Angie Sullivan: The Nevada Achievement School District is Only for Public Schools, Not for Failing Charter Schools
Nevada imported a woman named Jana Wilcox Lavin to run its “Achievement School District.” She is not an educator. She has a degree in marketing. The Nevada ASD is modeled on Tennessee’s failed ASD, which took over the state’s lowest performing schools and promised to vault them to the state’s top 25% in only five years and failed to do so (most are still in the bottom 5%). Lavin is employed by the United Way at the same time that she plans for the Nevada ASD. She ran charters in the Tennessee ASD and holds it up as a model. Is this what is called an “urban myth” or is it just a hoax? How many teachers and principals will be fired, how many charters will scoop up millions of dollars, and how many will succeed or fail? Place your bets, folks, it is Nevada.
Angie Sullivan, who teaches in a low-income school in Clark County (Las Vegas) writes:
The unfairness of the Achievement School District law became crystal clear during a discussion with Jana Wilcox Lavin.
The law requires a list which includes the under-performing schools in the bottom 5%.
It is apparent that Nevada’s under-performing schools are mainly charters and rural schools. 70% of the under-performing Nevada schools are charters and rural schools.
However the law ONLY allows a public school to be selected for charter take-over.
Severely underperforming charters are not allowed to be taken over by the Achievement School District.
This law is a direct attack on public schools while obviously ignoring the cancerous and tragic Nevada charters.
Also, rural schools which fill the under-performing list will most likely never be selected because there simply is zero appetite by charter schools to take over a rural school. This made me laugh inside to learn -having grown up in the rural communities of Lovelock, Winnemucca, and McDermitt. I would love to see an outsider go into those places and take over the school. I picture the community chasing the outsider out of town with a shotgun.
We also had a frank discussion about the alternative schools – 3 are on the list. These schools fill a specific need in our communities. Desert Oasis for instance is actually a school which serves a unique community Angie Sullivan: The Nevada Achievement School District is Only for Public Schools, Not for Failing Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog: