UPDATE - July 13, 2026:
A new law that’s looking to increase accountability in Nevada’s school districts still has lots of work ahead of it.
Senate Bill 460, passed out of the 2025 Nevada Legislative Session.
This last year since 2 News Nevada last covered it, mainly included setting up the foundation.
Now, sights are setting towards piloting and testing things out, before things go into effect in a few years.
"Senate Bill 460, it's a big bill.,” said Victor Wakefield, Superintendent, Nevada Department of Education. “So, it's hard to boil down a 200 page bill.”
The bill was originally Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro’s before parts of Governor Joe Lombardo’s education bill were combined to form one massive piece of legislation.
"The passage of that bill was one of the cues that drew me back to the silver state,” Wakefield said. “I saw that there was bipartisan momentum around improving education."
Wakefield took over as the state superintendent in November. He said this bill will be a game changer for education in Nevada.
One of the major things the legislation has covered in the last year is securing grants and funding for teacher preparation pipeline programs and open enrollment dollars were appropriated.
The next biggest thing down the pipeline starting next month is building a framework for how the Nevada Department of Education will hold school districts accountable.
"It's going to help us articulate what do strong districts do and have indicators to make sure that our districts are on track," Wakefield said.
Before SB460 went into effect, Nevada had stipulations for rating traditional public schools, but it’s never had one for districts. Over the past year, the state’s been building out infrastructure to that framework.
By August, the department will put out pilot program for the new framework of the new ideas and will run them concurrently with the current district performance system.
This way, they can compare and contrast to get the best possible product.
“Those are years out, but I think the most important thing for this, from our perspective, is that it's like an early indicator, early warning,” Wakefield said. “We use the analogy of a check engine light before. So that way if a district is seeing, financial challenges or, you know, having trouble recruiting the teacher workforce that they need."
The implementation of a tiered ranking system is not expected to be implemented until at least 2028 or 2029.
ORIGINAL STORY - July 2, 2025:
192 laws went into effect on July 1. 2 News Nevada has covered some that are centered around education, but there are some big ones looking to tackle a lot of different aspects.
The Silver State has ranked near the bottom when it comes to education ratings for quite some time.
Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo had a bill, AB584, centered around education, but ultimately it did not make it through.
However, parts of that legislation were added into Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro's education bill that did pass out of the 2025 Nevada Legislative Session.
"What you see in Senate Bill 460 is a result of maybe a month of hard discussions and building the two bills together to create the bill that passed," said Steve Canavero, Interim Superintendent of Public Instruction, Nevada Department of Education.
There are a lot of themes in the law that center around efficiency, literacy, and transparency. However, a huge focal point is accountability.
The Governor spoke about this in his State of the State Address at the beginning of the year, but it will take some time before families start to see the changes.
"It's going to take a while to plan and to develop. They're giving us the year to build in that work," Canavero said.
Starting July 1, focus will be all about planning how to implement this massive law. Canavero says the Legislature laid out a timeline for implementation.
That new accountability system isn't expected to go into effect for another two years, at least.
"What 460 has done is introduce a new aspect to our accountability system and that now holds districts accountable," Canavero said.
Nevada does have stipulations in place for rating traditional public schools. It's known as the Nevada School Performance Framework.
It's based on a one-to-five-star rating for each school. The more stars, the higher the chance the school has at being rewarded. The less, then the chances of needing additional help increase.
Now, sights will also be set on school districts as a whole, and it won't just be on school performance, but they will also look into governing boards.
"There's been some, I think, statewide issues around instability around the board level and so there is accountability for districts to ensure that they're running and that they're being governed by elected trustees to get the work done," Canavero said.
It will also include a new tiered system. A district can be deemed as low-performing, and if the district doesn't improve then it can be labeled as underperforming where a state monitor may be assigned to the district for oversight.
"There are targeted oversights and sort of more significant accountability measures that could be applied to the district level, and this is where this entity and oversight board, Public Education Oversight Board, would have a role," Canavero said.
This board is also new in this law. It'll include input from the Governor, Speaker, and Senate Majority Leader.
Canavero says that next year they will have to develop a system for how the districts will be rated. They do not know how exactly at this time.
A big portion from the Governor's bill that's not included in the law is the component that could have turned underperforming schools into charter or innovation schools.
Other priorities of the Governor that were passed in another piece of legislation, AB533, include options for open enrollment and help with funding for transportation for students moving out of one- or two-star schools into higher performing ones.
Those things Canavero says families can expect to see done first, but not at least for another year.
"The Governor was very clear that every student should have the opportunity, that families should have the opportunity, to choose schools especially if they are in a one or a two-star school, the two lowest ratings across the state," Canavero said. "So, what that means is every district is a system of open enrollment, meaning a student that's traditionally zoned for a school given the address of the student's residence, that student could then participate and attend a different school through this provision of open enrollment at the district level."
Canavero did mention that Clark County and Washoe County have similar systems in place and would just have to make some minor tweaks.
He says this next year is for how districts determine vacancies at a particular school or open seating where students can move from one school to another.
"Those kinds of details will be what we spend our next six to eight months working out," Canavero said.
Also included in the law is that districts, teachers, and principals will be able to petition to remove redundant reporting.
"Efficiency is a major theme for the Governor and so this fits within that body of work," Canavero said.
There will also be changes to literacy from the law.
"So, the state is formally making the transition to the Science of Reading framework, which is as the name implies, it's an approach to literacy and an approach to reading that's grounded in the research and grounded in the science," he said. "So statewide we'll be spending time working on providing professional development to teachers and new licensing standards."
The Interim Superintendent says the law also focuses on increasing transparency.
