Public schools statewide are making progress toward lowering chronic student absenteeism and improving student achievement, according to data from the 2023-24 school year released Monday by the Nevada Department of Education (NDE). 

However, despite the gains the state experienced in its math and English Language Arts proficiency rates among third- through eighth-grade students, they still lag behind pre-pandemic levels. 

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jhone Ebert said the data points are a sign that things are headed in the right direction. She credits the progress to some of the recent investment the state has made in K-12 education including professional development opportunities on reading instruction and the work that NDE has been doing to personalize learning for students.  

“Coming out of the pandemic, we knew that there were a lot of pieces to the puzzle that we needed to tackle,” Ebert said. “I think all of those coming together: making sure that teachers have resources, making sure that kids are coming to school, all of those components help lean in on the increase in ELA and the increase in math.” 

Chronic absenteeism

The state’s chronic absenteeism for the 2023-24 school year dropped by 9 percentage points from about 35 percent during the 2022-23 school year to 26 percent last school year, with some 60 percent of the state’s 781 schools lowering their rates by at least 10 percentage points, NDE said in a Monday statement. 

Students are considered chronically absent when they miss 10 percent or more of school days. 

Ebert credits the decrease to the work that schools are doing to connect with students and their families. That includes home visits and efforts to track down missing students. 

The state’s largest school district, Clark County, also saw an improvement in its chronic absenteeism rate from 38 percent during the 2022-23 school year to 31 percent last school year. But Clark County remains higher than the statewide rate. 

Washoe County, which saw a surprising increase in chronic absenteeism rate in the 2022-2023 school year from the year prior, dropped its rate by about 3 percentage points in the 2023-2024 school year.

Despite the improvements, the chronic absenteeism rate remains much higher than before the pandemic. About 77 percent of schools saw increases in chronic absenteeism — averaging about 8 percentage points — from the 2018-2019 to the 2023-2024 school years, according to a Nevada Independent analysis.

Esmeralda County, the state’s smallest district with about 90 students, had the highest chronic absenteeism rate among all of the 17 school districts and the state’s charter school system, 43 percent. Douglas County School District with about 5,000 students had the lowest at less than 21 percent.

Student achievement

Nevada schools saw improvements in mathematics proficiency among students in grades third through eighth for a second consecutive year. Overall, about a third of students in those grade levels demonstrated proficiency in math – a 1 percentage-point increase compared with the 2022-23 school year. But it still remains behind the pre-pandemic math rate, which is about 38 percent. 

The state’s English Language Arts rate for those grade levels, 41 percent, also saw a slight uptick, but it too is behind the pre-pandemic rate of about 49 percent. Statewide, more than half of schools increased their English and math proficiency from the 2022-2023 school year, according to a Nevada Independent analysis.

Clark County School District (CCSD) students in grades third through eighth are performing below the state’s rates, scoring 30 percent in math proficiency and 39 percent in English Language Arts. CCSD’s high schoolers’ math proficiency rate has been on a downward trend since the 2018-19 school year, which mirrors the state’s rate.

Ebert attributed this to a need for more math teachers and an increase in student engagement. 

Take the maps below, for example. They show that most schools in the Las Vegas Valley increased their English and math proficiency in the past year, though there were schools with falling proficiency levels, mostly in the central and eastern parts of the valley. Still, it’s a marked improvement from the same maps a year ago (shown here), which had many more schools with falling English proficiency.

However, the proficiency rates still lag significantly behind pre-pandemic levels. The Indy found that more than 75 percent of schools have lower English and math proficiency than in the 2018-2019 school year. The rate was slightly higher among Title I schools, a federal designation for schools with a higher percentage of students from low-income households.

Of all the district and charter schools, Lincoln County students in grades three through eight had the highest rate in math proficiency (47 percent), while Eureka County students had the highest rate in English Language Arts proficiency (59 percent).  

Eureka County 11th graders outperformed their peers in other districts in math proficiency with a rate of 32 percent, while 11th graders in the state charter school system outperformed their peers in English language proficiency, 53 percent. 

While the state is working on strategies to move the needle on K-12 education at a faster rate, Ebert said it will take some time until the investments made during the 2023 legislative session on K-12 education are reflected in the data. 

“We’re driving specific, specialized resources to those that are most in need, and those resources just became available a year ago,” she said. “To implement any program you’re looking at least two to three years to see some shifts.”