Fremont Elementary School third-grade teacher Maiya Foster works with her students on writing skills on Oct. 30.
Photo by Jessica Garcia.
Fremont Elementary School’s educators live by a motto that they find a way, not an excuse, when it comes to helping every student, Principal Jennifer Ward says.
“That, sometimes, is really hard because we can say, with COVID, 80% of our school year was messed up the following year; where they were coming every other day, or when we did get them back, they were only coming four days a week, but they wore masks,” she said. “The reality is that we didn’t fare well in relation to other schools, either.”
Discussion at the Carson City School Board level on Oct. 23 focused on the relevance of the state’s NSPF (Nevada School Performance Framework) framework as Nevada’s accountability system. COVID-19 left questions — and still does — for schools and educators, one of the most important of which remains: Are statewide accountability and performance systems still working?
Nevada uses the NSPF as a baseline required under federal law to keep track of student performance. The rating system gives points in five measures that are then added to produce a total index score.
‘DEVASTATING’ NEWS
When Ward assumed her position as Fremont’s principal eight years ago, the campus had just received its three-star rating, an adequate classification, from the Nevada School Performance Framework.
Fremont was the lowest performing among Carson City’s sites. As of October of this year, it was tentatively designated a one-star school, which means it has not met the state’s standard for performance.
Ward called the new designation “devastating.” Receiving the results without offering concrete ways for improvement might be one of the worst emotional impacts for educators, she said.
“It was the lowest rating that we had ever seen in our history of Fremont, and then we made a nice rise, slow and steady, with some sustainable growth, which is hard to find in that current system,” she said. “And then with COVID, we were plateaued at that 65 (index score) for those three years.”
Ward struggled to answer if the system is relevant after COVID-19. Most math and English tests are based on outgoing students moving on to the next school.
“You know, it’s fleeting because a third of your students leave,” she said. “So you can celebrate, but then you’re celebrating with a third less of the students that you are working with currently and then you have a new group of kids who can drastically change, for or against, that star rating as your third graders … and those third graders count twice in the rating, you know, so they have that extra five points as your third grade.”
NEW METHODS NEEDED?
New interventions and opportunities to help students at younger ages are needed, but that’s also part of the struggle, she said. Students’ changing needs, she added, are also hard to factor into an NSPF score.
“Our students are not the same,” she said. “Their brains are not the same. Their access to technology has drastically changed and how they access the world and yet we’re using old methodology to instruct our teachers.”
Ward said it’s been tough to recruit eager teachers willing to both work with kids and have the resiliency to stay in the profession.
“We’re not working with widgets; we’re not working with things on a conveyor belt,” she said. “We work with these little human, dynamic people that are coming through the door who are more complicated than ever.”