Forever, as a member of the faculty of the College of Education at the University of Nevada, Reno, I challenged the claims that were consistently made by the local school district that the district was doing well in educating the students who attended its schools. When reports were published showing that the claims were erroneous, district administrators would find ways to translate the bad to mean good, the common claim being that Washoe County School District (WSCD) did better than the state average and, therefore, even if the results were not very good, they were good because they were better.
Buried in today’s local Reno paper was the article linked below that showed that on the test the state has chosen to determine student achievement, the State of Nevada is not doing well and that Washoe County Schools are not very much better than the state average.
Watch how the numbers will be spun by our district superintendent and the Chair of the Board of Trustees. Such spinning is for the sake of administrators who like to brag about the goodness of the jobs they are doing, even when the numbers show they are not doing so well, and the business organizations and real estate folk who need to show that the schools, despite their actual performance, are good schools. When the spinning starts, citizens, put your foot down and demand the kind of truth that might lead to real reform that might lead to schools that are truly good schools.
