[lvmensch]

Originally Posted by SportyandMisty

Yes. That could be a very good program for motivated students.

It is a well known outlet for the very bright and has almost flawless performances as does the Clark magnet and Ad Tech. And the Tech schools are pretty good as well.

The very bright do have resources particularly if their parents are up to the role.

[EA]

My son is in magnet school. One of the best in town.
He's still far ahead of the other kids. They have him in their gate program and they have to bring in teachers from higher grades to set his curriculum.
I can't afford private school and even if I could every private school kid I ever knew is a drug addict.

[MaryoVilla]

Originally Posted by 08grad

You want to throw more money at people who don't care at all about their education? Kansas City tried this already. They burned through $2 billion ($40,000/student), increasing teacher salaries to attract the best teachers, building all new schools with the best facilities in the nation. And test scores didn't change one bit.

Our legislature already tried to entice teachers to move to low performing schools. AB 434 allocated $2.5 million in bonus money for teachers to transfer from non-Title I schools to Title I schools. Why didn't it work? Well first off, less than 20% of our schools are non-Title I. Even if we took all the teachers from the top performing schools and sent them to our Title I schools, we wouldn't even fix half of the problem. In addition, most who teach at those highly rated schools aren't effective teachers, as student test scores show little growth year-over-year.

In addition, the bonus was a whopping $5,000. That's not going to entice anyone to move from West Tech to Cheyenne HS. This is exactly the problem. The problems in education are so gargantuan that we would need to almost double our funding to have any meaningful impact. When I hear Sisolak promising to "fund our schools" on TV, I don't think he has any clue how bad it actually is, he's just trying to score political points like Trump was when he was promising to deport the illegal immigrants.

To fix education, you need to look at what schools who are out-performing their demographics are doing. Places like Hyde Park MS, who match wealthier suburbs even though they have 3x as many free/reduced lunch price recipients. They're not doing well because they have better teachers instructing their bottom half of the school who is only there because it's free and they're required to be there. They do well because they offer high level accelerated programs that effectively educate the brightest in the school, and separating these students from those who don't care.

When families of neighboring schools hear that "Hyde Park has a great accelerated program", then all of the sudden the involved parents start putting in requests to enroll their child there instead of their neighboring school, and you start getting more proficient students to enroll. This is the same model we used in California to bring our school up from the 24th percentile to the 51st percentile. We continued to offer middle school Geometry when every other school was getting rid of it in favor of Common Core. When parents heard of our accelerated program, our transfer requests went up.

You have to fix the top of these schools before you can do anything about the bottom half that treats education as free daycare.

Yes! Go Wildcats, my kid goes here...I support the teachers by giving them unlimited school supplies!!

[momofvegasgirls]

Originally Posted by ND_Irish

Given the size of Clark County, there is no question this area should have a school equivalent to the Davidson Academy in Reno for intelligent and highly motivated students: Davidson Academy | School for Profoundly Gifted - Online & Reno.

I couldn't rep you again but please, add my +1.

[Cold Warrior]

The Davidson Academy offers two options for profoundly gifted students to choose from: a Reno day school for local residents or an online campus for students living anywhere in the U.S. Applicants must be in the process of completing 6th grade, at minimum, at the time of application.

Of course, an online campus does not address the primary role of public schools: baby sitting for parents who work.