Educators release annual report card on schools

Western Nevada school districts are doing significantly better than the state average in both graduation rates and dropout rates.

But with the exception of Lyon school district, they aren't growing. Carson and Douglas, in fact, have been losing students for the past four years, according to the annual state Department of Education school report card. The totals in Churchill and Storey are basically flat.

Statewide, 67.5 percent of seniors graduated in the school year ended in June while the dropout rate was 4.6 percent.

In Carson School District, the percentage of students who graduate has been in the low 80s since the school report card was started four years ago with a dropout rate of 2 percent or less. But the total number of students attending Carson schools has declined steadily from just under 8,800 in 2003-4 to 8,352 in 2006-7. The only group showing an increase is Hispanic students whose numbers have grown from a quarter of the student body to over 31 percent.

Douglas School District too has seen its student population decline but not as dramatically, falling from 7,117 in 2003-4 to 6,909 this last school year. The most dramatic change in Douglas has been the decline in its graduation rate from just under 91 percent in 2003-4 to 82.8 percent last year while the dropout rate has tripled from 1 percent to 3.1 percent.

Douglas's population of Hispanic students has increased as well, but only from 11 to 14.5 percent.

Churchill, with 4,461 students, reported one of the state's highest graduation rates at 84.9 percent. That is about 5 percent lower than four years ago. The dropout rate there has fluctuated from year to year but is currently 2.4 percent compared to 2.6 percent four years ago. The number of students has been flat during that period.

In Lyon where the population is booming, the total student population grew 20 percent over the past four years from 7,660 to 9,149. While the graduation rate has remained fairly stable at about 80 percent, Lyon has managed to reduce its dropout rate from 2.5 percent to 1.2 percent

Storey's graduation rate is lowest in the area at 70.7 percent, just three percent above the state average. But the dropout rate is just 2 percent, less than half the statewide average. The student population has fluctuated between 467 and 450 for the four years.

Washoe also turned in good numbers with a graduation rate of 75.1 percent for it's 65,013 students. But Washoe's dropout rate increased from 2 percent to 2.7 over the previous year. The student population has grown about 5,000 over the past four years and there, like Carson, the number of Hispanic students has risen steadily from 27 percent to 31.5 percent.

The numbers in Clark County are what's dragging the averages down. In Clark this year, only 63.5 percent of seniors graduated and the dropout rate was 5.6 percent. The number of students listed as habitual truants more than doubled to 1,524. Clark's student population has grown about 15 percent in the past four school years from 267,858 to 306,099. And Clark has the highest percentage of Hispanic students in the state at 38.5.

The Lincoln County school District turned in the best graduation report with 95.1 percent of those eligible receiving diplomas and no dropouts in 2006-7. Mineral and Pershing school districts also reported zero dropouts for the school year.

The complete reports, including student-teacher ratios, numbers of substitute teachers, ethic breakdowns of student populations and other information are all available on-line at nevadareportcard.com. The website allows comparisons of data for the last four school years.

• Contact reporter Geoff Dornan at gdornan@nevadaappeal.com or 687-8750.