NSEA Talking Points on Rory Reid's Education Plan

• The NSEA Board of Directors proudly endorsed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rory Reid for his commitment to educators and students as well as for his vision for K-12 public education in Nevada.
  
• His recently-released plan, Economic Development through Great Education—or EDGE—is full of ideas and initiatives NSEA has supported for years.
  
• His plan gives freedom and responsibility to schools.
  
• EDGE ensures standardized test scores aren’t the only measure of success.
  
• His plan outlines steps to ensure world-class teachers lead every Nevada classroom by providing incentives that will attract and retain the best in the country.
  
• Rory’s plan seeks to provide more money for the classrooms without raising taxes—a must in order to get Nevada out of ranking 49th in the nation in per-pupil spending.
  
• Empowerment schools as proposed in his plan have been a concept NSEA has supported for several years now. As long as implementation adheres to collective bargaining agreements we support expanding the current program.
  
• This plan seeks to hold teachers and principals accountable to create “EDGE” schools. His goal is to convert 20 percent of Nevada’s schools into these “EDGE” models. His approach in staffing those schools requires some finessing but we will continue to work with him on an approach that is acceptable to ALL NSEA members.
  
• His views on modernizing testing to assess student achievement demonstrate an innovative vision. Measuring a teacher’s success by a student’s improvement over time rather than by a “snapshot” approach is more reasonable than current NCLB standards.
  
• Most importantly, Rory supports collective bargaining laws and the rights set within. At a time when anti-education groups are seeking to eliminate our rights as labor organizations, we need a governor who is going to stand behind the rights of all teachers and education support professionals.
  
• NSEA will continue to meet with Rory Reid to ensure his goals are in line with ours in setting the education agenda for Nevada.