Thursday, Oct. 31, 2019 | 2 a.m.
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Recently, the Las Vegas Review-Journal ran a commentary by Robert Fellner from the right-wing Nevada Policy Research Institute. Fellner claimed Nevada’s education woes are a result of a lack of accountability, not insufficient funding. Those of us in Nevada’s classrooms know that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Educators want accountability when it is based on fair, timely, rigorous and valid measures.
We are accountable every day to our students, their parents, our colleagues and our supervisors. Additionally, we are also accountable to our own high standards.
Meeting the demands of the teaching profession requires tremendous skill, ability, creativity, organization and preparation. It also requires continuous learning, feedback and support. All of these expectations are included in the current teacher evaluation system, the Nevada Educator Performance Framework.
So no, Nevada’s woes do not reflect a lack of accountability. Instead, the woes are a product of chronic underfunding, overcrowding and diversion tactics. The Nevada State Education Association (NSEA) has consistently advocated for more education funding along with greater education equity, ensuring all school districts have the resources necessary to provide a high-quality education for every Nevada student. The “market-based solutions” some groups advocate for, such as charter schools and vouchers, offer nothing more than a “choice for the chosen” and siphon public money from the neighborhood public schools where more than 90% of our children attend.
Despite historic appropriations of education funding this past legislative session, our school districts continue to struggle with budget cuts. An analysis released in late September from Educate Nevada Now shows that when correcting for inflation, most districts across the state have even less base funding from the state than last year. Additional funding would create more one-on-one instruction time with students; additional tutoring for struggling kids; more counseling and mental health services; and greater education equity, all of which are proven to increase student learning. Ensuring all school districts have the resources necessary to provide a high-quality education for every Nevada student will continue to be a primary focus of NSEA.
In the last days of this year’s legislative session, Senate Democrats introduced the long-awaited overhaul of the Nevada Plan seeking to modernize the funding formula in Nevada. Unfortunately, the new funding bill included no new revenue for our schools and set no benchmarks for achieving funding adequacy.
The new funding model will fail without new and additional revenue. Crafted behind closed doors, the bill creates a sort of “Hunger Games” of funding. The bill pits districts against each other for the same limited resources. While unaccountable charter schools reel in over $20 million in additional funding, most school districts’ budgets are frozen and left hoping not to be squeezed out of existence.
Educator accountability is plentiful; education funding is not. Every Nevada student deserves a high-quality public education. We are a long way from full adequacy in education funding, and bold leadership is needed to achieve the education excellence our kids, our educators and our state deserve.
Brian Rippet is president of the Nevada State Education Association.
