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# **UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION**

THE UNDER SECRETARY

July 1, 2003

The Honorable Jack W. McLaughlin

Superintendent of Public Instruction

Nevada Department of Education

700 East Fifth Street

Carson City, NV 89701-5096

Dear Superintendent McLaughlin:

I am writing to follow up on Secretary Paige's letter of June 10, 2003,
in which he approved the basic elements of Nevada's state accountability
plan under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as
amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). I join Secretary
Paige in congratulating you on Nevada's commitment to holding all
schools and districts accountable for the achievement of all students.

I appreciate Nevada's efforts to meet the Title I requirements and your
responsiveness to making changes as a result of the external peer review
of Nevada's accountability plan. The purpose of this letter is to
document several aspects of Nevada's plan for which final action is
still needed.

-   As outlined in the enclosure to this letter, Nevada indicated that
    its regulations need to be amended to reflect how adequate yearly
    progress (AYP) will be implemented as stated in your accountability
    plan. Nevada has indicated it will make these changes in the summer
    of 2003.

-   Nevada indicated in its accountability plan its intent to apply a
    confidence interval to its 'safe harbor' calculations. The use of
    this statistical test is acceptable for making AYP determinations
    this school year. We request, however, that Nevada provide impact
    data from the 2002-2003 AYP determinations regarding the use of this
    statistical test for 'safe harbor,' as soon as they are available,
    for further review and consideration by the Department. The
    Department will contact Nevada to discuss the data to be submitted
    and a timeline for the submission of those data.

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-   Nevada will use the spring test administration in grade 11 as the
    official administration date for the high school exit examination.
    Data from this administration will constitute the basis for high
    school accountability decisions. Please submit baseline data and
    annual targets as soon as they are available.

-   Nevada plans to use the graduation rate from the 2001-02 school year
    to make 2002-03 AYP designations. The State Board of Education will
    establish a graduation rate baseline and annual threshold targets in
    regulations in the summer of 2003. Please submit your graduation
    rate baseline and annual targets as soon as they are established.

Please submit this information as soon as it is available to:

Ms. Darla Marburger

Deputy Assistant Secretary

Office of Elementary and Secondary Education

U.S. Department of Education

400 Maryland Avenue, S.W.

Washington, D.C. 20202

Additionally, this letter establishes an understanding of one element in
Nevada's plan.

-   Consistent with its timeline waiver to implement the assessment
    requirements under the Improving America's Schools Act (IASA),
    Nevada will use its current norm-referenced test and writing test at
    grade 8, administered in spring 2003, for AYP decisions that take
    effect for school year 2003-04. Nevada also will use the spring 2003
    data from its new grade 8 criterion-referenced tests (CRT) to
    establish a baseline for AYP decisions and will use the spring 2004
    grade 8 CRT results for AYP decisions that take effect for school
    year 2004-05.

Nevada must confirm that the element noted above is an accurate
statement of Nevada's plan. Provided that Nevada supplies this
confirmation and information requested above, subject to the
Department's review and consideration, we will consider Nevada to have
met its conditions of approval and fully approve the plan.

With regard to several issues in Nevada's accountability plan, the
Secretary has exercised his authority to permit the orderly transition
from requirements under the IASA to NCLB.

-   Nevada proposed to include students with the most significant
    cognitive disabilities in its accountability system based on their
    performance on an alternate assessment that would hold those
    students to different achievement standards from those all other
    students are expected to meet. All students with disabilities must
    be included in a State's accountability system. Moreover, §200.1 of
    the final Title I regulations requires that all students be held to
    the same grade level achievement standards. In addition,
    §200.6(a)(2)(ii) of those regulations states that "\[a\]lternate
    assessments must yield results for the grade in which the student is
    enrolled."

We have issued new proposed regulations that would permit a State to use
alternate achievement standards to measure the achievement of students
with the most significant cognitive disabilities (refer to the Federal
Register notice of March 20, 2003). For this transition year only, while
these proposed regulations are being finalized, Nevada may use alternate
achievement standards for students with the most significant cognitive
disabilities who take an alternate assessment to calculate AYP for
schools and districts. Those alternate achievement standards must be
aligned with Nevada's academic content standards and reflect
professional judgment of the highest learning standards possible for
those students. Moreover, the percentage of students held to alternate
achievement standards at the district and State levels may not exceed
1.0 percent of all students in the grades assessed.

We note that this transition policy is not intended to preempt the
rulemaking process or the standards and assessment peer review process,
and that the final regulations may reflect a different policy and/or
different percentage.

-   Nevada can calculate graduation rate for a school as a whole and for
    each of the five race/ethnicity subpopulations to be used in the
    2002-03 AYP determination process. For all remaining subpopulations,
    graduation rate data will not be available for use in the AYP
    determination process until the 2006-07 school year. Until the
    2006-07 school year, average daily attendance may be used as a proxy
    for the economically disadvantaged, limited English proficient, and
    students with disabilities subgroups.

As required by section 1111(b)(2) of Title I, Nevada must implement its
accountability plan to identify schools and school districts in need of
improvement and to implement section 1116 of Title I for the 2003-04
school year, including arranging for public school choice and
supplemental educational services. If, over time, Nevada makes changes
to the accountability plan that you have presented for approval, you
must submit information about those changes to the Department for
approval, as required by section 1111(f)(2) of Title I.

Approval of Nevada's accountability plan is not also an approval of
Nevada's standards and assessment system. Since Nevada has a timeline
waiver to complete its assessment system under IASA, the State must
submit evidence of its final assessment system at the end of the
timeline waiver. As Nevada makes changes in its standards and
assessments to meet NCLB requirements, Nevada must submit information
about those changes to the Department for peer review through the
standards and assessment process.

Please be aware that approval of Nevada's accountability plan for Title
I does not indicate that the plan complies with Federal civil rights
requirements, including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title
IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the
Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities
Act, and requirements under the Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act.

I am confident that Nevada will continue to advance its efforts to hold
schools and school districts accountable for the achievement of all
students. I wish you well in your efforts to leave no child behind.

Sincerely,

/s/

Eugene Hickok

cc: Governor Kenny C. Guinn

Enclosure

## Enclosure

In its accountability workbook, Nevada indicated that the following
policies needed final state action. Final approval of Nevada's
accountability plan is contingent upon these policies being adopted as
described in the plan.

-   The State Board of Education is given statutory authority, through
    passage of Senate Bill 191, to establish the treatment of "special"
    schools in the AYP determination process. It is expected that the
    State Board will consider regulations governing this process in the
    summer of 2003

-   Changes to state regulations to support LEP inclusion policies
    consistent with the new statute will be made in the summer of 2003.

-   For [reporting]{.underline} purposes, the state will continue to use
    existing policy that sets the minimum at 10 students. Regulations
    will be revised to reflect the reporting N (n = 10) during the
    summer of 2003.

-   Regulations will be established to allow for the masking of scores
    for any size subpopulation if all students score within the same
    achievement level. Regulation supporting this reporting contingency
    will be passed in the summer of 2003.

-   In the summer of 2003, the State Board will establish graduation
    rate thresholds in regulations. For purposes of AYP comparisons,
    schools will have to demonstrate that they have met the annual
    threshold or improved toward the threshold in comparison to the
    previous school year.

-   Current statute requires a minimum average daily attendance of 90%
    for purposes of school classifications. The State Board will address
    the attendance threshold in regulations in the summer of 2003.

-   Current Nevada statute and supporting regulations require a minimum
    90% participation rate. This issue will be resolved in regulations
    to conform to the 95% participation rate in NCLB.