EDITORIAL: CCSD fears accountability, pushes to gut Read by 3

The Nevada education establishment is terrified that parents will one day see plainly how little their children are learning.

At a board meeting last month, the Clark County School District Board of Trustees voted to support gutting the “Read by 3” initiative. The move is a cowardly attempt to deceive both families and students and to protect the special interests that profit off the foundering status quo.

The Legislature originally passed Read by 3 in 2015 as a means of ensuring that kids have basic literacy skills before they enter fourth grade. Under the legislation, students who fail to meet reading proficiency standards in third grade would be held back unless they receive an exemption. It’s a modest accountability measure intended to help students succeed as they move through their academic careers. Through the first three grades, children are learning to read. Afterward, they read to learn. Fourth graders who can’t read well are set up to fail every day they remain in school.

Yet the law has been under constant assault from entrenched education interests who fear a parental revolt if the depth of this failure is exposed. State testing shows that a majority of district third graders don’t make the grade.

Under current statutes, Nevada schools starting in 2028 must retain third graders who aren’t proficient in reading. Holding these students back would hurt in the moment, but advancing them is cruelty. What’s especially tragic is that many parents assume their children are doing fine because the district keeps advancing them.

More than a dozen states already impose similar requirements. There are numerous studies that show retention improves student achievement.

If the school district’s priority were helping students, keeping the retention requirement in place would be an obvious step. Instead, the trustees are now complicit in setting many of these students up for failure.

The latest incarnation of Read by 3 was part of an omnibus education package backed by Gov. Joe Lombardo in 2023. That was the same session in which the governor approved a massive increase in education spending. Ben Kieckhefer, who was then Gov. Lombardo’s chief of staff, said the delayed retention requirement would allow students time to benefit from the new funding.

The delay will allow school districts to provide “additional literacy specialists and support for the youngest grades to help ensure we meet our literacy goals,” Mr. Kieckhefer said while presenting the bill.

That funding was widely celebrated. Jhone Ebert, then serving as state superintendent of public instruction, called it a “tremendous milestone for education in Nevada, as we have secured the largest increase in K-12 funding in state history.” She also said, “I am immensely proud of all that was accomplished, including the passage of bills that will support childhood literacy.”

Ms. Ebert now serves as the district’s superintendent. Unsurprisingly, dumping money into a broken system has actually done little to improve childhood literacy. So district officials and union interests are desperate to keep the public from learning just how many third graders struggle to read and comprehend text.

What’s especially discouraging is that this scenario is a repeat of history. In 2015, then-Gov. Brian Sandoval signed a third-grade retention requirement that would have begun in summer 2019. But before it did, his successor, Steve Sisolak, signed a bill removing mandatory retention.

“We need to have a sense of urgency that goes along with this policy because I do not think any of us want to tell families that we are requiring their child to be held back,” Mr. Kieckhefer said in 2023. “That is hard. If we see that situation on the horizon, the sense of urgency for us as adults to be successful is there, and it is a way for us to not just hold children and schools accountable, but to hold ourselves accountable.”

Mr. Kieckhefer was far too optimistic. Nevada’s education leaders — and the legislative Democrats who take their campaign contributions — have no desire to hold themselves or the system accountable, even when it means children don’t learn to read.

Instead, they want more money now, accountability never.