Education Reform Blue Ribbon Task Force Continues Work to Implement Reform Agenda

LAS VEGAS, Sept. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- On Monday, September 20, the governor's Education Reform Blue Ribbon Task Force will meet at Valley High School at 10 a.m. to continue work toward implementing its education reform agenda—Nevada's Promise: Excellence, Rigor, and Equity—with the collaboration of opinion leaders and representatives from the public, private and nonprofit sectors in Nevada.

The meeting will cover an analysis of the U.S. Department of Education's comments on Nevada's Race to the Top application—Nevada's Promise—as well as reports and preliminary recommendations from each task force working group.

The meeting location was chosen to highlight one of Las Vegas' most successful turnaround schools, a key component of the Nevada's Promise reform agenda. Under the direction of Principal and Education Reform Task Force Member Ron Montoya, Valley High School was designated a "high-achieving turnaround" school under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. In five years, the school nearly doubled its percentage of students passing the state's math, reading and writing proficiency tests.

"Valley High School was an obvious choice given its ability to exemplify what Nevada's Promise aims to achieve," commented Education Reform Blue Ribbon Task Force Co-chair Elaine Wynn. "Ron Montoya contributed his considerable expertise to Nevada's Promise in proposing recommendations for turning around the lowest-achieving schools, which received consistently high marks and praise from the application's U.S. Department of Education reviewers."

Nevada's Promise was not selected as a finalist in the federal Race to the Top competition for education funds, but the Education Reform Blue Ribbon Task force will continue its work to implement the long-term education reforms detailed in the agenda, as charged by the governor's executive order. The task force has organized into three working groups—governance, legislation and public will and communication—to advance the goals set forth in Nevada's Promise.

"The Race to the Top grant competition proved to be more than an exercise to qualify for dollars," commented Education Reform Blue Ribbon Task Force Co-chair Daniel Klaich. "It was the catalyst for a major collaboration of stakeholders in creating this blueprint for education reform in Nevada. Collaboration has been the hallmark of this serious engagement, and it will require that same diversity of perspectives and representation to fulfill our promise that every school will be led by effective principals, every classroom will be led by effective teachers and every student will graduate."

The reform agenda is available at www.nevadaspromise.org.

SOURCE Education Reform Blue Ribbon Task Force