Oregon Lawmakers Consider Education-Reform Package

At 6 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Tony Crawford looked at his clock in Canby, Oregon and lamented the change the next sixty minutes would bring.

"For the next hour, I am a social studies teacher at Ackerman Middle school," he said at the time. "Today's our last day. Our school is closed."

He alternates between feeling depressed and angry. His school is not closing because of issues with proficiency or performance, he said. Budget shortfalls in his district required the closure of one of its two middle schools. And since the building was the older of the two, Ackerman closed. He'll teach at the new, combined school in the newer building next year.

He's angry, he said, because the state legislature is weighing a bill that would make it easier to open charter schools -- schools that are publicly funded and can be privately run -- in Oregon. "It redirects what should be funding for public education for either private interest or expansion in charter schools who have not proven to save money," he said. Oregon is losing $1 billion in public education funding this year, about one sixth of its total education budget.

Meanwhile, lawmakers are considering a slew of bills that change the way the state runs education, including measures that mandate a full-day kindergarten and name the governor as the state's education superintendent. On Friday, these bills advanced through committees in the state house.

But unlike in other states, where bills that alter teacher management practices pit officials against teachers unions, the Oregon bill that amends teacher evaluation is the least controversial.

"It has bi-partisan support," said Gail Rasmussen, president of the Oregon Education Association, adding that her group helped write the bill.

The evaluation bill requires that teacher evaluation system take into account multiple measure of teacher effectiveness, stating that student performance data is one important component. The bill passed the senate on Tuesday afternoon.

"The Senate took a significant step forward today in creating a more accountable and innovative education system in Oregon," Gov. John Kitzbaher said in a statement. "Senate Bill 290's focus on professional development and uniform standards for educators and administrators can help achieve our goals of delivering better results for students, more resources for teachers and a better return for taxpayers."

But the other education bills advanced through Oregon state house committees quietly, making Rasmussen worry that "they bulked them together and the laws haven’t been vetted," she said. "It just doesn’t sound right."

Crawford said that as a social studies teacher, he was ashamed at the apparent lack of public process involved in considering these laws without debate. "It's unconscionable," he said.

Lew Fredrick, a Democratic Representative, said the bills only advanced this far because of backroom talks. "It avoided the discussion that would have taken place in committee," he said. "We had a charter-school bill that failed in the house floor. Once it failed, the co-chair decided we weren’t going to have more meetings."

Regardless of the process, Fredrick dislikes the content of three of the bills. One law "ends up being a re-segregation situation, where you end up with wealthy white kids moving to different schools than the low income minority kids," he said, referring to a law that allows students to move from district to district.

Amendments to the charter bill could end up allowing public universities to authorize the creation of new charter schools. "They're trying to let charter schools come in and set up schools in the same way you'd just set up a McDonalds somewhere," Fredrick said.

Calls placed to the office of Rep. Matt Wingard, the architect of much of this legislation, were not immediately returned.

The charter law touches on a national debate about the viability and value of charter schools. Advocates of charter schools and school choice say that zip codes should not determine the quality of education a child gets. Critics say they erode funding from traditional public schools.

Like Crawford, Rasmussen lamented the timing of the proposed expansion of charter schools. " Part of that bill promotes the growth of charter schools at a time when our own public schools are struggling. It does shift money away from our schools," she said. "That would be long-term damage. These bills certainly wouldn’t help us help our kids around it."

She added that she would rather see resources designated to bolstering the public college system. "Putting more emphasis in charter schools than on the college system doesn’t make sense," she said.

Comments

[raechel]

07:14 PM on 06/19/2011

I agree that charter schools are not the long-term solution. The charter school movement is, however, breaking the logjam / monopoly that the public school system of the 1960s and 1970s has had. It is unfortunate that so much time and money have been spent to accomplish this; and unfortunate that the education bureaucracy lost sight of its mission and turned instead to protecting itself. Of course, all bureaucracies do that. Their #1 goal: protect the bureaucracy. Change never comes from those in power, those who have benefited from the system in place.

It is sad that we are unable in this country to effect a national policy that addresses known issues quickly and forces change from the top down. Very sad. Instead we must kick the support pillars out and hope that what rises up from the ashes is better than what we destroyed.

As for public debate, are you kidding? The public discussion of this issues has been incessant, the noise deafening. We don't need more "process," we need more action, and results.

[PdxSue]

07:17 PM on 06/16/2011

It is repulsive to me that no one is even talking about how to fund our traditional public schools that accept ALL kids. It is lame to assume that if you are not for "reform" then you are a "defender of the status quo." No parent or any person passionate about education wants to see eduction stagnate, but always improve. We can always improve in any sector. What is unacceptable is assuming we can improve while we close schools, cut teachers, cut arts and other programs, shorten school days, etc. The focus on charters takes away from this work. Gee, who does that benefit...only those not in favor of raising taxes.

[OHteach]

11:33 AM on 06/18/2011

Good comments. Teachers are for reforms that make sense. Not the thinly veiled attempts to hurt public education, masquerading as reform.

[funky professor]

02:02 PM on 06/20/2011

Assuming that "improvement" is/can be/should be achieved while closing schools, cutting teachers, raising class sizes, getting rid of the arts, letting schools dilapidate, reduce instructional days, etc. is multiple shades of crazy. So let me get this straight . . . here is the recipe for improved public education: instead of working to fund and improve existing schools, we open "charter" schools and make them available to only those with means. That way, the wealthy white/Asian kids have a place to go that is separate from the economically struggling folks. At the "charter" schools, we can pay the teachers less and run it more like a "business", thus increasing "efficiency" (proven false, btw). Meanwhile, those lower-class schools are left to fend for themselves with lower funding, more lead paint, mold, and dilapidated environs in which to learn; they are also provided less than the "best-and-the-brightest" educators, because, let's face it, who in their right mind will continue to elect to take on the debt, long hours, and ridiculous "accountability" increasingly put into place by those who know NOTHING ABOUT EDUCATION? This is the recipe for "improvement"? The only folks who see this as a good idea are people who just don't get it. Guess what? Civilization costs money. As FDR once said, "“The test of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough to those who have little.”

[eceresa]

01:25 PM on 06/16/2011

Charters are a less effective model. Less than one in five charters succeeds in improving students' education, compared to traditional public schools.

So, of course, the answer to the problem is obviously to expand charter schools. Makes perfect sense, right?

[TINA ANDRES]

10:50 PM on 06/16/2011

We should probably take a hard look at why charters are appealing. One of the major reasons is that they are free from many of the regulations that bog down regular public schools. Why, if those regulations are supposed to make things better for schools, can charters simply choose not to follow them? Why do regular schools have to waste their time with these regulations if they aren't helping students. Aside from that, charter schools should be required to accept special needs students along with all of the costs associated with them. As it stands, special needs students remain in the public school when they would have gone to the charter school IF the charter school actually had services. That is just wrong.

[eceresa]

06:12 AM on 06/17/2011

Charters could be MORE regulated than regular publics. If they were still driven by the media hype that they've got right now, that would be the selling point. Charters are appealing because people have been told for decades that all public schools are horrible, and have been told for at least a decade that all charter schools are great.

That's not to say that there aren't some things that could be improved about publics, but I think the main reason people find charters appealing is the hype.

[amgnme]

12:39 PM on 06/15/2011

The problem with all the bills, laws, negotiations, etc is that none of them include any input by teachers. Teachers are not the problem as politicians would have you think:they are. Every decision made is for their benefit in some way. So they continue to come up with bizarre regulations that cost millions to research and implement and investing that money in their own futures rather than investing in our students. Money isn't the problem: it's greed.

[dbear4u2]

04:11 AM on 06/15/2011

Let's start with "no child left behind" and agree that there are kids that need to be left behind. A retarded, mentally challenged or whatever you want to call someone with an IQ of 30 is never going to be a contributing member of society. So why spend over $60,000 sending the child to a "special school" to educate them? With the law that could start at age 4 and go to age 21. You do the math, 60,000 time 17 and that is what you are going to spend on 1 child for their education. Those parents argue they want the best education for their child but when you get beyond the rhetoric, they want the child out of the house as long as possible so they don't have to deal with them. You want to fix town budgets? Fix the State mandates for education for "special needs kids"

[dave1f]

02:51 PM on 06/16/2011

I would tend to reject the opinion of anyone that would base an important decision on the results of the current means of intelligence measurement (as I have told many Mensa recruiters). In fact, based on your statement, I would tend to have left you behind because of your prominent lack of Humanity towards those in need. Instead of devising a Humanitarian solution, you wish to punish those that have already suffered and decided Not to kill or abandon their child (I applaud their choice) as occurs in many third world countries. And as those countries have shown, this propagates towards gender repression as well. The logic of your statement would support the practice and belief that Women or Minorities should not be given an education as well. That to, some would argue, would reduce the Government cost of education, and those that would make such an argument would show that educational efforts were wasted on them. If your solution were valid, then many fundamentalist Muslim nations would Not be involved in the current economic reduction in capabilities (and they have Oil). Part of the problem seems to be the results of a "dumbing" down of a culture to promote subjugation. Don't reduce the education, use it to show intellect in devising real solutions to maintain high educational and humanitarian cultural standards. For if we are indeed intelligent, then we can have it all and validate our existence, NOT reduce ourselves to regress back to a primordial ooze.

[ETexOpinion]

10:18 PM on 06/14/2011

I'm a teacher in Texas and I know which party is dismantling public ed. in our state. Can someone tell me which party is behind Oregon's situation?

[alpha9230]

07:56 PM on 06/17/2011

Mr Wingard a Republican and...........makes his money from charter schools. Funny how he is the co-chair of the education committee! He should recuse himself from this particular committee or at least be up front about his aliances.

[rjk111]

09:44 PM on 06/14/2011

Corporates wish to own the schools. Plain and simple. Privatize the gains, and publicize the losses ... it's how they've always done it.

[Dahlia Hutton]

09:28 PM on 06/14/2011

Our country would rather pay for wars than pay for education.

[booker52]

09:20 PM on 06/14/2011

Schools should not be privatized. Tax funded public schools are open for everyone. You want to send your child to a private school don't ask everyone else to fund your choice.

[NW Mom]

01:11 PM on 06/15/2011

Charter schools in Oregon are public schools, and the interdistrict transfer bill would only allow transfers within our existing public K-12 system. Very few of our legislators would ever support private school vouchers. It just wouldn't fit in Oregon.

[eceresa]

01:30 PM on 06/16/2011

Charter proponents always argue that they're public schools. But not the way we normally think of public schools. They take public funding, yes. But in some states, they can make a profit off of that. In others, the charter can't profit directly, but can contract with a for-profit management company.

Then they're selective. Since it's an opt-in system, they don't have any apathetic parents. Parent involvement being a major factor in educational outcomes (larger than in-school factors), that's a huge advantage. Then, if they find that a kid is dragging down their test scores, they suggest that maybe the school and the kid aren't a good fit, and send him back to public school to drag the scores down there. And though that's often technically illegal, they can get away with it, since they're nowhere near as regulated as traditional public schools.

So they game the system to teach the easiest kids to teach, the ones that would likely do well no matter where they go. And despite those advantages, fewer than one in five charters succeeds in improving education outcomes, compared to traditional public schools.

Not a good system. And not "public," in the way most people understand it. That's like saying that, when DC had a voucher system, all of the private schools that accepted vouchers were really public schools.

[TabaskoKat]

09:06 PM on 06/14/2011

i live in oregon and i swear we insist on having the worst schools in the country. you ever talk to an oregon high school grduate?? they are stupid no-it-alls. i get pissed with them but its really our legislature that wants to make sure our schools are as bad as they are in alabama

[pdxist]

09:49 PM on 06/14/2011

Know. Know-it-alls.

[mary896]

08:46 PM on 06/14/2011

Private schools screen every student, accepting only the very best and brightest. The majority of 'average' students are left behind. :( Getting rid of public schools, or even replacing a bunch of them with 'charter' schools, would be the final nail in America's coffin. Education for ALL Americans is the core of our value and power. Take away our brain power, we're nothing.

[rjk111]

09:48 PM on 06/14/2011

Rich corporate owners don't really care who gets left behind. But they do care how much each parent pays them for little Johnny's schooling.

[stanton89]

07:54 PM on 06/14/2011

Schools should all be privatized.

[pdxist]

08:15 PM on 06/14/2011

And that's the real point of charters and vouchers: privatization. Once all the schools are privatized, government funding will be reduced and eliminated (debt is the #1 concern!), and citizens will have to pay for their children's education out of their own pocket. Children will go uneducated for the crime of being born into poor families. It's essentially Ryan's Medicare plan, applied to schools. Republicans tried to privatize Social Security as well.

[rjk111]

09:46 PM on 06/14/2011

Yes. People interested in privatizing schools better get used to the idea of making monthly payments to Corporation XYZ for their children's schooling.

[jumpingforjoy]

08:23 PM on 06/14/2011

Why?

[eceresa]

01:31 PM on 06/16/2011

Because short-term profits are more important than the long-term viability of our country.