February 13, 2009
by Steve Rawley
This month marks the one-year anniversary of PPS Equity, and the two-year anniversary of my first blog post on education and tax policy in Oregon (warning: salty language). Thanks to all who have contributed to the discussion here. I continue to be overwhelmed by your intelligence, honesty and thoughtfulness, and all the support I get in the community.
Someday, maybe, there will be no need for this Web site. Until then, I intend to keep it running. Thanks for all the support, and please keep the discussion rolling!
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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February 12, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Beth Slovic reports today on Willamette Week’s blog that Madison High School will eliminate it’s autonomous, autocratic academic silos and return to a single high school in the fall, saving the district money while increasing opportunity for Madison students.
That leaves just Marshall and Roosevelt in the “small schools” category, with Jefferson having previously abandoned the disastrous experiment.
We’ll have to wait and see if any middle schools are reconstituted in the Madison and Jefferson clusters, the only parts of town stuck exclusively with K8 schools for the middle grades. Like “small schools,” K8s cost significantly more money to operate while providing significantly less opportunity (and high school prep) to their middle grade students.
At Monday’s school board meeting, the business agenda included money to purchase portables for Madison feeder schools Rigler and Scott, which don’t currently have room for eighth grade. Wouldn’t it be more prudent to invest that money into re-opening Rose City Park Elementary and converting Gregory Heights back to a middle school? Given the community uproar surrounding the decision to merge those schools into a single K8, it’s difficult to argue the community would be upset to have their old configuration back.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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February 10, 2009
by Steve Rawley
For two years I have argued that Portland Public Schools needs to balance enrollment in order to pay for programmatic, geographic equity in our schools. With poor schools already cut to the bone, the budget crisis may force the issue.
Carole Smith has now acknowledged to the school board, in a roundabout way, that we may no longer be able to afford the “smallness” we’ve designed into our schools: K8’s and small high school academies.
“In recent years, we’ve … supported small high schools with additional staff, and added assistant principals, algebra teachers and counselors for most K-8 schools. Can we afford to continue those initiatives?”
What she didn’t say is that even with this extra funding, students in small high schools and K8s have dramatically less opportunity than students in comprehensive high schools and middle schools.
As implemented in PPS, “smallness” is massively inefficient and more expensive than comprehensive schools, where cohort sizes in the hundreds afford significantly more opportunity for less money.
These failed experiments have contributed to the ill-effects of another failed experiment: the free market student transfer policy. This policy entered a death spiral years ago; now comprehensive secondary education has been virtually eliminated from the poorest half of the district, while transfer slots into comprehensive schools have all but dried up.
Students left in these schools suffer a general and wide-spread dearth of electives, instrumental music, college prep classes, civics, after school activities, and even science, math and literature.
Just as the free market banking crisis has succeeded in nothing more or less than transferring massive amounts of wealth upwards, the PPS transfer policy continues to transfer thousands of students and tens of millions of dollars out of our poorest neighborhoods each year.
We can’t fix the transfer policy without a coherent, equitable and balanced system of PK-12 schools. But we can’t afford comprehensive programs without the enrollment to pay for them.
And no matter what we do, the district faces large budget cuts.
So what can we do?
Just as with the global banking system, it’s time for a reset. We need to imagine a system that, no matter how lean, is no leaner in one part of Portland than another.
The budget crisis may force the district to do what I’ve been asking them to do for two years: restore comprehensive high schools at Jefferson, Madison, Marshall and Roosevelt. Re-open closed middle schools in those clusters, too.
More importantly, the district may be forced to balance enrollment — that is, curtail neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers — to pay for programmatic equity in every part of Portland.
It is a budget-neutral way to increase programming — or stave off cuts — for our schools serving our most vulnerable students. We must imagine a system where the poor don’t bear the greatest brunt of budget cuts, as they have in Portland since Measure 5.
The bright side of this budget crisis is that we have the opportunity to design a balanced system of schools, where you cannot tell the wealth of the neighborhood by the number of classes in the high school’s catalog.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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February 9, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Zone five is shaping up to be a dud.
First, it was Vicki Phillips’ number one fan Scott Bailey. Now it’s Portland Business Alliance’s Pam Knowles.
I’ve been critical of Sonja Henning, but now I’m hoping like hell she runs for re-election. Run, Sonja, run!
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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February 6, 2009
by Steve Rawley
The “Initiative for 21st Century Libraries” is on the agenda for this Monday’s school board meeting, with district library staff presenting their case for what our school libraries should look like.
If last month’s community forum was any indication, expect to hear a call for a staffed library with media literacy instruction available to every PPS student. (That last part is particularly critical; some PPS high school principals are under the mistaken impression that students don’t need instruction in research and the evaluation of information in the age of the Internet.)
Friends of libraries are asked to attend and wear red to show their support. The meeting starts at 7pm, the library update is scheduled for 7:55, and citizen comment is scheduled for 9:45 (since this is an informational item — no vote — there will not be citizen comment immediately following the staff presentation).
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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February 2, 2009
by Steve Rawley
A new study in the journal Pediatrics finds that school recess ameliorates student behavior problems, and that children with limited recess time are more likely to be black, poor and urban.
There is anecdotal evidence in Portland (PPS does not keep track of recess time centrally) that schools with high poverty and minority concentrations tend to limit recess time in order to maximize instructional time, ostensibly to improve test scores.
(Thanks to reader Buzz for the tip.)
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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January 29, 2009
by Steve Rawley
David Wynde issued a dire warning at the last school board meeting about the coming budget, which he describes as large cuts to an already inadequate base of funding. Though he didn’t say it, there will likely be cuts to programming, increases in class size and maybe even school closures.
Current enrollment figures, released this week, show a persistent pattern of divestment from the poorest neighborhoods in Portland due to the migration of students under the Portland Public Schools student transfer policy, and its labyrinthine, outdated and counterproductive layers of school board exceptions and amendments.
We have allowed “choice” to design a system of schools in Portland that are dramatically inequitable in terms of course offerings, teacher experience, and discipline.
School choice has dismantled, closed, or demolished (literally) every single comprehensive secondary school in the Jefferson and Madison clusters. The same is true for the Roosevelt and Marshall clusters, save two beleagured, largley poor and minority middle schools on the fringes of district boundaries.
The schools that remain disproportionately lack library staff, music, art and electives when compared to the rest of Portland, and are more segregated by race and class than the neighborhoods they serve.
It’s been two and a half years since a joint city-county audit (230KB PDF) concluded that Portland’s school choice system was at odds with strong neighborhood schools, noted declining availability of transfer slots in high-demand schools, and recommended suspension of the transfer lottery “until the Board adopts a policy that clarifies the purpose of the school choice system.”
The school board has never issued that policy, or done anything significant to reform a system that has not only failed, it’s made matters worse.
So, two and half years later, parents in the poorest parts of town are agonizing over ever more rapidly dwindling transfer slots in schools increasing distances from their homes, because their neighborhood schools have been utterly drained of enrollment, funding, and opportunity.
“This isn’t school choice,” one parent told me. “It’s school chance.”
Current transfer policy arose largely out of the last budget crisis, and the result has been devestating to poor neighborhoods and the families who live there. So this current crisis is an opportunity as much as it is a challenge.
It may seem an awkward time to demand the rebuilding of school libraries, music and art departments. But if we spread enrollment and funding proportionately to where students live, we could begin rebuild these programs in schools that have lost them. At the same time, we can maintain a base line of programming at other schools that are currently over-crowded.
Yes, there will be cuts, but some clusters and schools have fared dramatically better under choice than others. We cannot tolerate any more reduction of opportunity in the Jefferson, Madison, Marshall and Roosevelt clusters, all of which have been cut beyond the bone. Yes, the rest of this town may have to go without some of their gravy so these clusters can have a little meat.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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January 12, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Advocates for “closing the achievement gap” pay attention: a new study from the University of California, Berkeley, shows dramatically reduced brain function in poor children when compared to children from high-income homes.
“It is a similar pattern to what’s seen in patients with strokes that have led to lesions in their prefrontal cortex,” which controls higher-order thinking and problem solving, says lead researcher Mark Kishiyama, a cognitive psychologist at the University of California-Berkeley. “It suggests that in these kids, prefrontal function is reduced or disrupted in some way.”
As has been argued here and elsewhere, actually closing the achievement gap will require a co-ordinated anti-poverty effort beyond the scope of any single school district. This study serves to reinforce that basic fact of social science.
The “achievement gap” is a symptom of the “income gap,” the “opportunity gap” and many other gaps. Drill and test all you want, even if you improve test scores, you’re still not doing anything real to address the problems faced by poor children.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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January 7, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Forwarded from PPS library staff; supporters of PPS libraries and library staff are encouraged to attend! –ed
Staff, administrators, teachers, parents and community are invited to attend a community forum focusing on school libraries. The meeting is scheduled for January 14, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Grant High School Library.
This group will provide input on a district vision to improve and integrate the services provided by and for school libraries. The focus is to increase capacity for information literacy instruction and improving library administrative services.
- WHAT: Library Initiative Community Forum
- WHO: Library staff, administrators, teachers, parents, community
- WHERE: Grant High School Library – 2245 NE 36th, Portland, OR 97212
- WHEN: Wednesday, January 14, 2009, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Update, 1/10/09: Here’s a flier (38KB PDF) with more details from PPS library staff.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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December 30, 2008
by Steve Rawley
Jennifer Anderson reports in the Tribune that Portland Public Schools is hiring a private investigator to probe one of its charter school operators. The contract for this PI is costing the district $75 an hour and runs through the end of the school year. Jack Bogdanski asks the $64,000 question: Isn’t this the kind of thing that we have detectives, DA’s, and a labor commissioner for? To which I would add: Doesn’t the school board employ an independent auditor?
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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