Teaching to the top, private school has staying power

By Emily Richmond

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 | 2 a.m.

In the early 1980s Carolyn Goodman regularly visited the headquarters of the Clark County School District to discuss with superintendents and administrators what she saw as a looming crisis.

The district was starting to grow rapidly and among the new arrivals were students whose first language was Spanish. Public schools needed to offer dual-language classes in the lower grades, Goodman told the district. An active PTA member for nine years, she also worried that teachers didn’t have the resources they needed.

District officials agreed, according to Goodman, but said they had to wait for approval from the state and funding from the Legislature.

“I told them, ‘By the time you get those things in place my daughter (Cara) will be 40,’ ” said Goodman, wife of Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman. “She’s now 35, and they’re still not there yet.”

Goodman decided not to wait and established a nonprofit organization that would ultimately become the Meadows School, now in its 25th year. Southern Nevada’s only nonprofit, nonreligious private school for grades pre-K through high school has grown into an educational oasis in the desert.

“This is a phenomenal place,” said Goodman, Meadows’ president. “But that’s because we know where our dollars have to go, and that’s to the children.”

The school currently has 910 students, 34 percent of whom are minorities.

It offers a full complement of athletics and electives, including golf, football, photography, forensics, music, drama and art. Students in the lower grades have Spanish class three times per week. By middle school it’s daily. Latin is added in sixth grade.

The school day starts at 8 a.m. and ends at 3 p.m., giving students an additional hour of instructional time compared with the standard district school day.

In grades K-8 classes are limited to 20 students. In the upper grades an Advanced Placement class might have as few as eight students, while a popular theater production elective might have 15. No core high school class has more than 18 students, roughly half of the districtwide average.

District Court Judge Jackie Glass said she has been amazed by the academic rigor expected of her daughter, who graduates from the Meadows next month.

“She’s doing college-level work,” Glass said. “The friends she’s made, the teachers she’s had, and it’s all been a really positive experience.”

Each year 100 percent of the graduating class goes on to a four-year college or university, and many earn athletic and academic scholarships.

To be sure, the Meadows escapes many of the challenges that plague public school systems. Students are tested for aptitude before being allowed to enroll, which removes the necessity for remediation and special education.

For the upcoming academic year, tuition will range from $8,950 for the half-day preschool program to just over $20,000 for grades 9-12. About 18 percent of students receive financial aid.

The Meadows is debt-free, thanks to the donations that built the state-of-the-art 40-acre campus, the first tenant in Summerlin. At the same time, the school’s endowment stands at a modest $3 million, which makes fundraising an ongoing need.

When she decided to create the school, Goodman took out full-page newspaper ads announcing her plans, and inviting families to a planning meeting. That earned her a reprimand from Nevada Education Department officials, who told her she shouldn’t have started recruiting until the school’s license and academic plan were approved.

But Goodman said there was no reason to take those steps unless there was enough community interest to support the model she envisioned.

More than 300 people showed up at the meeting. Many of them became the school’s founding families.

The school started in 1984 with 140 students, a portable building and a vacant lot on Meadows Lane, near Decatur Boulevard and U.S. 95. The Summerlin campus opened in 1988 and the first class of seniors graduated in 1991. Cara Goodman was valedictorian.

The school’s mantra is “teach to the top,” Goodman said, which means the strongest student in the class must always be engaged and motivated. When testing students for admission, the school looks for ambition as much as ability, Goodman said.

One of the most dramatic differences between the Meadows and the area’s public schools is how the campuses are staffed. At the Meadows everyone — from the custodial staff to the teachers to the head of school — is on a one-year contract.

Not every educator is a good fit for the Meadows, Goodman said.

For Meadows teacher Kim Cagle, in her 17th year at the school, the one-year contracts make sense because you should have to continually prove yourself.

“This is the first job I had out of college,” said Cagle, a 1987 Chaparral High School graduate. “I never presumed to be offered anything more than a year from anywhere. It’s a little bit pompous to expect more from anybody.”

The Meadows doesn’t have to meet state and federal requirements that many educators say force them to abandon instructional innovation to “teach to the test,” so students and schools meet required benchmarks.

“It’s true as a private school we have a great deal of freedom, but we have an equal amount of responsibility,” said Henry Chanin, headmaster and director of the Meadows upper school. “Everyone — every student, every teacher and the headmaster — has to earn their way back here one year at a time. If we use the freedom well, we’re in great shape. If we abuse the freedom, we’re history.”