Boom or Bust
Nevada's fast-growing school systems have many students playing catch up.
To keep up with Las Vegas’ explosive growth, the Clark County School District builds, on average, one new school per month. That alone goes a long way toward explaining why improving academic performance is especially challenging in Nevada, where the number of public school students increased by more than 50 percent between 1994 and 2003—the nation’s fastest-growing enrollment. Compounding the problem are the growing ranks of new students from immigrant families who need intensive help in English. The number of Hispanic students grew by 214 percent between the 1993-94 and 2002-03 school years, to nearly 30 percent of K-12 enrollment.
Located in the northeastern part of the city, Liliam Lujan Hickey Elementary is just one of 11 new schools that opened this school year. About 400 of the school’s 786 students are Hispanic; 278 have been identified as English-language learners.
On a sunny fall day, Wanda Keith, the school facilitator for English-language learners, works for 45 minutes with two 5th graders who moved from Mexico after the start of the school year. She uses a picture dictionary to gauge how much English the boys know. One can read only a few words in English without prompting from Keith, while the other...
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