- Quickdraw McLaw
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- OJ Simpson’s new Twitter account is the real deal according to his attorney Malcolm LaVergne. [Deadline]
- The BLM reports more unauthorized use of its land in Nevada. [TNI]
- Advocates and Metro discourage feeding the homeless. [Las Vegas Sun]
- State opens up occupational licenses to non-citizens. [Nevada Current]
There was a very thoughtful comment on Friday that I think deserves some more discussion:
https://lasvegaslawblog.blogspot.com/2019/06/no-confidence.html?showComment=1560554175562#c682552738611663464
While I agree that parents in Clark County do not emphasize the importance of education as much as parents in other parts of the country, especially places like Utah where I grew up, I have a little charitable view of this failing. It is an exhausting, two-parent enterprise to be a blue collar worker in Las Vegas. It may not be that the parents don't care, but have nothing left to give after working really, really hard.
I also think that sometimes, as white collar professionals we forget all the little privileges we enjoy that our kids benefit from. As harried as my hours can be, I can essentially schedule short vacations to places like Newport Beach at-will. If one of my children has an event at school or church or some other organization during the day, I can just get up and leave my desk to be there. The parents who are the target of criticism do not enjoy this kind of latitude. Of course, part of the reason I sacrificed to go to law school was because I knew what kind of lifestyle and opportunities I wanted for my future children. And I knew that because my parents were white collar professionals. It's a cycle.
That said, I think all of the kids in Clark County would benefit immensely from breaking up CCSD. Just because we have many many parents who fail to emphasize education, doesn't mean that the broader society won't benefit from breaking up CCSD. There are many reasons why education outcomes in Clark County are so horrific. We should address those that we can and one of the easiest (relatively speaking) is to break up CCSD. I say relatively easy because any such effort will be met with fierce resistance by those who have a personal financial stake in maintaining the status quo. This fight will be existential for them and they will fight to the death. But we must be victorious over them.
My spouse and I recently decided we are going to switch our kids over to charter schools. We are happy with our elementary school, but the middle school we are assigned to is a dystopian hell hole with no discipline. I can't, in good conscience, send my daughter there. We attend Church with people who are very involved in the local schools. Slowly, they have all been switching over to charter schools. This is a good solution for my family, and for the families of our fellow parishioners, but it's a bad outcome for our community. The parents most likely to take education seriously are those self-selecting to leave CCSD. This makes the problems of indifference worse for CCSD. I feel bad about it, but I have to put my kids first.
My oldest is 8. I often tell her how uneducated Las Vegas is, especially compared to where I grew up. I tell her that if she wants to make it in life, she needs to be twice as smart as her classmates to get half as far outside of Vegas. Even when we get into a charter school, I am going to have to emphasize this over and over and over with them. What is acceptable to most Vegas families is totally unacceptable in our family.
In sum, there are a lot of reasons why education fails in Las Vegas. Some of it is the parents. A lot of it is the unweildy, ineffective massive bureaucracy that is CCSD.
The OJ twitter thing is really disturbing.
Our Charter schools are pretty good and need to be recognized by the State as picking up where our State and CCSD fail. The State needs to start giving the Charter Schools funds so they can function. They have them on such a shoestring budget. It is hard for Charter Schools to survive.
The crazy part is that Charter Schools are held accountable for every single penny spent and have to do extensive reporting to the public and the State. But the State and our public schools have little to no transparency or strict reporting requirements.
Blue collar parents, too tired etc. etc..
Nice sentiment, but most of America is comprised of two parents working to pay the rent who can't leave their job whenever they feel like it. Other states spend less on education and get better results. Let's give thought to District and teacher accountability.
"Other states spend less on education and get better results." I'll give you Utah. Who else? NV is consistently in the bottom few states in per pupil spending, so there aren't many other states that spend less and their results are predictably right in line (they're not good).
Funding levels aren't everything, but it's like the old saying "money doesn't buy happiness, but it helps." More money won't guarantee better results, but it helps. There is definitely a positive relationship between dollars spent and educational outcomes.
Fixing the schools in Clark County is a multi-pronged approach:
1. Break up CCSD.
2. Increase per pupil funding.
3. Get more parents involved (#1 will facilitate this).
OJ Simpson Twitter handle is sick. 'Juice is Loose."
"Break up CCSD!" they say. Well, the result is predictable. The schools in the "nice" areas, e.g. Summerlin, will get even better, cf. Bloomfield Hills [MI] School District. But the schools in the "bad" areas, e.g. North Las Vegas, will get even worse, cf. Detroit [MI] Public Schools Community District. This will exacerbate the extant inequities in a geographically confined area, our Las Vegas Valley. If you support breaking up CCSD, then I hope you are the one who is shot when they come out to eat you . . . .
So let's keep equitable failure. Makes sense.
It is fine, and probably a good idea, to break up the CCSD, for most of the reasons that have been stated by others, but you have to maintain the funding at equal levels for everyone.
Funding at equal levels means it won't be equal. Parents in affluent areas will not hesitate to chip in hundreds of dollars for their kids to supplement the activities. These costs cannot be born by someone in a less affluent area. For Example, I personally know of an elementary school in the south part of town that routinely generates substantial funds through its PTA to pay for extra teachers and activities. Not so much for a school even 3 miles up the road. Schools in that area will get more volunteers that dual worker blue collar families in other areas. So its not goingto be equal.
most significantly, everyone forgets about the Nevada plan, which guarantees that Clark County Schools get less per pupil that virtually the rest of the state. If you break up CCSD what will that do to funding? What impact will the diminished political lobbying ability of CCSD do to funding.
I am generally a proponent of breaking up the school district, having grown up in a town with a patchwork of school districts, but its not uniformly positive and breaking up CCSD is likely to be fraught with perils. Thus it is just as easy for things to go downhill as it is to improve. I would believe that Green Valley, Anthem, Summerlin and Centennial would improve and the rest would suffer significantly.
"Parents in affluent areas will not hesitate to chip in hundreds of dollars for their kids to supplement the activities"
This is already true regardless of whether CCSD breaks up.
I am for breaking up CCSD to benefit ALL students. Small districts increase parental control and influence and accountability. If we need to fund students in poor areas at 125% or 150% of affluent areas to truly even things out, that's fine. I just want this unresponsive, ineffective bureaucratic behemoth put to death.