Nevada funds students at risk of not graduating high school. It isn’t working, study says

Nevada school districts receive millions of dollars from the state each year to support students at risk of not graduating from high school.

But those extra funds are not improving at-risk students’ odds of earning their diploma, according to a new study.

Staff at the research agency WestEd found that an artificial intelligence program effectively determined which students were at risk of not graduating, but that additional dollars provided to support those students did not improve their academic performance or the likelihood that they would graduate.

Nevada limits the at-risk label to students in the bottom 20 percent of Graduation Related Analytic Data (GRAD) score earners, the report said, totaling around 93,000 Nevada students last school year. The AI-calculated score is based on roughly 70 measures of student need and performance.

Over the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, “no impact was found on the impact of at-risk status on academic or attainment indicators,” said Patrick McClellan, an education finance research associate at WestEd and co-author of the report with Kelsey Krausen, WestEd’s director of education finance.

The study assessed at-risk students’ graduation rates, chronic absenteeism and standardized test results in math, science, early literacy and English language arts. The state’s Commission on School Funding approved the analysis Sept. 25.

Nevada schools receive about $3,320 in extra per-pupil funding for eligible at-risk students, the report said, an amount comparable to other states. The Clark County School District has more than $159 million allocated for at-risk weighted funding through June 30, 2027, according to its budget approved in May.

Nevada law allows at-risk weighted funds to be spent on services such as free pre-K programs, teacher professional development and reading skills centers.

Questions over approach

The report and its authors noted some of the study’s deficiencies. The analysis included just two school years, and the results apply only to students on the cusp of eligibility for the at-risk label.

However, the report said its findings raise questions about how Nevada distributes at-risk funding and whether at-risk funds should be allowed to combine with other weighted funds.

Nevada offers schools additional funding, called weighted funds, to students with extra needs, such as students who are at-risk, disabled or whose primary language is not English.

Currently, Nevada schools with students who are eligible for multiple weighted funds receive only the money to support one of their needs. A stacked weight model would allow students to receive the extra funding for all of their needs.

McClellan said only about 52,000 students of the roughly 93,000 eligible received at-risk funding last school year. The remainder received weighted funds from other pools that they were eligible for, he said.

If Nevada were to let weights stack, the report authors suggested that the state set a number of at-risk students to fund, rather than a proportion of students, as is done now. Krausen said such a model would protect districts from losing funds to enrollment decline, a nationwide trend in public education that has already caused budgeting chaos in Nevada.

“If it’s a set number, then that number can be revisited and increased should enrollment overall increase across the state,” Krausen said.

McClellan and Krausen also wrote that their analysis may suggest that districts and schools need coaching on how to use at-risk funds effectively. Not much research exists on how to properly support at-risk students, Krausen said. She added that local education leaders should analyze their at-risk students’ specific needs before spending at-risk dollars.

“There is likely not one intervention that fits the needs of all students,” Krausen said. “It’s really critical that local leaders are digging in more deeply to understand the needs of students in order to direct this funding effectively.”

What do the findings mean?

As the Commission on School Funding considers this study’s findings, its authors and local education policy analysts shared differing interpretations.

Both McClellan and Krausen said the study should not be a sign to give up on at-risk funding, as research shows allocating more money to services for needier students helps them academically. McClellan added that the lack of negative effects is reassuring, despite results showing no positive effects.

“Providing additional funding for students who are economically disadvantaged or otherwise at risk is in line with best practice from across the country,” Krausen said. “I think it’s clear from input from our leaders across the state that this funding is really critical in order for them to provide the types of support that students need to be successful.”

Amanda Morgan, executive director for the policy group Educate Nevada Now, said she doesn’t see the study as a failure of additional funding, but rather proof that the money is being targeted incorrectly.

Clark County’s former Victory Schools, for example, received targeted state funding and produced positive outcomes, she said. Those schools were in some of the state’s highest-poverty ZIP codes.

“Poverty has just been such a reliable predictor of whether a student needs that extra support, and the research shows targeting funding there has been really effective, not only elsewhere in the country but here in Nevada,” Morgan said.

The current value of the at-risk per-pupil dollars can also leave schools without enough funds to establish adequate interventions, Morgan added. And once improvements begin, she said, the money that spurred growth can dry up.

“Not only do they typically not have the funds to really fully implement that, but they’re also afraid to because they might lose that funding the following year,” she said. Morgan added that she knows of one school that discontinued intervention programs because they lost $1 million in at-risk funding after they improved enough students’ GRAD scores.

Anahit Baghshetsyan, policy analyst at the think tank Nevada Policy, said she views the study as proof that raising education funding does not automatically produce better results for students. She called Nevada’s current approach to at-risk funding “a waste of taxpayer money.”

“At its core, at-risk funding is saying, let’s just throw more money into the system that has been failing our kids for years,” Baghshetsyan said, adding that she doesn’t believe a stacked weight system would lead to better outcomes. “Do we want maybe double or triple the amount of money that’s entering right now to enter the schools where we have empirical evidence that it’s not serving the kids?”

Baghshetsyan added: “We need to move on, and we need to figure out a better way to use these dollars, because I think the dollars are there. The good policies are not.”