Category: Equity
July 24, 2008
by Steve Rawley
In an interview with The Oregonian‘s Kim Melton, incoming Portland Association of Teachers president Rebecca Levison puts equity at the top of the list of teacher concerns.
“We need equity across the entire district,” said Levson. “It should be part of what we do.”
When the word “equity” is thrown around by district leaders, too often it’s no more than a buzzword. But most teachers, especially those who, like Levision, have taught in North Portland, get what it really means.
Levison also talks about teacher workload, top-down decision making, and getting “teachers at the table at every level of decision-making.”
Here’s wishing her luck in all these very well-placed priorities.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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July 16, 2008
by Steve Rawley
The biggest problem with Carole Smith’s “equity administration” is that no leaders in Portland Public Schools are willing to define a base level of curriculum that every child is entitled to, in every neighborhood school.
This is fundamental to working toward equity.
Without this definition, district leaders are free to talk about equity at every opportunity, but can avoid actually taking meaningful steps toward it.
Equity immediately achievable
This much is true: it is immediately possible, with available funding, to offer equal educational opportunity in every neighborhood school, simply by having kids go to school in their neighborhoods.
I’m not talking about cookie cutter schools, or replicating programs like Benson in every neighborhood. I’m talking about every child guaranteed an education with a common K-12 core curriculum, ideally including library, music, art, science, math, language arts, social studies, health and world languages.
This is what our neighbors in Beaverton get, through a combination of an extremely strict transfer policy, relatively large schools, and a clearly defined core curriculum. You can walk into any neighborhood school in Beaverton and find a common level of what PPS calls “enrichment,” regardless of the income level or ethnic makeup of the neighborhood.
Contrast this with Portland, where schools vary dramatically, and race, income and address are the best predictors of the kind of opportunity available to students.
We don’t need 2000-student high schools to do this, but we clearly can’t do it in 600-student high schools with the existing funding formula.
While the size of Beaverton’s schools may rankle many idealists, I personally would rather have a large institution with smaller and more classes than a smaller institution with larger and fewer classes.
Details can vary, of course. But we must have a centrally-defined core curriculum, or we will never see equity. And we need to return to neighborhood-based enrollment to achieve the economy of scale necessary to pay for this.
Baby steps not working
Ask yourself how much equity we’ve gotten since it was declared the “over-arching” goal of current leadership.
So far, the “baby steps” approach has seen continued enrollment drains and FTE cuts in our poorest schools. There has been neither talk nor action on addressing the enrollment drain, i.e. the transfer policy, or the FTE cuts, i.e. the staffing formula.
Our schools continue to become more segregated, with dramatic differences in curriculum between white, middle class schools and poor and minority schools. These differences become especially stark and intolerable at the secondary level.
Poor and minority middle school students are disproportionately likely to be assigned to PK8 schools, where they are more likely to be deprived of libraries (nearly a third of PK8 schools completely lack library staff) and the kind of curriculum breadth available at comprehensive middle schools, where white, middle class students are more likely to be assigned (and which all have at least some library staff).
This pattern continues in high school, with white, middle class students generally assigned to comprehensive schools with broad curriculum, and poor and minority students overwhelmingly assigned to “small schools” with far less opportunity.
District leaders refuse action for fear of alienating middle class
By taking the transfer policy off the table, leaders seem to have convinced themselves that we can’t afford a common curriculum. To speak of it would be to acknowledge that we indeed have the means to solve the equity crisis, but won’t, for fear harming the neighborhoods that benefit when district policy siphons enrollment, funding and opportunity out of North, Northeast and outer Southeast Portland.
This unspoken fear — that we will alienate a few hundred middle class white families if we take bold steps toward equity — is unfounded and ironic, especially considering the number of families I personally know who have pulled their children from PPS, or plan to for secondary school, precisely because they cannot receive a fair shake in their neighborhood schools.
It is unethical to maintain current policy based on this fear. How can we deprive at least half of our students of opportunity to benefit the other half?
I don’t believe there is anybody currently on the school board who has both the conviction and the courage — it takes both — to come to the table with policy proposals that will even begin to address this issue.
Terry Olson is right; we need to start working toward electing three strong leaders to school board zones four, five and six in May. We need bold leadership in times of crisis, and we’re not getting it from the current crop of school board directors.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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July 14, 2008
by Terry Olson
The school board is the crucial leadership body for effecting real change in the way the Portland Public Schools District does business. Therefore it’s urgent that school equity activists start now in seeking out and campaigning for three new board members who will represent the interests of the vast majority of parents and district stakeholders who believe that a public school district should offer equal educational opportunities to all students regardless of family background and economic status.
As Steve Rawley pointed out in a recent post, “In other words, despite the demonstrable harm [district leaders] are doing to at least half the students of Portland, the perceived risk to their constituency outweighs the clear benefit to the greater common good.” They refuse, he says, to even talk about it.
Community members can’t change district leadership, but they do have a say in electing the representatives who can — the Portland Public Schools Board of Education. The school board chooses the district superintendent, it develops district policies, and it ratifies — or rejects — policies proposed by the district administration. It also can be a powerful bully pulpit for change. In other words, the real power lies with the men and women who are chosen to represent the interests of the broader community.
I say it’s time for a change.
As most of you know, the board this summer will pick a replacement for departing board member Dan Ryan. PPS Equity has urged the board to replace Ryan with either Jefferson activist and teacher Nancy Smith or with former board member and teacher Steve Buel. In addition the terms of Trudy Sargent and Sonja Henning are up in the spring. I’ve argued that both should be replaced with candidates willing to confront the district policies that have led to a two-tiered school system of schools with resources and those without.
We in the activist community need to start now. I speak from experience. I ran for the board in 2003, but didn’t make my decision until the February before the May election. Despite the late start, I still managed to finish second in a field of eight to Doug Morgan. If had to do it over again, I would have started much earlier.
So here’s my challenge. First we need to make every effort to see that the board appoints either Nancy or Steve B. to the board this summer. Then we need to find and recruit at least two good candidates from the Madison cluster and the Marshall and Franklin clusters, respectively. As I wrote in a comment to Steve Rawley’s post, I know that the Madison area is a hotbed of district discontent. Surely some good “equity” candidates are available to fill that seat.
I know less about Zone 6, the seat held by Trudy Sargent. But that’s where you come in. Send your ideas, meaning the names of potential candidates, to this site.
Let’s see if we can get something going, maybe start a mini-uprising for equity and democracy. Let’s take back the school board!
Terry Olson passed away in October, 2009. He was a retired teacher and a neighborhood schools activist. His blog, OlsonOnline, was a seminal space for the discussion of educational equity in Portland.
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July 12, 2008
by Steve Rawley
Portland Public Schools’ student transfer system transfers public investment out of our neediest neighborhoods and hands it to the wealthiest.
The poor are the biggest public school philanthropists in Portland, to the tune of 40 some million dollars a year.
The solution: rebalance enrollment. The Jefferson cluster alone had a net loss of 1,949 students to out-transfers last school year. At a conservative estimate of $5,800 per student, that’s over $11 million of public investment drained from the Jefferson cluster alone.
That’s a lot of money, but more importantly, it robs the cluster of the economies of scale that allow other clusters to offer more curriculum at lower cost.
The other clusters with significant net losses to out-transfers are Marshall (1,441), Roosevelt (1,296) and Madison (1,067).
If we put these students in schools in their neighborhoods, we would not only be able to return comprehensive education afforded by economies of scale, we would also relieve significant overcrowding at schools like Grant, Cleveland and Lincoln.
This solution has been staring district leaders in the face for a long, long time, but they refuse to even speak of it. Why? As far as I can tell, the reasons are two-fold:
- fear of losing enrollment (they hear from their affluent white friends that they would send their children to private school if this happened) and
- fear that balancing enrollment and opportunity would mean equalizing downward in white middle class neighborhoods.
In other words, despite the demonstrable harm they are doing to at least half the students of Portland, the perceived risk to their constituency outweighs the clear benefit to the greater common good.
Make no mistake, this is class war, and the only Robin Hoods are the reverse type.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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July 1, 2008
by Steve Rawley
Sixty-one years after Mendez v. Westminster, 54 years after Brown v. Board of Education, 51 years after the Little Rock 9, 48 years after Ruby Bridges, 45 years after George Wallace caved to the national guard at the University of Alabama, 28 years after Ron Herndon stood on the school board desk and demanded equal opportunity for Portland’s black school children, and two years after city and county auditors demanded justification for effectively segregationist enrollment policies, Portland Public Schools have become more segregated than the neighborhoods they serve.
The school board refuses to answer the auditors, and shows no intention of changing the policies that have created the situation.
The segregation (or “racial isolation,” as the district calls it) would not be so objectionable, if it weren’t for the fact that schools in predominantly white, middle class neighborhoods have dramatically better offerings than the rest of Portland.
The desegregation plan hatched by Herndon’s Black United Front and pushed through by then-school board members Steve Buel, Herb Cawthorne and Wally Priestley in 1980 did away with forced busing of black children out of their neighborhoods, added staff to predominantly black schools, and created middle schools out of K-8 schools to better integrate students within their neighborhoods.
For several years, things clearly got better for non-white, non-middle class students in PPS. Then the nation-wide gang crisis hit Portland in 1986, with white supremacist, Asian and black gangs wreaking havoc and contributing to a wave of white flight from Portland’s black neighborhoods and schools. This was followed by the draconian budget cuts of Oregon’s Measure 5 in 1990, which ended the extra staffing brought by the 1980 plan.
Under inconsistent funding and unstable central leadership throughout the 1990s, central control over curricular offerings devolved to the schools, and the gravity of a self-reinforcing pattern of out-transfers and program cuts became virtually insurmountable.
The devolution of curriculum was formalized under the leadership of Vicki Phillips in the early 2000s. Her administration pushed market-based reforms and “school choice” as a salve for the “achievement gap,” and used corporate grants to extend reconfiguration of high schools in poor neighborhoods into “small schools” which severely limited educational opportunities available to Portland’s poorest high school students.
(Small school conversions were tentatively under way at Marshall and Roosevelt when Phillips took office, but didn’t become the de facto model for non-white, non-middle class schools until Phillips pushed it through at Jefferson, against community wishes, and finally at Madison, casting aside the designs of veteran educators who had initiated the concept.)
A bond measure whose revenue was intended to restore music education to the core curriculum was instead frittered away in the form of discretionary grants to schools. Principals in poorer neighborhoods continued to put teaching resources into literacy and numeracy at the expense of art and music, while schools in white, middle class neighborhoods continued to offer a broad range of educational opportunity.
The Phillips administration also began to dismantle middle schools in poor neighborhoods, including, notably, Harriet Tubman Middle School, which was created under the 1980 desegregation plan. This move back to the K-8 model added significantly to the resegregation of middle school students.
It also turns out that middle schoolers in K-8 schools, who are disproportionately non-white and poor, get fewer educational opportunities at greater cost to the district. Predominantly white, middle class neighborhoods have, by and large, been allowed to stick with the comprehensive middle school model, which allows them to offer a much broader range of electives, arts and core curriculum at no additional cost.
So in 28 years, we have moved from a reasonable semblance of equal opportunity, with schools’ demographics reflecting their neighborhoods’, to a demonstrably “separate and unequal” system, with schools more segregated than their neighborhoods.
Current policy makers like to blame Measure 5 and the federal No Child Left Behind Act for the wildly distorted educational opportunities in the district, and they generally refuse to examine district policy in the context of the advances in equity that were realized 28 years ago.
PPS has managed to maintain pretty good schools in white, middle class neighborhoods through years of stark budget cuts, but they have left poor and minority children fighting over crumbs in the rest of Portland. Even as the steady march of gentrification makes our neighborhoods more integrated, our schools are more segregated than they were in the early 1980s.
When today’s school board speaks of “school choice,” the “achievement gap” or “equity,” they appear to speak in a historical vacuum. I hope to remind everybody of the context of PPS’s policies, and the continuum of institutional racism they are a part of. These policies are indeed racist in effect, no matter how they are rationalized or how they were originally intended.
And no matter how much they complain that their hands are tied, or how much they claim to be making progress by “baby steps,” the school board has total control over district policy. They could start rectifying this immediately if they wanted to. Yes, it’s hard — ask Steve Buel or Herb Cawthorne about their late-night sessions trying to push the 1980 desegregation plan through — but it can be done.
I know there are school board members who care deeply about equal opportunity. They may even be in the majority, depending on who is appointed to replace Dan Ryan.
But nobody on today’s school board has demonstrated the political courage or vision necessary to stand up for all children in Portland Public Schools.
With baby steps, we will never get where we need to go. Bold, visionary action is required.
Edited January, 2016: For more background on Ron Herndon and the Black United Front, watch OPB’s Oregon Experience Episode “Portland Civil Rights: Lift Ev’ry Voice.”
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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June 30, 2008
by Steve Buel
Portland Public Schools is the only school district in the metropolitan area where the quality of eduction in a neighborhood school depends on the wealth of that neighborhood. There is, of course, a basic unfairness in Wilson, Lincoln, Cleveland, and Grant clusters having greater educational opportunities than the remainder of the district. But there are other important ramifications to this than just a lack of fairness and justice.
The Portland area is looking at building a $4.2 billion dollar I-5 bridge. With 6000 acres of undeveloped land in Clark County just waiting for families looking for good schools, it would be nice if Portland itself could offer reasonably priced housing for working class families coupled with good schools and good neighborhoods. PPS’s refusal to create good schools in lower economic neighborhoods has a tremendous negative impact on controlling unsound sprawl and helping neighborhoods deteriorate.
The United States now has 25% of the world’s prison population in its prisons. Portland’s failure to educate well its least wealthy populace adds to this problem as well as the negative economic impact on our city and state through building and maintaining prisons.
Because of its poor education for lower income families Portland is in jeopardy of creating a permanent undereducated underclass. Our lack of helping kids rise above their conditions by not educating them well for college and/or the trades pulls the economy of both our city and state down.
Our poor education shortchanges huge numbers of kids by not helping them be happy, successful members of society. In our lower economic schools and neighborhoods the lack of the arts, athletics, and other worthwhile activities encourages young people to find other forms of “recreation” such as drugs, sex, gangs, and alcohol. These choices lead to a life much less fulfilling and productive. And less happy and productive citizens are less healthy citizens and less engaged citizens. Another terrible drain on community resources.
The school board might think they are getting by because they are keeping their constituency happy, but in the long run their policies are helping rot our city from the insides.
Steve Buel has taught in public schools for 41 years. He served on the PPS school board (1979-1983) and co-authored the 1980 School Desegregation Plan. He has followed PPS politics since 1975.
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June 26, 2008
by Nancy Smith
The problem with our education system is not that parents do not have a choice. The problem is that inequities continue to exist. —Patsy Mink
In the movie Sophie’s Choice, a mother was forced to make a literal life choice between her two children — a soul-destroying decision impossible to reconcile or live with — and one no parent should ever have to make.
How do we choose one child’s future over another, if given the choice? Yet, that is precisely the result of Portland Public Schools’ policies: consciously determining that some children will be provided opportunities for an educated, productive future – and that some children will not.
Affected parents cried out that the district’s policies have inequitably diminished their children’s future, and they chose to do nothing.
Affected students cried out that the district’s policies have inequitably diminished their future, and still they chose to do nothing.
A community member documented that the district’s policies have resulted in resources being inequitably shifted from our poorest children, and still they chose to do nothing.
City and county auditors documented that the district’s policies have resulted in educational inequities for our poorest children, and still they chose to do nothing.
Their own analyses documented that their policies have resulted in educational inequities for our poorest children, and they have still chosen to do nothing.
The district’s rationale? Changing these policies would result in removing “choice”. However, it is disingenuous, hypocritical and indefensible to justify policies under the guise of “choice” when these policies simultaneously remove “choice” from our most vulnerable students.
Our city’s educational system is shamefully unacceptable. Portland Public Schools has a choice, and that is to choose all of our city’s children — by utilizing the concepts of equal access and equitable educational opportunities to drive every policy decision.
Whatever they grow up to be, they are still our children, and the one most important of all the things we can give to them is unconditional love. Not a love that depends on anything at all except that they are our children. —Rosaleen Dickson
We can no longer tolerate the inequity that benefits one child’s future at the expense of another. We have no choice.
It’s possible to light another man’s candle without damaging your own. —Danish Proverb
Nancy Smith has taught public school grades 5-12 for 32 years. She is a life-long resident of North Portland and a graduate of Roosevelt High School. She is mother to three Jefferson High School graduates — with her youngest currently attending Woodlawn Elementary School.
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June 24, 2008
by Steve Buel
It is time for the Portland School Board to step up and take a giant step toward district-wide equity.
For the last couple of years they have only been willing to take baby steps, and anyone who ever played “mother may I” in their childhood knows baby steps are not enough.
A logical first step would be to add 12 FTE to each of the following high schools: Roosevelt, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, and Benson. This money could only be used to increase the curricular offerings in these schools (including maintaining a certificated librarian). The increased offerings should begin to strengthen the comprehensive nature of the school and thus attract students back to their own neighborhood school and help Benson begin to regain its previously well-deserved reputation.
The cost? About $5,000,000 I presume. The money would come from the money which would follow the returning students, the contingency fund (if the lack of curricular offerings and degradation of these schools doesn’t fit the definition of an emergency then I don’t know what will), the other places a good superintendent can find money in a $400,000,000+ budget, some grant money, and donations.
The superintendent and the school board need to either commit to having equitable and good high schools or find some other school district to administer. And they need to show their commitment with giant steps, not baby and backwards ones.
Notice this proposal skirts what is often referred to as the catch 22 of the transfer process — less kids equals less curricular offerings which means less kids which means less curricular offerings etc. A school board which allows its educational policy to be controlled by a bureaucratic catch 22 needs to reread the book — catch 22’s are to be fixed, not applauded.
Mother may I…….
Steve Buel has taught in public schools for 41 years. He served on the PPS school board (1979-1983) and co-authored the 1980 School Desegregation Plan. He has followed PPS politics since 1975.
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June 20, 2008
by David Colton
Approximately 8 years ago Madison High School received a Carnegie Grant through the Portland Schools Foundation with the intent of exploring the promise of small schools.
When I was a counselor at Hosford Middle school I was witness to the success that Hosford had in their creation of three small school communities using the theories and research of Ted Sizer and Deborah Meier. The work they did in creating smaller learning communities was very compelling and held promise for high schools that struggle with getting a large percentage of their students to state benchmarks.
My positive experience at Hosford as well as my experience as a parent with a child at a private school set me on a mission to work with the administration and teachers to restructure Madison High School. I visited schools in Texas, New York City as well as local schools to experience first hand the impact that reform could have on schools and learning.
Monthly and bi-monthly meetings with a team of teachers and administrations led ultimately to the writing of the Gates grant to secure the funds to create smaller learning communities. There were many of us on the staff that felt that by going small we would see academic gains in our students.
Once Madison was awarded the Gates-Meyer Memorial Grant it became obvious that the administration had one vision and that many on the staff had another vision of what small learning communities would look like. It was apparent that structure was going to dictate curriculum and course offerings and that students were to be locked in to communities without access to electives or programs just down the hall.
There were not enough electives, and I found that students had holes in their schedules that could not be filled within the small learning community. Students asking to take a class such as advanced biology in another community were told no and it was suggested they take that that course at a local community college.
Administrators were going through schedules looking for unauthorized crossovers, and I was being written up for insubordination for filling a student’s schedule with something other than a teaching assistant in his or her community when they wanted an elective in another community. I went from having an administrator who had not evaluated me in 5 years to one that scrutinized my every move.
My new administrator is a woman who has never been a teacher, let alone an administrator, and who is long on scrutiny but short on practicality or reason. I went from not having a blemish in a long career to a plan of assistance that in truth was designed to shut me up and stop asking questions about the efficacy of how we were delivering the model for education in our community.
I have a lot of support in my building and the questions that got me in to trouble are being asked publicly and have even come out in the Oregonian. Small schools are supposed to about shared governance, teacher as leader.
Creating autonomous schools work for start up schools but not for conversion schools. Hybrid models, 9th and 10th grade academies, team teaching, project based learning, performance outcome based learning and a lot of collaboration and hard work will get students to parity with their peers on the west side of this city.
Show me one west side school that is embracing some of the notions that are being imposed on the less affluent east side schools. They don’t exist.
I have been screaming for equity for these kids and limiting their choices, taking their school away from them and their community is not serving anyone but the ideologues who are building a reputation on the backs of the students and the families least likely to have the ability to fight this approach or any other approach as they are just too busy making a living and trying to survive.
David Colton is a high school counselor and a former English and drama teacher.
14 Comments
June 16, 2008
by Steve Rawley
In the search for a replacement for departing director Dan Ryan, the school board need look no further than Steve Buel and Nancy Smith. I asked both if they would be willing to serve.
“I accept,” was Buel’s response. Smith was a little more circumspect, but would serve if called.
Buel finished a strong second to Ryan in the last election for this seat. His experience as an activist policy maker on the PPS school board is much needed on a body that seems paralyzed to do anything about obvious, glaring inequity.
He has demonstrated a keen understanding of the issues of poverty in education, and the various troubles with PPS policy, from middle school discipline to the student and teacher transfer policies.
In the 2005 race of five candidates, Buel won 27.94% of the vote to Ryan’s 50.65%. Not bad, considering Ryan outspent Buel five-to-one. Buel beat third-place finisher Charles McGee by a three-to-one ratio.
Of course, Buel has a tell-it-like-it-is style that rubs some “important” people the wrong way. It’s hard to imagine the existing board welcoming him into their fold, but I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
If the board won’t appoint the runner-up for the seat, Buel says he’ll be running again in the spring.
I’m not sure how much serious thought Smith has given to a 2005 run, but she seems to be edging in that direction.
Smith is currently president of the Jefferson PTSA and a high school business teacher in the Beaverton School District. Like Ryan, she is a graduate of Roosevelt High. She has real skin in the game, with children past and present in the Jefferson cluster. She is a founding member of the Neighborhood Schools Alliance and a veteran school equity activist.
Smith would bring unparalleled passion and energy to the board. If her passion sometimes boils over, it is because of her deep belief that we have a moral obligation to provide all of our children with equal opportunity.
Both Steve Buel and Nancy Smith are eligible, and both have the experience, dedication and and conviction to do the job. Most importantly, both share a fundamental, unshakable commitment to equal opportunity in education.
If the school board is as serious about equity as Carole Smith claims to be, they would be foolish to appoint anybody but one of these two. Either would bring a much-needed equity focus to the board, and help them achieve Smith’s stated, “overarching” goal of equity.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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