State Superintendent Jhone Ebert listens to Eagle Valley Middle School students Nicholas Budd, eighth grade, in front of the mixer, Kassandra Mosqueda, sixth grade, center, and Allen Riley explain how they applied Legos to practical uses such as creating an improved grip on mixers to help people with arthritis.
Photo by Jessica Garcia.
Miracles are happening in classrooms every day, Carson City school educators shared with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jhone Ebert on Feb. 2. But often the student data or tests teachers are asked to collect or review don’t best reflect the positive results being achieved.
Ebert visited with Carson City School District administrators, students and school board members as a part of her listening tour and outreach effort to hear about the highlights and challenges they’re facing. With each district’s diverse populations offering academic, agricultural and technological programs catering to student interests, Ebert said it’s “phenomenal” to see so much good transpiring all over Nevada. She described a recent meat fabrication program in Wells, where two students are about to open a butcher shop.
“This is about us coming in to listen to what your needs are, just like you listen to your teachers, your families, and you meet them where you’re at,” Ebert told administrators.
The Nevada Department of Education’s Ebert and Deputy Superintendents Ann Marie Dickson and Christy McGill joined Carson City Superintendent Andrew Feuling and CCSD’s trustees and administrators as representatives on behalf of school teachers and families to ask about overall or site needs and concerns.
Dr. Jennifer Ward, principal of Fremont Elementary School, shared the difficulty of seeing her school nearly achieve a four-star rating according to the Nevada School Performance Framework’s Star Ratings before the 2020 pandemic only to drop to two stars since then.
“We have some kiddos who are struggling, and none of those tests are capturing the struggles of our kids, and to be a two-star school and lose half of our points …and being able to not feel we’re not making any difference in kids’ lives, and yet I know on a day-to-day basis, we are making miracles happen,” Ward said.
She expounded on rural schools’ pressures to attract potential teachers as evaluations continually are placed upon them to make sure they’re effective. Ward said one of their demands for teachers or education support professionals is to understand the whole child as they come to school each day with most managing more than 20 students in a classroom at a time.
“As a classroom teacher, I have 21 kids in first grade and I have one kiddo tearing apart the classroom and how do I make sure these kids aren’t traumatized? And none of that can be captured in an SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium) assessment or point in time. So I think just trying to find a better accountability system and I know how hard that is to come up with a number to show the true growth of a school.”
Carson High School Principal Dan Carstens, describing himself as a competitor, discussed some of the anxiety lingering over teachers with accountability and data. He said it’s important to ensure “students are winning.”
“We do everything down to the number,” Carstens said. “We boil our teachers down to a number and our kids down to a number. … I’m looking at all of our systems and processes and structures and how do we improve our schools or is it through what we build up for kids and allowing teachers to collaborate and look at their data in their classes?”
Carstens said it’s nearly impossible to teach every standard in the classroom to the level the district or state would want a teacher to teach.
“If we teach every standard, we’re going to (have students here) to the 22nd grade,” he said. “We just don’t have time to do that.”
Associate Superintendent of Educational Services Tasha Fuson said a challenge for rural districts has been the inability to receive information on their level on issues impacting them the most.
After discussion with the administrators and principals, Ebert then visited Carson City’s Eagle Valley Middle School, Mark Twain Elementary School and Carson High School campuses, where she met with students and staff members to hear about recent celebrations, meet with the high school’s student leadership and gain insight on program developments in classrooms.
Feuling told the Appeal at the end of the day he was excited for the opportunity to show the work happening in the district’s schools every day.
“The opportunity for her to speak with our Carson High leadership kids, I think she was thoroughly impressed,” Feuling said. “They just represented us and asked real thoughtful questions that, as adults, we don’t realize are concerns, especially as our world continues to change. And our kids are worrying about things we never had to be concerned about generations ago. As they bring those to the attention of state leadership, it helps make for possible change, so I think that’s ultimately the reason for Superintendent Ebert’s being here.”
Ebert had asked of many of Carson’s staff members if they could get what they want, what would they have, and Feuling told the Appeal his own desire would be to change the accountability system hovering above education. Feuling said he would always advocate for more funding to help students as much as possible.
“(The system) is detrimental to not only quality and excellence in what we do and it hampers innovation, and if we’re trying to prepare kids for that is changing so rapidly, we need to be more nimble and keep them engaged,” Feuling said. “We need to … find new and better ways to do things so that kids see value in their educational experience and that they reflect back and see that it made a difference.”