Fixing Our Broken Education Situation (K-12 & Beyond)
By: Doug Busselman, Executive Vice President
Nevada’s private sector and the public education system need to get together and make it a priority to work at building a better outcome than what we are currently achieving. This Reno Gazette Journal article on the subject of Nevada needing more college graduates and some insightful details on Nevada’s “Race to the Top” application crossed my desk about the same time. Improving our college graduation rates should be a priority that is given some attention – but so is moving our high school graduation rates above the 50 percent mark.
In some ways it’s hard to concentrate on not having enough college graduates when you know the statistics that out of 436,000 students in Nevada schools – only about 220,000 will graduate from high school in four years. That’s the details which Ray Bacon, a member of the select committee which worked on the Nevada Race to the Top application committee, has shared with us. We also understand that the average dropout takes place in the junior year of high school – after 92 percent of the “investment” made on per student basis has been made.
The theme of needing to improve our K-12 performance is also presented in this piece by Patrick Gibbons of the Nevada Policy Research Institute.
All in all, reform is extremely critical if Nevada’s future is going to be put on its proper course. Along with developing a hard-core obsession on results for K-Third grade outcomes of adequate reading skills, Bacon notes that math and science in higher grades simply must be improved. He also observes that the outcome of improving math and science is linked with colleges providing a higher quality of teacher as part of an educational infrastructure that has to be home-grown, given the competition on a national basis for these types of improvements.
Having read lots of articles and reports on how Nevada is not producing the skills and knowledge outcomes that we need to foster an opportunity for improving our economic status, we need to start doing something about making those connections link. It’s not simply a matter of pouring more money into the failed system which is getting us what we’ve been getting – it’s about making meaningful changes to get the system in working order, capable of delivering results…and then holding the system accountable to achieve what’s required.
Nevada’s private sector and the public education system need to get together and make it a priority to work at building a better outcome than what we are currently achieving. This Reno Gazette Journal article on the subject of Nevada needing more college graduates and some insightful details on Nevada’s “Race to the Top” application crossed my desk about the same time. Improving our college graduation rates should be a priority that is given some attention – but so is moving our high school graduation rates above the 50 percent mark.
In some ways it’s hard to concentrate on not having enough college graduates when you know the statistics that out of 436,000 students in Nevada schools – only about 220,000 will graduate from high school in four years. That’s the details which Ray Bacon, a member of the select committee which worked on the Nevada Race to the Top application committee, has shared with us. We also understand that the average dropout takes place in the junior year of high school – after 92 percent of the “investment” made on per student basis has been made.
The theme of needing to improve our K-12 performance is also presented in this piece by Patrick Gibbons of the Nevada Policy Research Institute.
All in all, reform is extremely critical if Nevada’s future is going to be put on its proper course. Along with developing a hard-core obsession on results for K-Third grade outcomes of adequate reading skills, Bacon notes that math and science in higher grades simply must be improved. He also observes that the outcome of improving math and science is linked with colleges providing a higher quality of teacher as part of an educational infrastructure that has to be home-grown, given the competition on a national basis for these types of improvements.
Having read lots of articles and reports on how Nevada is not producing the skills and knowledge outcomes that we need to foster an opportunity for improving our economic status, we need to start doing something about making those connections link. It’s not simply a matter of pouring more money into the failed system which is getting us what we’ve been getting – it’s about making meaningful changes to get the system in working order, capable of delivering results…and then holding the system accountable to achieve what’s required.
Posted by Doug Busselman at 6/14/2010 1:55 PM 
Categories: Nevada Educational Funding
Tags: Nevada Education Improving School's Peformance
Categories: Nevada Educational Funding
Tags: Nevada Education Improving School's Peformance
If we're serious about fixing education, we will start simplifying. Competency test will be a 1040EZ and a SF-171. We will develop a vocational track and a academic track. As a state we will quit awhoring after federal money. We will ban teacher's unions beyond the district level. Education should be teamwork. No us vs. them mentality allowed within the system. This means the school board will provide the leadership rather than a rubber stamp.
We dismantle the current certification circus and recruit people who have talent for teaching and develop them. We pay teachers the same as administraters.
We develop reform schools for the trouble makers and recruit retired marines to run them.
I have more ideas but these will do to start.
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Jule, I hope you are on your local school board or are running for a seat on it. The changes you speak of need to start at the local level and the that same message needs to be carried by those affected to the State Board of education and the ineffective Department of Education at the national level.
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