Latest graduation ranking has familiar ring

By Emily Richmond

Saturday, June 13, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Once again a national report has ranked Nevada at the bottom in high school graduation rates. And once again Silver State education officials are scrambling to explain why the formula is flawed.

Education Week recently released its annual “Diplomas Count,” ranking states and the country’s 50 largest districts. Clark County, the nation’s fifth-largest district, was ranked 43rd.

The education journal put Nevada’s graduation rate at 47.3 percent and Clark County’s at 46.8 percent. The most recent graduation rates reported by the state and the district — measuring the percentage of the ninth-grade class that earns a diploma four years later — were 67.4 percent and 63 percent, respectively.

The Education Week formula doesn’t count students who drop out of one high school and finish coursework at a different local campus. Nor does it count special education students who earn adjusted diplomas.

That’s a source of frustration, said Keith Rheault, Nevada’s superintendent of public instruction.

No matter which formula is used, there’s obvious need for improvement, he said. But Education Week’s method is particularly harsh.

“The formula hurts us and never helps us,” Rheault said. “There’s no real way for us to get out of the bottom (of the ranking).”

Each year about 1,300 special ed students are awarded adjusted diplomas after completing the requirements of their Individualized Education Plan — accommodations required by federal law. To take those students’ accomplishments into account, Rheault plans to release more comprehensive statistics on high school “completion rates” rather than just the standard diploma graduation rate.

In addition to the special ed students, the new data would also include Adult Education graduates, painting a more accurate picture, Rheault said.

Beginning with the class of 2011, the nation’s governors have agreed to use the same methodology for reporting graduation rates. There will be challenges for Nevada with the new formula as well, Rheault said, because it will penalize districts and states with high transiency that lose track of students who move quickly in and out of schools.

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Sandy Miller Elementary is in the running for a $20,000 prize and title of the nation’s most environmentally friendly campus.

The Clark County magnet school, home of the Academy of International Studies, is one of 20 finalists for Wal-Mart’s “Earth Day, Every Day School Challenge.”

Students at the northeast Las Vegas campus turn leftover lunches into compost for an organic garden. Solar panels, donated by the Desert Research Institute, power the hydroponics lab, where second graders raised a bumper crop of tomatoes.

“When I made the garden, I helped the earth by giving it oxygen,” one student wrote in an essay submitted as part of the competition. “I also use each side of paper I’ve ever used.”

In fact, Miller students learn to make their own paper, pulping pages that wind up in one of the school’s numerous recycling bins.

Each school submitted a brief video of its earth-friendly activities. The campus that receives the most online votes by June 19 will win the $20,000 grant.

For information and to vote, go to www.earthdayeverydaychallenge.com.

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Sixteen Nevada high schools made Newsweek’s list of the 1,500 best high schools in America, representing the top 6 percent of public campuses.

Wooster High in Reno had the highest ranking of any Silver State school, at 239.

Advanced Technologies Academy, a Clark County magnet school, was the top-ranked Southern Nevada campus, coming in at No. 519. Clark High followed at No. 658. Green Valley and Valley High School also cracked the top 1,000, at Nos. 848 and 926.

Coronado High and the Las Vegas Academy magnet school were at No. 1,248 and No. 1,327 respectively.

Coral Academy of Science in Reno, a charter school sponsored by the State Board of Education, finished in 1,478th place.

For its annual ranking, Newsweek uses a formula that rewards campuses at which the number of Advanced Placement exams taken in a given year exceeds the size of the graduating class. Green Valley received a bump from students taking specialized exams as part of the International Baccalaureate program.