Douglas, Whittell rated four stars by the state

The return of star rankings for Nevada schools saw both Douglas and Whittell high schools achieving four out of five stars.

According to data from the Nevada Department of Education, Douglas High received a total index score of 78, tied for fourth place among Western Nevada traditional high schools with Incline Village.

Whittell came in fifth with a 73.8 total score. Carson High School rated four stars with a score of 70.5, according to state figures.

The index rates schools on college and career readiness, graduation rates, in addition to state proficiency scores generated through the annual mandatory ACT testing.

A review of updated proficiency scores showed the math score for Douglas County juniors at 26.6 percent on the ACT college entrance exam. While that sounds pretty bad, it’s the second highest score for a school district in the state, following Eureka’s 31.8 and leading the State Charter Schools, according to a review of scores posted to the Nevada Department of Education Web site. Douglas High School had a 27.4 percent on the test.

The scores were generated last spring when juniors across the Silver State took the mandatory ACT test. While required to take the college entrance exam, there is no requirement to excel at it or even pass.

Neither Nevada university requires a college entrance exam but do use results to determine class placement.

Math scores in Esmeralda and Mineral counties are below 5 percent. Neighboring Carson City has a math score of 20.1 while Lyon County posted a 10.4 percent.

On the language arts side, Douglas County juniors were in the middle of the pack with a 46.7 percent, or sixth in the state.

Storey has the top score in the state at 60, followed by the state charter schools, Lander, Esmeralda and Churchill districts.

The state lists one school at the top of the heap. University School with a total enrollment of 163 students last year, a staff of 16 teachers and a per pupil expenditure of $23,725. Both its language and math scores exceeded 95 percent.

During a presentation on education at Stateline, Douglas Superintendent Keith Lewis said that national rankings that put Nevada dead last in the country included several things educators don’t control.

“The state of Nevada is 18th in the nation in academic achievement we need to celebrate that,” he said. “Do we want to be higher? Yes. But it’s not 50th in the nation and I think we need to do a better job of selling that.”

Lewis has entered an agreement under which he is resigning as superintendent effective today.

“In 2014-15 you see those proficiency rates up at 89.3 and 90.2 percent,” he told the Critical Issues Conference. “That was when we had a high school proficiency exam that students had to pass to graduate. We remediated them over and over and over to get them across the finish line.”

Implementation of the ACT saw scores start to slide each year, dropping to the current rates not just in Douglas but across the nation.

“It is a one-time test, and in the state of Nevada you only have to participate in the test,” Lewis said. “There is no score you have to receive to graduate.”

Even the nonprofit that administers the ACT has noted that scores on the test have been declining for the last six years to a composite of 19.5 for the class of 2023, according to an Oct. 10 release.

“This is the sixth consecutive year of declines in average scores, with average scores declining in every academic subject,” ACT CEO Janet Godwin said. “We are also continuing to see a rise in the number of seniors leaving high school without meeting any of the college readiness benchmarks, even as student GPAs continue to rise, and students report that they feel prepared to be successful in college.

The Class of 2023 was the first one to experience the coronavirus shutdowns in spring of 2020. Nationwide 43 percent of students met none of the exam’s benchmarks, with only 20.8 percent meeting all four, according to the company.