School superintendent banks job on Fresno students: Fire me if test scores don’t improve
Fresno Unified Superintendent Bob Nelson has a job to do, and if he doesn’t do it in the next four years, he said, the board should sack him.
His goal is to get two-thirds of the district’s more than 70,000 students to perform at grade level for math and reading standards. As of the 2021-2022 school year, only about a third are on par for reading, and just over 20% are on par for math.
“If I’m not the guy who can move the needle academically for kids,” Nelson said, “you need to get me out of here and put somebody in who can.”
Nelson discussed these goals, as well as highlights of his tenure, in a recent interview with The Bee’s Education Lab.
The superintendent has been at the helm of California’s third-largest school district for more than five years. With his latest contract extension, Fresno Unified trustees approved to keep him through 2026, which will put Nelson at almost a decade in office at the end of the contract – an increasingly rare feat among superintendents in the era of pandemic politics.
Over those years, Nelson’s been credited by some with improving relations with the Fresno Teachers Association, taking over at a time when tensions were near an all-time high and teachers had voted to strike. Nelson’s also been steering the district through the pandemic for more than half his tenure, after schools in FUSD and around the country were forced to shutter about two-and-a-half years after Nelson’s contract began.
After five years, why does he think Fresno Unified students remain so far behind?
In Nelson’s mind, one of the biggest culprits is the district’s issue with chronic absenteeism. FUSD’s numbers, released in December as part of the California Department of Education’s Dashboard, were staggering: as of the 2021-2022 school year, about 50.9% of FUSD students were chronically absent. That’s in the neighborhood of about 37,000 Fresno students.
“To some degree, we did it to ourselves in the pandemic,” he said. “We contact-traced out people with a lot of fidelity.”
That’s partly because the pandemic shifted priorities for Fresno Unified and districts around the country.
“We stopped being an educational entity, for lack of a better descriptor, and we became a health agency,” he said. “We became the enforcement arm for pandemic health policy, which wasn’t really fun.”
The pandemic changed the academic trajectory the district was on, too, as Nelson often emphasizes publicly. Fresno Unified’s students were behind the rest of the state when Nelson started in 2017, years before the pandemic. But its students were also making gains at a higher rate than the students across California.
The percentage of Fresno Unified students meeting reading standards bumped up from just over 33% in the 2016-2017 school year to over 36% in the 2017-2018 year – a more than 3% gain, while statewide students’ growth in reading was approximately 1.3%.
The same is true of the district’s math scores between the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 school years. The percentage of students meeting the standard increased from roughly 24% to just under 27% for a 2.75% gain, compared with statewide growth of only about 1.1%.
Fresno Unified had smaller gains in reading but larger gains in math between the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 school years. Closer to 1.5% more students met reading standards while almost 3% more met math standards – but those gains again outpaced statewide growth that hovered closer to 1.2% for reading and 1.1% for math.
The pandemic, however, eradicated those test score gains.
Fresno Unified students lost ground in reading and math scores at a higher rate than the rest of the state, dropping six points on reading tests and nine points on math. Across California overall, reading scores dropped four points, and math scores dropped six points.
As for how the district can right its course after dramatic setbacks, Nelson sees another possible “panacea,” and that’s the expansion of early learning. Similar to tackling Fresno Unified’s chronic absenteeism problem, the aim is to secure more time with each of its students.
“I need (parents) to give us their early learner earlier,” he said. “Because people are like, ‘Oh, my God, kids in Fresno are so far behind.’ No, they actually didn’t start at the same level because none of them went to preschool.”
Studies over the past five years have pointed to the benefits of pre-K for students, particularly in terms of developing math and reading skills.
The pandemic also sparked heavy short-term investments in schools around the nation, sending a treasure trove of federal dollars that could help significantly expand learning opportunities.
Nelson said that figuring out how to allocate these one-time COVID relief funds wisely — while also in the middle of a bargaining cycle with the Fresno Teachers Association’s contract set to expire in June — will define his next two years as superintendent.
“Can we navigate this situation in a responsible way, knowing that the money is there now, but (while) all the signs point to the fact that the economy is dropping through the floor?” he said. “How do you preserve ... making sure kids have everything they need to be as successful as they need in a really complex system while simultaneously compensating people fairly?”
The Education Lab is a local journalism initiative that highlights education issues critical to the advancement of the San Joaquin Valley. It is funded by donors. Learn about The Bee’s Education Lab at its website.
