Rory Reid terms Nevada education ranking 'shocking'

Gubernatorial candidate Rory Reid on Wednesday said a new study showing Nevada's graduation rate is the nation's worst was "shocking."

He said the report was announced in Education Week and places Nevada 51st out of 50 states and the District of Columbia with a high school graduation rate of just 41.8 percent. That, he said, is 12 points below the second worst state, New Mexico, which graduated 54.9 percent of high schoolers.

"This is not a moral failure," Reid said. "It's an economic one. We will never have a first rate economy if we continue to accept second-rate schools."

He said businesses and their executives and workers won't come to Nevada unless the state improves its school system.

He said the graduation rate has fallen from 65.7 percent to under 42 percent in just the past decade - "a 10-year period overseen by Republican governors."

"Students in Nevada have half the chance of graduating as students in the top-ranked New Jersey," he said, pointing out that state graduates 83 percent of high schoolers.

Reid said his plan for the state would give schools more freedom and responsibility, ending what he termed micro-management by Carson City, and give parents the power to choose the school right for their child. He said he would improve preschool and after-school programs as well as vocational education.

He said he would reverse the cuts imposed on education by the Gibbons administration.

"Jim Gibbons had no plan for education and stood by as 60,000 students dropped out," he said. "That's embarrassing."

He charged that his Republican opponent Brian Sandoval has only proposed more of the same.