Carson-Douglas schools neither highest or lowest achievers in the state

Carson City, Douglas, Lyon and Storey county schools didn't show up among the state's top performers in Terra Nova tests of overall student achievement this year.

But no schools in the area showed at the low end of the scale, either.

State Superintendent of Education Mary Peterson said the 1999 Legislature directed her department to designate schools as "demonstrating exemplary achievement, high achievement, adequate achievement or needing improvement."

The vast majority of schools in the state, including all those in Carson City, Douglas, Lyon and Storey counties, fell into the broad "adequate" category.

To reach the exemplary category, she said, more than half the students in a school had to score in the top quarter of the national percentile in reading, language arts, math and science.

Only two Nevada schools did it this year: Advanced Technologies Academy in Las Vegas and Elizabeth Lenz Elementary in Reno.

Another eight schools were listed as having high achievement - one in Clark and the rest in Washoe County. All those schools had 40 percent or more of students in the top quarter nationally.

And there were 10 schools listed as needing improvement in the state. In those schools, more than 40 percent of students tested in the bottom quarter in all four subject areas.

Those schools will all be eligible for state funding to start or expand remedial programs. Six of them are in Clark County and one each in Nye, Pershing, Elko and Washoe counties.

Peterson said two of the schools - Fitzgerald and Madison elementary in Clark - have been in the bottom category for three years. The state will develop improvement programs for them. The other schools will submit their own plans for improving their scores to the state.

State officials have a total of $3.3 million available to the 10 schools as well as 17 other schools where 40 percent of students scored in the bottom quarter in one, two or three of the subject areas but not in all of them.