A five-star system

Sunday, March 11, 2012 | 3 a.m.

The Clark County School District recently rolled out a ranking system for its elementary and middle schools, and despite the grumbling in some corners of the district, it should prove to be a good tool to improve student achievement.

The schools were scored based on a variety of indicators, including standardized test results, academic rigor, improvement and how the schools engage students and parents. The schools were then given one to five stars based on their scores.

The top-performing schools with five stars are being given greater freedom in how they work, and lower-performing schools will be given more help. To describe the push for achievement that comes next for schools, district officials are using this term, “Catch up, keep up, move up.”

In other words, standing still isn’t an option, and that’s good to hear. Superintendent Dwight Jones has been insistent on improving the schools since his arrival and has tried to shake the complacency out of the district.

“Let’s not let ‘good’ be good enough,” he told the Sun’s editorial board recently. “Our kids are so much smarter than we give them credit for.”

The plan immediately ran into criticism in some corners of the district.

As Paul Takahashi recently reported in the Sun, some teachers have complained that the rankings put an undue emphasis on competition and test scores. Some teachers worried about staff morale at low-ranking schools.

That’s not a surprise. Educational rankings are controversial, and they are often done poorly, as the Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act demonstrated. Jones, however, is standing firm, and soon plans to release a ranking system for high schools.

“We need to take ownership” of the education system, Jones said. “Some people don’t like to do that.”

Indeed.

No ranking system is perfect, and standardized test scores don’t tell the whole story of a school or a student’s achievement. However, they are indications of how a school is doing, and the School District’s system is much more nuanced than a simplistic reliance on test scores. The new system will undoubtedly be tweaked as school officials find room for improvement, but what they’ve rolled out is a good start.

Teachers should support the plan. It provides a way to track student achievement from year to year, and that should encourage good teachers — their work should become evident.

We would hope that parents and others who have a clear stake in education, including the business community and the people whose names are on the schools, support this and work with Jones and his staff to improve the schools.

This ranking system and the push to improve student achievement is not, by any means, the only thing that needs to be done to improve education. For example, the state still has yet to invest in the schools — the amount of money spent in the classroom per-pupil is still far below other states. That needs to be addressed.

But what Jones is doing is a critical. By creating the new ranking system, the standard for achievement has been raised. We believe students can step up to the challenge. The question is if the community will.

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