[Greatday]

Originally Posted by chi166

1. The CCSD system is known as one of the worst in the nation..

I don't know about "worst" but, it certainly has one of the highest high school drop out rates in the country IMO

[MomMom]

Originally Posted by Greatday

I don't know about "worst" but, it certainly has one of the highest high school drop out rates in the country IMO

That's because the parents moved here to party...

They don't want to be bothered with their kids...and a lot of those kids are left to fend for themselves while their irresponsible parents are too busy having a good time. Dropping out of high school and getting a job to make a buck or two...and the parents "I don't care what you do" attitude reflects in the number of high school drop outs.

I'm even surprised that the number of drop outs is not higher. It's gotten better in past years, but not by much.

I wouldn't assume (because you know what THAT makes you) that Las Vegas would be the education mecca of the nation. Not with our 24 hour party tourist atmosphere and that being the reason why so many move here. For every kid that drops out of high school and does not receive a diploma...there are many more who go on to graduate. So, then, why don't some kids continue their studies, yet a lot more do?


The problem starts at home, with ignorant, irresponsible "me, me" parents.

Las Vegas just gets the bad rap as usual

[olecapt]

Originally Posted by Greatday

I don't know about "worst" but, it certainly has one of the highest high school drop out rates in the country IMO

Nope. About 16th of the 50 biggest school districts. Better than NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles. Way better the bad ones...Detroit, Milwaukee.

Not great. Needs improvement. But not one of the highest.

[kimba01]

Not sure where Vegas stands, but Detroit just won the honor of highest high school dropout rate. Lovely. Governor wants to raise dropout age. Well, either that or lower the graduation age. Hmmmm.

The thing is that I think a lot of people posting here to ask about the schools are not living in the actual city of Detroit or their children are going to school outside of Detroit. Or private. Most schools in the suburbs are decent here. Some are better than others and I guarantee they all have crime and drugs. My son goes to the best rated school in the Utica School District and says there are so many drugs it is sick. Anything and everything. Many fights too. Of course, it is a higher income area and those are the parents who will give their kids money to override their guilt of not being home.

Test scores do not make the BEST school. Money does not make the BEST school. Children, parents, staff and people with a genuine interest in making and keeping their schools the BEST do.

[chi166]

Originally Posted by olecapt

Interesting. Cite a source for that piece of utter BS...

After we deal with that one we may try some of the rest.

I was an employee of the district for over three years. I lived it. Even the employees at CCSD are amazed how inept we are.

Nevada's smarts. We rank 49th of 50th as entire state.

Smartest State 2006-2007

By this we can figure this from wikipedia.

Las Vegas (City) 552,539
Las Vegas (Metro) Apx 1,700,000 (includes CCSD Clark Co. with NLV, Henderson and BC.) (2006 US Census has us apx at 2 mil)
State of Nevada (2004 US apx Census) 2,495,529
Nevada QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau

Some have estimated we do in fact have over 2 million metro wide. At 1.7 million Las Vegas metro is STILL over 66% of the population. The rest of the state would have to be dumber than rocks in the desert to sink us to 49th.

Funding

There's a dispute if Nevada is 37th or 49th with school funding.

Bob Beers’ Blog » Blog Archive » Nevada Schools Rank #1 In Deception Index

Here's more info about Nevada poverty and ranking.

Techpolicybank | Nevada Fact Sheet

31% of 4th graders and 51% of 8th graders in Nevada scored below the basic level of math that is expected in their grade (national average is 24% and 33%, respectively).

How about the CCSD magent schools? Well the grand idea was to put some of the magnet schools in some of the worst areas in town and bus the kids in. A kid who wants to study law gets a bus up to...Canyon Springs High School where graffiti and drugs in the washrooms is an all day affair. Let's not even mention gangs and gangfights. A wonderful learning enviornment for kids who may want to learn.

Public school systems usually offer less than par education. The cities you've mentioned do suck. Chicago used to be the flat out worst. Now they are just among the worst. Milwaukee stinks. The issue with Las Vegas is that there aren't enough private schools for an alternative. You don't have many choices. The wage in town also makes it unaffordable for more than many.

[chi166]

I think the point I'm trying to get across is this. I think we can mostly all agree. In Las Vegas crime exists everywhere. It's to what degree the crime occurs. Same for the schools. Drugs, booze, gangs and other crime occurs in all school. Again, it's to what degree does it occur?

Here's the Channel 3 crime tracker.

News 3 Las Vegas Crime Tracker 3

Here's one more thing to digest. In some areas and circles, the police in considered the enemy. You will find that crime will go unreported rather than dealing with the police. Some have the motto of not liking "snitches" in the area. This bleeds down all the way to middle school level.

[chi166]

Originally Posted by PinkString

The poster didn't say that. They said the new areas of N Las Vegas, not old area's.

If it's me buying property. I am not buying in El Dorado (I lived in the Park Ridge subdivision for over a year.) I don't feel safe over there. There was two Section 8 houses on the block. Take a guess which house(s) had eight people, the most parties and violence? The bus stop at Tropical and Coleman had a gang related shooting there year. These involved a 14 and a 15 year old. A child of mine would either be zoned for Mojave or Legacy. Therefore any points east on Centennial are a no go. The area over there is a mixed bag.

The corridor up Losee and the north of 15 Lamb has people moving North up from the CSN Cheyenne area.

Some use Craig Road as the cutoff. I use Centennial if I am in NLV. I'm prefectly fine almost anywhere in town during the day. These bad areas are NOT Chicago, Detroit, Philly, Baltimore, DC, Miami or L.A. bad. I don't feel "safe" by Walmart on Craig Rd. at night. It's not Nellis or Lake Mead bad. It's not that good either. Anything up in Aliante is fine, but too close to areas (for me) that aren't as good as they appear. Anything North of 215 is as nice as you'll get up Decatur in town.

The Shadow Ridge kids consider Cheyenne HS the "ghetto".

[MomMom]

All your information was right on chi166, and thank you for providing your sources (links) to back up your info.

You can provide any proof you want, statistics, facts, figures, first person accounts, former employee stories...about how "bad" the Clark County School System is.

Not many listen. CCSD is the fifth largest school district in the nation and one of the worst at providing children a "high level" of education. CCSD has provided the standard kind, for kids who want to learn and graduate and receive their high school diploma. We've NEVER EVER turned out any Einstein's from our school district and we never will, and Las Vegas has never been touted as the education center of the country either. Education is the last thing a tourist based industry is worried about, to be perfectly honest

A lot of folks are not too concerned about it. Folks have moved here, knowing all that for it is well publicized across the country, how "BAD" the CCSD is, and they're still moving here and raising families as well. You can quote facts and figures all you want about how bad the CCSD is, but people want to move to Las Vegas no matter what the pitfalls are. We wouldn't have grown to over 2 million strong in the valley if people were that concerned that their kids weren't getting educated. That is...the parents who want their kids to be educated anyways.

Kids that I know that have been educated here (including a few who graduated UNLV and CSN) seem to have well paying careers here in town and these kids are quite successful. Their CCSD sub-standard education didn't do them wrong, that's for sure.

A lot of people are not concerned with all the school rankings, the poor level of school performance and bad test scores. They wouldn't have moved here with school-age children if they were. You can talk to them about that till you're blue in the face. They're moving to Las Vegas because THEY want to and nothing else really matters.

Good couple of posts you did there...good info.

[daveyjones978]

Ok, so I don't know if this was already covered, so this may end up being a dumb question. But since curiosity has been known to kill a few cats in my day, here goes:

As most of you know, I don't have kids (and don't really plan on having them anytime soon), so the whole CCSD being a bad school district does not really have any bearing on me for the moment, and definitely has no bearing in my move to Vegas. But it seems to me that I read a lot of people complaining about how bad the district is for education, and all of that stuff.

So why are the parents not getting involved?

Let me explain a little bit. Where I live right now, there is an over-abundance of school districts. Too many in fact. But in several of the districts (mine included), in addition to your basic PTAs and all of that stuff, several years back, the parents banded together and formed an "advisory council" of sorts, to address issues in the school and/or district, and network and liason (if you will) with the educations and superintendants (the "powers that be"). This group proved vastly successful, and has been implemented in several other schools and districts.

I guess what i'm getting at is: if there i such a problem with the high schools, and I'm guessing the district as a whole, then why are the parents not getting more involved? I have yet to see anything regarding PTA or adivsory councils mentioned. Is it that it's just too large of a district? Or is it (and I really feel sorry if this is really the case) that the parents just don't care? I find it really hard to believe that parents of CCSD students don't give a rat's ass (pardon the expression) about their children's educations. The few parental responses I've seen on here have not shown that sort of mentality, but I'm sure a few hear and there do not represent the community as a whole. So why are parents not getting more involved in the education that their children are receiving, if it's such a "problem"?

I have friends that went to high school in CCSD, and believe me, they're far from uneducated. I have friends that have taught in CCSD, and some still teach in the district, and they don't seem to make it out to be as problematic as it's being made out here. Maybe I just don't see it?

[olecapt]

Originally Posted by chi166

I was an employee of the district for over three years. I lived it. Even the employees at CCSD are amazed how inept we are.

Nevada's smarts. We rank 49th of 50th as entire state.

Smartest State 2006-2007

By this we can figure this from wikipedia.

Las Vegas (City) 552,539
Las Vegas (Metro) Apx 1,700,000 (includes CCSD Clark Co. with NLV, Henderson and BC.) (2006 US Census has us apx at 2 mil)
State of Nevada (2004 US apx Census) 2,495,529
Nevada QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau

Some have estimated we do in fact have over 2 million metro wide. At 1.7 million Las Vegas metro is STILL over 66% of the population. The rest of the state would have to be dumber than rocks in the desert to sink us to 49th.

Nevada is a very urban state. Third in the US in fact in terms of the percent of the population living in urban areas. Effectively there is metro Vegas, metro Reno and another 200K scattered around the rest of the state.

The result is that Nevada ends up effectively one very large and one smaller urban area stacked up against states with large suburban and rural areas. It is reasonably known that urban areas generally have lower academic performance do mainly to their heterogeneous ethnic and economic populations. So Nevada does badly because it is two cities being compared to mixes of cities and suburban and rural. The cities don't do well.

The correct comparison is Las Vegas to other cities. Or CCSD to other large school districts. CCSD does not do well. But not near the bottom either.

Funding

There's a dispute if Nevada is 37th or 49th with school funding.

Bob Beers’ Blog » Blog Archive » Nevada Schools Rank #1 In Deception Index

Well generally I agree Nevadans are cheap skates when it comes to education funding.

I would however observe that this is true of the entire SW...Utah, New Mexico, Arizona...except CA. Note that CA spends vastly more money but does not do better. In fact LA is worse on most criteria than LV.

I would think that, given the importance of education and the requirements to teach, any beginning teacher should be paid more than say a starting Policeman or Fireman.

Obviously we as a collective do not agree.

Here's more info about Nevada poverty and ranking.

Techpolicybank | Nevada Fact Sheet

More relevantly to the overall situation Nevada pays more income tax per capita than almost any other state. How come?

31% of 4th graders and 51% of 8th graders in Nevada scored below the basic level of math that is expected in their grade (national average is 24% and 33%, respectively).

How does that compare to other large urban school systems? National numbers are a much different mix. Not relevant to a city school system.

How about the CCSD magent schools? Well the grand idea was to put some of the magnet schools in some of the worst areas in town and bus the kids in. A kid who wants to study law gets a bus up to...Canyon Springs High School where graffiti and drugs in the washrooms is an all day affair. Let's not even mention gangs and gangfights. A wonderful learning enviornment for kids who may want to learn.

Ahh what happened to ADTech, The Las Vegas Academy, VoTech and the CSN high schools? Your credibility comes in question when you pick only from one end of the spectrum

Public school systems usually offer less than par education. The cities you've mentioned do suck. Chicago used to be the flat out worst. Now they are just among the worst. Milwaukee stinks. The issue with Las Vegas is that there aren't enough private schools for an alternative. You don't have many choices. The wage in town also makes it unaffordable for more than many.

You have not made your case. The very capable are well served. The first tier of regular high schools appear at least adequate...some maybe better than that. I would place Gorman and Faith in this class. Meadows is up there with ADTech perhaps. I see no crying need for more private schools.

Note again that this is a State with very high per capita federal taxes. Do you really feel that happens because they lack income?