Category: High Schools
January 21, 2010
by Steve Rawley
The Oregonian attempted a little analysis today, with a two-page spread in the “In Portland” section.
Reporter Kimberly Melton took several factors into account, including enrollment trends, political climate, community resources and current academic programs.
What this approach clearly misses is that free-flowing student transfers have drained significant enrollment from schools in poor neighborhoods, resulting in schools with some of the largest attendance area population having the smallest enrollment.
Also not considered in The Oregonian analysis is the value of the properties.
In the past, Portland Public Schools has allowed student transfers to drain enrollment from poor schools, then used low enrollment as an excuse to close them (think Kenton, with its valuable real estate at the intersection of N. Interstate and Lombard). In its analysis of Jefferson High, The O mentions PCC, but not the fact that PCC has long coveted the property for its own expansion.
In the end, the O puts Jefferson, Grant and Madison in the “too close to call” column, which will only lead to more fear, uncertainty and doubt in the community. The district is already dealing with a mini parent rebellion at Grant, and Jefferson, Oregon’s only majority black high school, has long been suspected as a candidate for closure.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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January 20, 2010
by Carrie Adams
PPS 
Seattle School District
If people have any doubts about the direction that PPS is heading, they only need to head north 175 miles. PPS and the Seattle School District have so much in common.
Seattle School District converted some K-5 and 6-8 schools to K-8s. PPS followed (sort of…it’s half-assed and still in limbo). Both districts have parents and staff complaining about lack of support in the transitions.
The Seattle School District closed and consolidated schools. Portland followed.
The Seattle School District contracted with DeJong to develop enrollment projections. Those projections were met with skepticism by parents and board members.
In Portland, DeJong partnered with Magellan Consulting to complete a facilities assessment for PPS. More skepticism.
Both Seattle and Portland love to hire Broad graduates. They pop up like new Starbucks. Broad graduates are supposedly hired for their business expertise. That expertise has played out to be disastrous for public education.
In 2009, the Seattle School District developed a Student Assignment Plan which changed attendance boundaries and the way in which students were assigned to schools. Portland is in the middle of a high school redesign plan which also affects boundaries and student enrollment.
The Seattle School District closed several schools in 2009 due to declining enrollment. They expected to save $3 million per year. Just one year later they find themselves in need of buildings. The cost to reopen 5 of the recently closed buildings is $47.8 million. Not only was it a foolish financial decision but it disrupted the education of children.
Will PPS follow?
Sourced from: Cheating in Class. Used by permission.
Carrie Adams blogs at Cheating in Class.
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January 19, 2010
by Steve Rawley
The Oregonian ran an op-ed today by Xavier Botana, chief academic officer of Portland Public Schools, in response to a January 4 editorial criticizing high school system redesign plans.
Botana writes that “current plans would guarantee a well-rounded core program at each community high school. And those plans aren’t based on wishful thinking — they’re realistically budgeted, based on current resources and forecasted enrollment. They’re also based on what today’s students need.”
He also writes frankly about “small but real tradeoffs” required to bring comprehensive high schools to all students. Botana talks about having ninth grade academies at all schools, which have been shown to reduce dropouts, but he does not mention doing anything about the gross inequities still present in the middle grades.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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January 18, 2010
by Steve Rawley
As the school board begins to draw battle lines on the high school redesign, resistance is emerging in expected quarters.
Two weeks ago, the Oregonian editorial board opined against changing the student transfer policy, which has brought a bounty of enrollment and school funding to wealthy neighborhoods in tough times. (As one acquaintance put it, you can always count on the Oregonian editorial board to defend white privilege. I had some words about it here.)
A week ago, in an online op-ed on OregonLive.com (where The Oregonian maintains a half-assed Web presence) Grant High teacher Geoffrey Henderson argued against neighborhood schools, claiming there simply is not enough money to do it. (He doesn’t address how Beaverton, with similar size and demographics and identical state funding, has maintained a very viable and effective neighborhood-based school system during the two decades that Portland’s has been dismantled.)
Last Thursday, The Oregonian ran the op-ed I wrote in response to their editorial. (I joked with my wife that pigs must be flying, because I wrote a strong defense of PPS, and the O published it without rewriting it.) I expected to get some flack for it, and I have. They give you 500 words to make your case, which isn’t enough to get into nuance. I used those 500 words to give the district props for finally addressing the student transfer policy, at least in part, nearly four years after city and county auditors found it to be at odds with their stated goal of strong neighborhood schools.
Suffice it to say, many are troubled with aspects of the high school redesign.
In my high school redesign minority report, I suggested modifications to the ban on neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers to build trust in communities that have historically been hurt by district policies.
The district also missed an opportunity to build trust and demonstrate system planning competence by not fixing the K-8 mess before embarking on high school redesign. And, increasingly, community members are expressing doubts about the magnet school aspect, with concern that it will simply weaken neighborhood high schools. At a recent work session, it was revealed that enrollment at Benson High, our only major high school without an attendance area, would be significantly shrunk under current plans.
The school board is expected to vote on a series of resolutions next month, which will help clarify the process going forward.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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January 11, 2010
by Steve Rawley
I only caught the tail end of board discussion on the HS redesign… didn’t see the staff presentation. Who watched? Who was there? What’s your take?
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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January 10, 2010
by Steve Rawley
Kim Melton reports in The Oregonian today that school board members are starting to debate and discuss specifics of the high school system redesign.
Bobbie Regan is quoted questioning staff assumptions about curtailing neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers and the size (and by extension, number) of high schools to close. “I’m not clear that those are the board’s assumptions,” said Regan.
Board co-chair Trudy Sargent worries about closing “successful” schools, while David Wynde and co-chair Ruth Adkins warn about labeling schools as “successful” and “unsuccessful.”
As we get down to brass tacks, battle lines are being drawn, with a split board possible on student transfer policy changes.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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January 8, 2010
by Steve Rawley
School board member Bobbie Regan may be signaling opposition to proposed limits to neighborhood-to-neighborhood student transfers, according to a report by Beth Slovic on Willamette Week‘s news blog.
Regan’s apparent expression of unease with the proposal, which is part of a larger redesign of the high school system, comes on the heals of an Oregonian editorial Monday which expressed more direct opposition to the idea of limiting the flow of students and funding.
Each year, thousands of students and tens of millions of dollars in education funding transfer from Portland’s poorest neighborhoods and into its wealthiest. Schools in the Lincoln cluster home to Regan and the wealthiest familes in Portland Public Schools, had a net gain of nearly 600 students in 2008-09, representing over $3 million in funding.
In that same school year, schools in the Jefferson cluster, encompassing some of Portland’s poorest families, lost nearly 2,000 students and about $12 million to out transfers.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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January 4, 2010
by Steve Rawley
The editorial board of The Oregonian, that rump of a daily paper that still (barely) manages to spill a little ink on Mondays, today spilled some in defense of the radical transfer policy that has been a significant contributor to the two-tiered system of education in Portland Public Schools.
In an editorial on the proposed high school system redesign, Thee O makes a wishy-washy argument in favor of some aspects (ending the long-discredited, Bill Gates-funded experiment with small schools in poor neighborhoods and reducing the number of neighborhood high schools) but against proposals that might hurt property values in wealthy, white neighborhoods (curtailing student transfers between neighborhood high schools and equalizing opportunity across the district).
In the end, the editorial reads as plea for the status quo, at least as far as wealthy, white Portlanders are concerened: “Fix what’s broken. Don’t break what’s working.”
How we can fix poor schools whose enrollment and funding have been drained by the enrollment policies that support this status quo for the wealthy is left as an exercise for the reader. They’ve got the full meal deal, and the other half doesn’t even get bread.
Cake, anyone?
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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December 18, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Joseph Malone and Carla Randall, principals of Grant and Madison High Schools respectively, penned an op-ed in today’s Oregonian in support of the principle behind the high school redesign: equal educational opportunity.
Echoing Deputy Superintendent Charles Hopson’s speech to the City Club last month, Malone and Randall argue that opportunity should not be determined by race, income or ZIP code as it currently is.
Malone and Randall blame the current state largely on the district’s open transfer enrollment, an issue explored extensively on this site.
Malone and Randall ask:
What drives these inequities? Enrollment. In Portland’s open-choice system, it’s easy to flee some schools for others. Declined enrollment overall multiplies the effect. Schools that lose students, lose teaching staff, which means skimpier choices for kids. The risk? High-flyers leave, courses are diminished, parent involvement declines and students struggle.
It’s refreshing to hear district administrators openly repudiating the “school choice” policies the previous administration defended until the end, but troubling that so far these reform efforts are only aimed at the top four grades of a thirteen-grade system. School choice continues to drive dramatic inequities in the K-8 grades, too.
Also troubling in the high school plan, besides a nagging lack of details of analysis done to support planning (or, perhaps, the lack of analysis altogether), is the thinking around special focus options. At one point, planners were talking about having a third of high school students in special focus schools, meaning lower enrollment (or fewer in number) community high schools. Because of the lack of detail on how schools will be targeted for closure or conversion to focus options, rumors have consistently swirled in advance of every community meeting, with the latest, at Franklin, drawing upwards of 2000 concerned community members.
In perhaps unrelated news, Malone announced his resignation, effective at the end of the current school year, in e-mail to Grant parents yesterday. This has added fuel to the rumor mill, with parents wondering if he knows something the rest of us don’t.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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December 18, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Lili Taylor has posted a poll on her blog: “Do you think the PPS administration has already decided which high schools to close?” So far, 100% of respondents have answered “Yes.”
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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