The Oregonian has six full-time ed. reporters (at last count), one (Kim Melton) dedicated to PPS, and two (Betsy Hammond and Bill Graves) who write about local, state and national ed. issues.

They and their predecessors have, over the two decades I’ve lived in Portland, completely missed the story of how market-oriented “reforms,” funded by corporate foundations, in combination with radical revenue cuts, have led to the re-segregation of our public schools, even as our neighborhoods re-integrate and gentrify.

They’ve also completely missed the story of how the Portland Schools Foundation has given cover to allow wealthy, white Portlanders to privately fund their public schools, while the rest of us fight over crumbs.

It’s rare to see anything critical about the corporate or governmental status quo in the pages of the O, especially if it smacks of populism. It is this kind of lazy, cozy elitism that is the downfall of papers like the Oregonian, not their failure to adapt to new media (though they suck at that, too).

But I’d give major kudos to anyone attending this panel:
Improving Achievement and Closing the Achievement Gap in Academic Writing: The Story of Portland’s Grant High School
-Linda Christensen

It’s sad to see education writers duped into believing the words of Vicki/Gates; framing the $500 million the Gates Foundation will spend on teachers as “pioneering,” as Betsy does in her article, is head-shaking. Money talks – and education reporters, like most other journalists, are more or less lap dogs for the big foundations.

Maybe Bill can call up his billionaire pal Eli Broad – Eli paid for some really bogus merit-pay research conducted by Oregon’s very own market fundamentalists at the Cascade Policy Institute.

For those interested in Mr. Gates and his foundation’s history, there’s a new website dedicated to the foundation’s foray into reforming public education. It’s not fully operational yet, but it will be soon. Check it out at: GatesEducationReport.blogspot.com

-KL

Uh….and how on earth do you give merit pay to those who teach special populations? Perhaps I should open up a stem cell lab for application in my classroom, so that I may reverse congenital disabilities so that my students could meet benchmarks???

Yup, just lower all teacher pay to minimum wage (and make that FEDERAL min. wage). Pay current salaries to the kiss-ups in each building, and we WILL FIX EVERY EDUCATION ILL!!!!! YEEEHA!!!! BINGO, I HAVE THE ANSWER!!!

Since PPS is not going to purposely hire poor teachers, then pay for performance has to cost extra money or we have to give only certain teachers raises. If it costs extra money then the money could be better spent adding offerings, activities, more librarians, counselors, arts, activities in the middle grades etc. Unless, my 42 years of experience in schools is all wrong, teachers won’t do any better if they are paid more so giving some teachers more will have no real impact (on real learning).

However, if it means cutting the pay of some teachers (the other alternative) the administrators and board members need to state this right up front. “Listen, some of you teachers who are working 10 and 12 hour days are still doing a horrible job. We are not sure why, maybe you are just dumb, or maybe you aren’t paying enough attention to inservices which we give you to make you better. Who knows? But anyway we are cutting your pay and giving it to those teachers who are doing … exactly what we want … or getting better test scores cause they are teaching more directly to the test or rigging their own classes to show unimportant gains and calling them important … or not causing trouble (oops, we didn’t mean that)…or they are in a subject which is easier to demonstrate gains. Whatever,tough sh##”

Now that’s education we could all get behind and not too far removed from the other wonderful ideas that Vicki brought us — the destruction of Benson High School, a messed up unfair transfer system which depleted offerings in neighborhood high schools, and the costly, undereducating
k-8′s.