Nevada Ranks 21st In New Education Report

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StudentsFirst, a national organization that assesses state’s education performance, just released their annual report showing each state’s ranking for education. Nevada actually ranked 21st in the nation, which is an improvement over years past. This is all according to an article released by the Las Vegas Review Journal.

However, while Nevada ranked 21st, they still received a D grade because of many of the states longstanding policies that have a tendency to put adults and teachers before the students.

According to Jim Guthrie, Nevada State Superintendent, limited school choices is one of several reasons that Nevada students have a harder time excelling. These low scores are just one of the reasons that both Guthrie and Gov. Brian Sandoval have advocated for sweeping reforms in education throughout the state.

The Governor actually signed four new reform bills into place that include revamping of teacher evaluations and consequences for unsatisfactory evaluations. One of the other reforms includes changing a 45-year-old formula used for determining the per-student funding in each of Nevada’s counties. The LVRJ article stated that Esmeralda Country receives more than $17,000 per student while Clark County only receives about a one-third of that.

There have also been two new bills introduced for 2013 that include giving parents the ability to fire school administration and shut down low-performing schools.

Zappos Moving Forward with School Plans

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I recently came across an article that talked about how Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is creating an innovative new school set to open in downtown Las Vegas in August of this year.  In December, a workshop was actually set up at the site of the new school (former First Baptist Church at Ninth Street and Bridger Ave. in downtown Las Vegas) to give kids an opportunity to help design the look and feel of the classrooms in the school.

The school plans on having community and creativity as the dominant themes within the curriculum, and they actually will begin to interview prospective teachers this month.  Meg Murray, the school’s lead researcher and designer, believes the school will be unique in its efforts to employ neuroscience, learning, and positive psychology to maximize the children’s learning. 

We’re excited to see that education is going to play a part in the building of the community through the Downtown Project and we’re sure these efforts will help push education further along in Las Vegas.