Feuling, staff worry about political posturing in accountability

Carson City School Superintendent Andrew Feuling on Tuesday expressed concerns during the Carson City School Board meeting that the state’s required “Acing Accountability” metrics present as political posturing before the 2025 legislative session.

Gov. Joe Lombardo’s initiative that was approved by state legislators last year provided $2.6 billion in funding for education. It was a call to increase literacy and math proficiency and better prepare high school students with college and career ready diplomas, among other objectives. Lombardo squarely dismissed poor funding as a reason for underperformance in the state’s classrooms but also sought solid outcomes from the investment into Nevada’s education budget.

With his commitment to help schools better perform came an expectation for transparency, and this required data to be culled from all school districts representing the 2022-23 school year. The Nevada Department of Education would apply this information and create benchmark numbers and goals for 2023-24. Baseline metrics were established for districts to meet, although according to what tools and by what formulas these numbers were established, district educators were not privy to, Feuling said.

But, as Feuling reported to the board, data has not been requested from CCSD from this most recent year to date.

“Some (metrics) were a little unique and, in some ways, they were overdue for a more holistic look at what matters in education,” Feuling told the board.

CCSD, for example, “meets expectations” in its use of evidence-based instruction materials and its district performance plan to improve student growth and proficiency in literacy and mathematics.

Others, however, were found to be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve and “unrealistic” without an ability to recalibrate or allow for incremental growth.

Feuling said when it comes to the question of whether students in kindergarten through the third grade are making progress in mastering literacy as measured by their Measures of Academic Progress test growth reading assessments, the state’s established goal in student academic growth for CCSD was 65%. With a base of 41.1%, Carson City would have to show a 24% improvement rate, which Trustee Richard Varner was skeptical could be achieved in a year.

“My understanding is the folks who make the MAP tests, they don’t think that’s a reasonable number, which I think says a lot,” Feuling responded.

Tasha Fuson, district associate superintendent of educational services, agreed it’s “100% ludicrous.” She said it’s possible to merge the Acing Accountability goals with the Nevada School Performance Framework Star Ratings system, the system of indicators showing how well a school performs by measuring academic and student engagement factors, to work in cohesion.

“We’ll do the best we can,” she said. “This is what happens with folks who don’t understand what we’re up against in education and these tools are built and used and how they’re normed when those folks are the ones that set the goals. It’s definitely admirable.”

In looking at preparing high school graduates for success in college or a career, Carson City’s base of 70.5% falls just shy of in a metric examining rigorous coursework to ensure at least 75% of all high school students are enrolled in at least one course unique to the College and Career Ready diploma and includes an Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate course or Career and Technical Education course.

Other metrics also examined the district’s availability of a workforce to students.

Feuling said the district, which does have an option to submit data for a goal of its choice, has had to resubmit because the NDE requested more feedback on its original idea based on a work-based learning goal from its strategic plan.

He added he experienced some frustration upon hearing a presentation from Lombardo about the original audit for the data only eventually to hear districts were not performing based on the 2022-23 year before the funding had been made available, he said.

“I worry about how it’s going to be presented or postured, I guess, during the legislative session and it may be that if the Acing Accountability metrics don’t come back, like, ‘Look, all this movement happened in one year,’ that somehow it’s frowned upon. And I think it’s really unrealistic when you have 30 years of underfunding that in one year that you’re going to have this amazing shift in terms of what the governor’s expecting,” Feuling said.

“I think that’s the message we have to have out there. I think this is happening during really difficult times out there for education and for kids and for families. I think we have to keep supporting education across the state.”