller (68% reading, 46.8% math). And for grade schools it was James and Rae Smalley (80.6% reading, 73.7% math) and Billy and Rosemary Vassiliadis (78.1 reading, 74% math).

Other schools of note include: James Gibson Elementary, which improved by 23.5 percentage points in reading and 22.6 percentage points in math, and the College of Southern Nevada’s three high schools, which are within the public junior college’s campuses and run by CCSD — at the Charleston campus in particular, 92.3% of students were proficient in reading and 73.6% in math.

There were some victories for schools serving low-income, inner-city children. C.C. Ronnow, Lewis Rowe and Stanford elementary schools, where at least three-fourths of the children come from poverty, posted some of the highest year-over-year improvements in reading across the district. Ronnow, in the east valley, posted a gain of roughly 19 percentage points.

“Despite the traumas our students experienced because of the pandemic, they have continued to make gains despite the emotional and mental toll they endured,” said Irene Cepeda, president of the CCSD School Board. “Through it all, our teachers, administrators, and support professionals continued educating our students to facilitate their rebound toward academic success and recovery.”