With Nevada consistently ranking low in education when compared to other states, Nevada lawmakers passed a bill to hold schools accountable.

The collection and reporting of data play a pivotal role in accountability.

So what's the state's plan in these areas?

The Guinn Center made specific recommendations that the state is implementing.

And Anna Colquitt, Director of Education Policy at the nonpartisan research center, joins us now.

Anna, welcome back to Nevada Week.

(Anna Colquitt) Thank you so much, Amber.

-We are also going to talk about AI in schools and chronic absenteeism, but those recommendations that the Guinn Center made that are part of this law, what were they and what led the Guinn Center to making those recommendations?

-Yeah, so last fall, we published a report on school funding with the new Pupil-Centered Funding Plan and our new way of funding schools.

We wanted to look at how it's being implemented across the state.

And findings from that research resulted in two key findings on reporting and accountability.

And both of those made their way into SB 460, which was our huge education bill that was passed this last session.

And those two recommendations, as I noted, center around reporting and accountability, so really looking at how we can create uniform guidelines for reporting so that we're eliminating redundant reporting.

We are reporting school-level expenditures so we know not just what amount is being allocated to schools, but what schools are actually spending those funds on.

And then the second one was on centralizing a data system to make sure that that data is accessible for all people to look at how those funds are being spent.

-And how did you determine that those were needed?

-So when we interviewed through this research project, we interviewed district-level administrators and then school principals, and we asked a variety of questions around how this new funding model is really playing out.

And the way that really these two recommendations came about was in our difficulty obtaining the data to know how these funds are being both allocated and spent.

And so the data accessibility piece stemmed from that of our inability to access the funding information.

And then in terms of reporting, that came up several times of just district burden in the amount that's required of them to report and then the frequency in which they were required to report.

-And this was an issue that we came across when we did a story on exclusionary discipline and found that how that's recorded across schools in this state is different.

It's hard to compare when you don't have that uniformity.

So funding accountability, how can you determine whether a school's use of money is appropriate?

-Yeah, great question.

So it's a common thing that we talk about with, you know, Nevada funding is-- school funding is much lower than the national average, about $4,000 per student below the national average and the expert recommendation for what is adequate funding, and we talk about that a lot.

But then the follow-up question is usually, What are we doing with the funds that we do have, and are we ensuring that we are making the most of those funds?

And both questions are worth asking and worth exploring.

And so from the accountability standpoint, I think there's kind of two-fold pieces of accountability.

One is the fiduciary accountability piece to ensure that we are spending the funds in the most effective way.

So when-- And when one piece of this that kind of shifted with the Pupil-Centered Funding Plan and the introduction of it is that we are now allocating funds to different things than we were before.

So now we have this at-risk population of students where funds are being specifically allocated for these students.

We need to make sure that that money is reaching those students, and our way to do that is through reporting and accountability metrics, so really rethinking that and ensuring we have that structure in place to hold our schools accountable for that funding.

And then the other side of that, or the second piece, is that school and student success piece.

So how are we defining that?

Are we broadening our definition of school success beyond kind of those standardized metrics, standardized tests that we typically use as kind of our metric for school or student success, and what are the, what are the other things that we can consider in that equation to say, yes, this student is successful, or, yes, this school is successful?

And those definitions are changing.

-Can you paint a picture of, let's take graduation rates, for example, and students who are determined to be at risk of not graduating.

How are you going to figure out if funds are being appropriately used to address that issue?

-Great question.

And actually, through our research, that was something that came up quite often as principals or district administrators feeling this sense of uncertainty on how those funds should be spent: How should we be spending these funds?

What are good interventions?

How do we target this population of students and actually see an increase in their success, however we're defining that, and a reduction in, you know, the amount of students that are at risk of not graduating?

And so I would say most of the programs are pretty synonymous with student engagement, chronic absenteeism interventions.

They're pretty synonymous with that.

But in addition to that, it's looking at what are the actual metrics that we want to say, yes, these things lead to increased graduation rates?

And I don't think we're quite at that place yet where we have a solid, solid set of those metrics to equate the two.

-You mentioned chronic absenteeism.

The Guinn Center just released the third part of a three-part series on that, and that has recommendations from principals across the state as to how they have fought that issue.

What was surprising to you in your research on that topic in what leads to a student becoming chronically absent?

-Yeah, so as you mentioned, we recently released the third part in a three-part series on chronic absenteeism.

We looked at national trends, what's happening in Nevada, innovative practices, as you mentioned, from across the state.

We always love to highlight when schools are doing something innovative and new and different to tackle issues.

And so that was the goal with that.

With chronic absenteeism, we know it's a huge issue in education.

The national average is about 23% of our students are chronically absent.

In Nevada, it's significantly higher at 25.6% of our students that are chronically absent.

-Why do you think that is?

-It's a huge issue.

And what we learned in that research is that there are a lot of factors that contribute to a student being chronically absent.

And maybe an interesting finding to me is the way that those factors interact with each other.

So you take a factor like food security, and a student who is food insecure is 57% more likely to be chronically absent than their food secure peer.

Then you take a student with a disability that is-- Students with disabilities are, 36% of them, are chronically absent.

You look at a student who is both food insecure and has a disability, what is their likelihood of being chronically absent?

It is very high.

And so you look at the way that these layers really-- or these factors really compound when you start to add them up and how can we tackle those at the school level?

-I believe I read in your report that AI is being used to identify chronically absent students and start to address it.

AI in schools across the country, you're examining that.

And what have you found?

-Yes.

So we released a report on AI in higher education earlier this year.

We are also report-- releasing a report on AI in K-12 in the fall, which will hopefully capture kind of the risks, benefits, what's happening on a national basis with AI.

In general, from a, from a national perspective, 81 bills were introduced in the last two years for AI and K-12 initiatives.

That was across 28 states.

And then 15 of those bills were enacted.

In Nevada, we had one bill related to AI and K-12, now is AB 406, which prohibits AI from replacing mental health professionals in schools.

And so we know that this a federal priority with AI literacy and professional development in schools.

Most of the bills that were introduced and passed related to things like governance, so making sure that we have some human oversight and task forces, potentially, over AI initiatives, curriculum, and digital literacy initiatives, and then, of course, privacy and security and those things.

-And that bill that you mentioned in Nevada, it did pass.

What was the argument for it?

-Really thinking about the need to have the human interaction and human connection with students and ensuring that AI was not taking over that human interaction when students need it most in the mental health area.

So that was, that was the primary motivation behind it.

-There is a need for more mental health resources-- -Absolutely.

- --yet AI, don't yet know if that's a good response to it.

Anna Colquitt, thank you so much for joining Nevada Week.

-Thank you.