Stasis

November 20, 2008 by Steve Rawley

sta·sis \ˈstā-səs, ˈsta-\ noun
1: a slowing or stoppage of the normal flow of a bodily fluid or semifluid: as a: slowing of the current of circulating blood b: reduced motility of the intestines with retention of feces 2 a: a state of static balance or equilibrium : stagnation b: a state or period of stability during which little or no evolutionary change in a lineage occurs

Stakeholders in Portland Public Schools have noticed that not much seems to be getting done (at least publicly) on several critical issues.

• K-8 The Superintendent’s PK-8 Action Team hasn’t held a public meeting or posted new information since May, at which time the lack of library staff was identified as a critical issue. Five K8 schools continue to operate without library staff, and no status has been reported on adjusting the budget formula to provide more opportunity to the small cohorts of middle graders in K8 schools. The lack of a comprehensive middle school option in two of nine clusters (Jefferson and Madison) continues to be a glaring symbol of the inequity that is being institutionalized by the lack of action on this issue.
• Libraries Eight schools in PPS have no library staff whatsoever, including five K-8s, one PK-5, one 6-8 and one 6-12. Three high schools lack a certified media specialist. There has been talk of making library staff centrally-funded, as was done in the last budget for counselors, but there is no visible progress on this.
• High Schools The high school design team hasn’t posted any new information since September, when it posted a high level goal statement (PDF). A community committee to provide input to this group never materialized.
• Transfer policy Two and a half years ago, county and city auditors found that the district’s transfer policy led to “significantly less socio-economic diversity in schools than would be the case if all students attended their neighborhood school,” contrary to its stated intent to “promote equity, diversity and student achievement.” They also found that “the transfer policy competes with other Board policies such as strong neighborhood schools and investing in poor performing schools.” (Flynn, Suzanne and Blackmer, Gary. “Portland Public Schools Student Transfer System: District objectives not met” (PDF) June, 2006.)

  Since this audit report was published, the school board and administration have failed to address the central question (What is the purpose of the school choice system?) or make any modifications to mitigate the damage it causes. Each year we are told it is too late to make changes for the coming transfer cycle.

  Likewise, this year, a citizen committee was to be formed, announced several weeks ago. The committee still has not formed, though applications were taken and applicants were interviewed. With the transfer cycle for 2009-10 set to open January 23, it appears the district has once again stalled long enough to avoid any changes or clarifications for yet another year.

  Meanwhile, schools with high out-transfer rates continue to be punished by a funding formula that drains funding along with enrollment. It is unlikely this will be changed, since the budget cycle is soon upon us as well.
  Update, 12:40 p.m.: The committee has been selected and will hold its first meeting two and a half weeks before next year’s transfer cycle begins.

• Facilities Efforts to get a billion dollar facilities bond on the ballot came to a screeching halt last winter, and soon after, a high-priced consultant’s scathing e-mail went public. The official reasons for holding off on the bond were reasonable (we need a high school design first, and there was a good chance the double majority law would be overturned, allowing a bond to be passed during a special election). But with no visible progress on high schools or K-8s, this “critical” issue seems to have been reduced to a simmer.
• Equity As with high schools, a committee of community members had been suggested to advise the superintendent’s equity team. No such committee has been announced, and no information has been posted about the internal team. With equity the “over-arching” goal of Carole Smith and her second budget cycle looming, you’d think this would at least be a public relations priority.

I certainly don’t mean to imply nothing is being done. But given the severity of the problems, the disgrace they bring to our fair city, and the superintendent’s stated priorities, it’s shameful actual change on these issues is evidently being kicked down the road yet another year. Our children aren’t getting any younger.

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

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The school board fiddles

November 8, 2008 by Steve Buel

Here’s Monday nights agenda for the Portland School Board:

1. PRESENTATION TO THE BOARD 6:30 pm

   • MESD 2007-2008 Annual Report (information item)

2. STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE REPORT 6:45 pm
3. SUPERINTENDENT REPORT 6:50 pm
4. BUSINESS AGENDA 6:55pm
5. OTHER BUSINESS 7:00 pm

   • Council of Great City Schools Annual Conference (information item)

6. ADJOURN 7:10 pm

So the school board can only find 40 minutes of work that needs to be done? Or should I say 40 minutes of reports to receive. This is in a school district which spends hundreds of millions of dollars of citizens’ taxes, which is beset by problems ranging from incredible school inequity, massive economic problems on the horizon, disastrous maintenance deficits, serious teacher hiring malpractices, rampant school discipline problems, incredible numbers of dropouts, a TAG program which desperately needs to be revamped, a k-8 curriculum which is the envy of no one, a student transfer program which is further segregating the school district, schools which are inundated with a culture of testing instead of education (no offense to those educators who are fighting this), schools without libraries or librarians, huge numbers of kids who can’t read or do basic math, and a myriad of other serious problems. 40 minutes?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I know that Superintendent Carol Smith has begun to address many of these problems and the school board does a lot of work in committees. They are good people who care about Portland and its children. But that is not enough. The school board is elected to lead, to solve problems, and work for the best educational programs it can. It needs real public input, serious public discussions about directions to take, resolutions put forth to address problems which are debated openly and sold to the public and the school district’s employees, real leadership which garners genuine support and confidence. Leadership that continues to move us in a new direction where all kids are important and which looks at education in Portland as something more than a referendum on programs which arise out of some hazy educational research done somewhere by someone for some reason we don’t understand, and which we then push on our teaching staff eating up their time in meetings instead of having them be further engaged in the teaching process.

So I call on each school board member to bring their resolutions to the table. This is the time. November and the first part of December are a slow time in education. A good time to make some progress. A good time to look at those problems which are beginning to fester. A good time to discuss those problems which need to be addressed by our city’s educational leaders –- you, the board.

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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Size matters

October 12, 2008 by Steve Rawley

How student transfers, “small schools,” and K8s steal opportunity from Portland’s least wealthy students, and how we can make it right

When speaking with district leaders about the glaring and shameful opportunity gap between the two halves of Portland Public Schools, it doesn’t take long before they start wringing their hands about enrollment.

“If only we could get enrollment up at Jefferson (or Madison, Marshall or Roosevelt),” they’ll tell you, “we could increase the offerings there.”

Or, as PPS K8 project manager Sara Allan put it in a recent comment on Rita Moore’s blog post about K8 “enrichment”: “All of our schools that are small … face a massive struggle to provide a robust program with our current resources.”

Not to pick on Sarah, but this attitude disclaims responsibility for the problem. After all, the “smallness” of schools in the PPS “red zone”* is by design, the direct result of three specific policies that are under total control of PPS policy makers:

1. the break-up of comprehensive high schools into autonomous “small schools”
2. the transition from comprehensive middle schools to K8s, and
3. open transfer enrollment.

Smallness is not a problem in and of itself, but it is crippled by a school funding formula in which funding follows students, and there is little or no allowance for the type of school a student is attending (e.g. small vs. comprehensive or K8 vs. 6-8).

So when you’re dealing with a handicap you’ve created by design — smallness — it’s a little disingenuous to complain about its constraints. Instead, we need to eliminate the constraints — i.e. adjust the school funding formula — or redesign the handicap.

Adjusting the school funding formula to account for smallness would be ideal, if we had the funding to do it. Since we don’t, this would mean robbing Peter to pay Paul. That is, we would have to reduce funding at other schools to pay for smallness brought on by out-transfers, the K8 transition, or the small schools high school model. This obviously hasn’t happened, and it would be political suicide to suggest we start.

So barring a new source of funding to reduce the constraints of smallness, we need to redesign smallness.

The easiest case is the “small schools” design for high schools. Where students have been constrained to one of three “academies,” with varying degrees of autonomy, we simply allow students to cross-register for classes in other academies. Instead of academies, call them learning communities. Instantly, students at Madison, Marshall and Roosevelt have three times the curriculum to choose from. The best concepts of “small schools” — teachers as leaders and a communities of learning — are preserved.

For K8s, the problem is simply that we can never offer as much curriculum with 50-150 students in what is essentially an elementary school facility as we can offer at a middle school with 400-600 students. So we offer a choice: every middle grade student can choose between a comprehensive middle school or continuing in their neighborhood K8. Reopen (or rebuild) closed middle schools in the Jefferson and Madison clusters, and bolster those in the Roosevelt and Marshall clusters. Families in every cluster then have the choice between a richer curriculum of a middle school or the closer attention their children may receive with a smaller cohort in a K8. We all like choice, right?

Which brings us to the stickiest wicket of the smallness problem: open transfer enrollment, which conspires with K8s and “small schools” to drain nearly 6,000 students from the red zone annually (that’s 27% of students living in the red zone and 12% of all PPS students). We’re well-acquainted with the death spiral of out-transfers, program cuts, more out-transfers, and still more program cuts. It has reached the point that it doesn’t even matter why people first started leaving a school like Jefferson.

If you look at Jefferson now, compared to Grant, for example, It’s shocking what you see. Not counting dance classes, Jefferson offers 38 classes. Grant offers 152.

What kind of “choice” is that? (Disclaimer: both the Grant and Jefferson syllabi listings may be missing courses if teachers have not yet submitted their syllabi.)

Obviously, given funding constraints, we can’t afford to have a school with 600 students offer the same number of classes as one with 1,600, as district leaders will readily point out. What they’re not fond of talking about is the budget-neutral way of offering equity of opportunity in our high schools: balance enrollment.

All of our nine neighborhood high schools have enrollment area populations of 1,400-1,600. Jefferson and Marshall, two of our smallest high schools by enrollment, are the two largest attendance areas by residence, each with more than 1,600 PPS high school students.

With a four-year phase-in (keeping in mind that transfers into Lincoln, Grant and Cleveland have basically been shut-down for a couple years anyway), you start by making core freshman offerings the same at every neighborhood high school. Incoming freshman are assigned to their neighborhood school, and they don’t have to worry about it being a gutted shell. (Transfers for special focus options will still be available as they are now.) The following year, we add sophomore classes, and so on, and in four years every neighborhood high school has equity in core sequences of math, science, language arts, social studies, world languages and music, paid for without additional funding and without cutting significant programs at schools that are currently doing well.

Once we have this balance in place, both in terms of offerings and enrollment, we can talk about allowing neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers again, but only as we can afford them. In other words, we will no longer allow a neighborhood program to be damaged by out-transfers.

It’s time for Portland Public Schools to stop blaming its opportunity gap on the smallness it has designed — by way of “small schools,” K8s, and open transfer enrollment — and it’s time for policy makers to stop transferring the costs of smallness to our poorest students in terms of dramatically unequal opportunities.

—
*I define the red zone as clusters with significant net enrollment losses due to student transfers: Jefferson (net loss of 1,949 students), Madison (1,067 students), Marshall (1,441 students) and Roosevelt (1,296 students). (2007-08 enrollment figures.) This represents, by conservative estimate, an annual loss of $34 million in state and local educational investment to the least-wealthy neighborhoods in Portland. “Small schools” were implemented exclusively in these four clusters, and the K8 transition, though district-wide, has disproportionately impacted the red zone. There are only two middle schools remaining in the red zone, one in the Roosevelt cluster and one in the Marshall cluster. By contrast, the Cleveland and Wilson clusters each have two middle schools; Franklin, Grant and Lincoln each have one.

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

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“Enrichment” in K8s: is Winterhaven the model?

September 28, 2008 by Rita Moore

What’s the current status of the K8 Action Team these days? As I recall, there was supposed to be a model K8 curriculum developed by now, but I don’t think I’ve seen it. Does anybody have an update on that?

I’ve also been looking at the information on the amount of “enrichment” — a term which I truly detest — offered at each school. I was dismayed to see that in the K8 FAQs (144KB PDF) they are using Winterhaven and MLC as examples of K8 (or K12 as the case may be) enrichment done right. I beg to differ.

Both schools rely very heavily — almost exclusively — on parent volunteerism and fundraising to provide anything beyond the three Rs. MLC has been at it for much longer and has a more elaborate system, with many more classes, including some taught by pros, but the principle is similar in both schools.

As much as I appreciate the efforts of the parents, these “interest classes” cannot be considered equivalent to a real class. For one thing, they tend to be very short term, typically 5-6 weeks. Obviously, that limits the the kinds of topics that can be tackled and the ability to explore anything in-depth. In fact, a lot of these special interest classes are, in fact, pretty fluffy in my opinion. (No criticism of the parents intended. You can only do what you can do. And this comment applies to my elective, too.)

Winterhaven does a lot of things right, don’t get me wrong. But “enrichment” isn’t one of them. The principals, staff, and parents have done, I think, a remarkable job providing these kids with what they can, and I am deeply grateful to them.

But when you compare the offerings at Winterhaven against the offerings at Sellwood, West Sylvan, or other middle schools, our kids are clearly being shortchanged. (It should be noted that doing this kind of comparison is exceedingly difficult, since there is no centralized source of information on offerings at all schools in PPS. The PK8 page includes a link to a document that lists “enrichment” in all those schools, but there are no details and no comparisons with middle schools.)

For example, my kid gets 5 “enrichment” periods a week, half of the recommended number for 6-8. Winterhaven has an accelerated math/science focus, so presumably extra time is devoted to those subjects. But I question the quality of even the few “enrichments” that the kids get.

Every middle schooler at Winterhaven gets one period of PE and one period of technology a week. The PE consists, as far as I can tell, of exercises (e.g., sit-ups) and running around the gym. His friend at West Sylvan gets a daily PE consisting of yoga, Pilates, and weight lifting, among other things.

In addition, kids in grades 6-8 can choose one among three official, year-long electives offered: Spanish, theatre, and study hall. The Spanish class (offered only in the last 2 years) is taught twice a week by a non-certified teacher hired with Run for the Arts cash. My son has never had what I would consider to be a real foreign language class. After one year of this elective — plus a year of after school Spanish that I paid for — he can barely say hello in Spanish. And he’s good at languages.

A theatre elective is also offered, but only because two teachers are doing it out of the goodness of their souls, giving up their prep time. That’s probably not sustainable. The third elective is a study hall. Hardly qualifies as an “enrichment” in my book.

Meanwhile, there’s no music at all for middle schoolers. (There is some singing offered for K-5 kids in a Run for the Arts-supported musical once a year, but no instruments, no reading music.) There are usually parent-run arts classes that the kids like, but, again, they’re short-term.

And there you have it. Not exactly an impressive array of “enrichments” if you ask me. In fairness, there is a fairly robust list of after school clubs, (most free and run by parents, some paid), but most of the students do not or cannot take advantage of them. (Winterhaven is, after all, an all-city focus option school, not a neighborhood school.)

The problem is that Winterhaven just plain doesn’t have enough FTE to provide what I would consider a full curriculum and supports. Why? Because we have only about 340+ students (not sure of this year’s latest numbers). But the reality is that we can’t have more because the building is too small; we are already overcrowded. [Some of you may recall that this prompted an ill-conceived scheme in 2006 to relocate Winterhaven to a larger building that was, unfortunately, utterly inappropriate to support the program and, oh by the way, landed on the demolition list a year later.]

I go into this detail only because I want to make sure that Winterhaven is not used as evidence that the K8 model is fully elaborated and just swell. It’s not. That doesn’t mean it can’t be, but I’d like to see some progress on that sooner rather than later. In fact, this K8 model is long overdue. For those who aren’t familiar with Winterhaven, it is now in its 13th year as a K8 program/school. Any curricular deficits, therefore, cannot be attributed to the more recent reconfiguration chaos.

More to the point, given that there were two K8 schools (Winterhaven and Sunnyside) and one K-12 school (MLC) already in existence when the decision was made to do a wholesale conversion of vast swaths of the city, it was at the time and remains a mystery to me why the District didn’t consider their experiences in planning for the reconfiguration. Now it appears that the District is simply declaring them cases of K8 done right without acknowledging that even in these “successful” schools there are some significant curricular deficits.

While I’m at, can we come up with a better word than “enrichment?” To my ear, this makes the subjects in question sound like luxuries that are, by definition, easily dispensable in hard times. The term strikes me as positively Rovian. I think we should come up with a term that implies that the subjects are not fluff, but essential to a child’s development with proven beneficial effects on both academic achievement and student retention. Any ideas?

Rita Moore has a Ph.D. in Political Science and taught at universities in the US and Europe for 18 years. She now works as an advocate for children in the child welfare system and volunteers as a mediator and facilitator. She has one child in PPS and recently ran for the zone four position on the Portland Public Schools Board of Education.

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K8 crisis molders on

September 23, 2008 by Steve Rawley

Over the last school year, Carole Smith’s staff held a series of community meetings in response to outrage over the district’s complete lack of planning and funding for the K8 transition. As of the last meeting, held at the end of May, district staff painted a much rosier picture of things, with library staff at eight of 30 K8s remaining a significant gap.

Funding 2-4 Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) positions to fill this gap (a half time or full time classified library assistant for each of the eight schools) from a half a billion dollar budget, didn’t seem too onerous at the time.

Another meeting was suggested for the summer, but it never materialized.

Now, as we begin the new school year, we find five K8 schools still have no library staff. We also continue to see many schools with only one class (if that) of a given middle grade year, which means staffing is bare-bones at best.

Many eighth grade students, whom we are supposedly trying to prepare for the high school transition, are spending their days in a single elementary school classroom, with a single teacher for most subjects, and a cohort of 25-30 students. They are not choosing electives, managing their time between classes, learning to deal with varied teaching styles, or learning to deal with other types of students (K8s, since they draw on much smaller geographic attendance areas, are significantly more segregated by class and race than middle schools).

K8s that were created out of middle schools appear much better off — middle grade students have lockers, change classes, and have a variety of electives to choose from. But that’s only a small number of K8s. Most of the K8s created from elementary schools simply don’t have — nor will they ever have — the economies of scale to offer the kind of breadth and depth of curriculum that a middle school can offer.

So even if we pour some real money into making K8 schools work (something we’re certainly not doing, and there doesn’t seem to be any money coming), we’re still looking at a model that is clearly not well-suited to preparing all students for high school.

Some students may benefit from a smaller cohort and the closer attention of a single teacher to get them through the difficult middle school years. But there is something fundamentally broken with a model that sees radically reduced opportunity at most K8s, and the distribution of middle schools, offering significantly more opportunity and high school preparation, mainly in middle class, white neighborhoods.

School board director Ruth Adkins has spoken of having a middle school option in every cluster, something I have advocated for here (the Jefferson and Madison clusters do not have middle schools). But other board members seem hesitant. One told me privately that this idea was premature, since “we don’t know how many clusters there are going to be.”

The lack of urgency on this crisis is troubling. Superintendent Carole Smith has correctly identified the transition from middle school to high school as a critical phase of a student’s career. But at the same time, her administration has pushed a middle school model that can clearly make this transition more difficult for many at-risk students.

There are school board members like Adkins, who was not on the board when the K8 transition was approved, and Sonja Henning, who voted against the K8 transition, who could take the lead on making sure we have a comprehensive middle school option for every student in every cluster. Since K8s seem to have fallen off the radar, now would be a good time for them to step up and push on this.

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

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Libraries: an equity index

September 23, 2008 by Steve Rawley

Neighborhood middle schools no library staff: 0
Of 30 neighborhood K8 schools, number with no library staff: 4
High schools with no library staff: 1 (Young Women’s Academy)
High schools with no certified media specialist (librarian): 3 (Marshall campus, Roosevelt campus, Young Women’s Academy)
Library staff at each of Cleveland, Grant, Lincoln High Schools: 3

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

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On the right track with Carole Smith

September 21, 2008 by Steve Rawley

Lest the casual reader believe PPS Equity is solely focused on the things Portland Public Schools is doing wrong (we’ve been described as “scathing” by Sarah Mirk at the Merc), we should pause and take note of the things that are on the right track.

In Carole Smith’s September 5 speech (58KB PDF) to the City Club of Portland (reviewed by Peter Campbell here and by Terry Olson on his blog), she highlighted what I see as a significant policy shift from her predescessor. In her prepared remarks, she says

…our high school campuses with the lowest enrollment — the ones usually suggested for closure — each have at least 1,400 high school age students living in their neighborhoods. As a city, we have a choice: We can declare defeat, shut down those campuses and tell 1,400 students they have to take a long bus ride every day to a high school in a more affluent part of town — sacrificing their ability to participate in athletics, after-school programs at those schools that meet families’ needs and are attractive to students.

I’m not ready to give up on those schools and on those neighborhoods.

Hey, I could have written this! In fact, I have, many times.

(The next step is to figure out how to pay for it. I’ve long suggested balancing enrollment through a combination of equalizing opportunities across the district and a neighborhood-based enrollment policy. Carole Smith and her staff haven’t made that next step yet, but unless they have a 50% increase in funding or want to cut programming in wealthier neighborhoods, balancing enrollment is the only way we’re going to get there.)

Finally, we’re hearing talk of “equity of access,” which sounds pretty darned close to the “equity of opportunity” I’ve been calling for.

The significant question about “access” is whether we will continue to have a two-tiered secondary school system — comprehensive middle and high schools for the wealthier half of the city and K8s and “small schools” high schools for the rest — or whether we’re going to work toward eliminating the ability to know the wealth of a neighborhood by the type of school you find there.

Smith is taking the first steps on the path to what I call equity; to that end, her staff, “by the end of this school year, … will define the core educational program to be offered at each of our high school campuses, as well as a plan to fund it within existing resources.”

You have to assume this will be a pretty low bar, as it has been with K8s. (The minimum 6-8 curriculum being defined for the K8 transition is significantly less than what was already available at every middle school in Portland before the K8 conversion.) But we’ve got to guarantee that students are at least able to graduate with the classes available, something that isn’t necessarily possible at some of Portland’s poorest high schools, a problem aggravated by the district’s rigid implementation of the “small schools” model at Madison High School, for example.

Nevertheless, these implementation details, along with a continued focus on assessment, do not detract from the fact that Carole Smith is on the right track in significant, broad stroke ways.

Talking about high schools before talking about facilities. Talking about “equity of access”. Talking about where students live (as opposed to where they’ve transferred to) as a critical element in the design of the high school system.

It’s easy to point to missed opportunities to take immediate action and show a real commitment to equity of opportunity: Madison High, K8s, Libraries, etc. But it seems to me the winds have shifted, and if we actually put some of Carole Smith’s words into bold action, we’re going to see a turn-around from the laissez-faire, two-tiered, self-segregated “system” of education we currently have.

Then it just becomes a question of urgency. Every year we wait, we lose another class of students.

It wouldn’t hurt if the school board put a little more wind at Carole Smith’s back in this regard.

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

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A challenge for Martín González

September 14, 2008 by Steve Rawley

As the newest member of the Portland Public Schools board of education, I would like to extend a cordial welcome to Martín González in the form of a challenge on a number of critical issues, in no particular order.

• High schools: advocate for comprehensive high schools in every neighborhood, with the schools offering the best variety of courses and the most qualified teachers sited in the poorest neighborhoods. This policy, the inverse of the current high school system, would rebuild enrollment and public investment where it is most needed. “Small schools,” as currently implemented, may be offered as a special focus, but should never be substituted for comprehensive schools.
• Facilities: advocate for building new facilities based on where students live, not where they’ve transferred, a policy of investing in proportion to local student population and encouraging families to stay in (or return to) their neighborhood schools.
• K8 transition: advocate for a comprehensive middle school option in every neighborhood. K8 schools may be the best option for some students, but they offer dramatically less educational opportunity and are more segregated than middle schools. (Before this transition, every middle school student in PPS had access to a staffed library. Now many do not.) PPS middle grade students assigned to K8 schools are significantly more likely to be non-white and poor than those assigned to middle schools. If any student has a middle school option in their neighborhood, all students should.
• No Child Left Behind: bring a resolution to the board calling for the repeal of the punitive aspects of this law that unfairly target poor and minority students, and introduce policy directing district administration to de-emphasize assessment in favor of a more rounded, whole-child educational focus.
• Student transfer and school funding policies: advocate for a school funding policy that would reinvest in schools that have been gutted by out-transfers as a way to bring enrollment back. Introduce policy that would shift our public investment back to where families live, and guarantee a minimum core curriculum (including the arts) in every neighborhood school. If you really want to be bold, propose policy that would limit neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers to those that would not adversely impact socio-economic segregation. That is, students who qualify for free or reduced lunch could basically transfer anywhere, but other students could only transfer into Title I schools, much like the transfer policy in place during the 1980 desegregation plan (but keying on income instead of race).
• Charter schools: come out strongly for neighborhood schools. Learn from charter school applications what’s missing in our neighborhood schools, and advocate for policy to provide these things in neighborhood schools. The most recent PPS charter school proposal suggests nothing we shouldn’t already be doing in every neighborhood school.

González has a unique opportunity to “audition” for the seat that he will have to win by popular vote in May. How he performs on each of the above issues will signal where he stands with those of us who want school system based on equity of opportunity, where the wealth of a neighborhood does not correspond to the wealth of offerings in its schools.

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

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PPS starting the school year off with a…

September 2, 2008 by Steve Rawley

Tomorrow marks a significant milestone for Portland Public Schools, as Carole Smith begins her second school year at PPS, the first with her own budget. It’s not clear yet how she (and the board’s budget committee) did.

Fortunately, Smith gave us some key points on which to gauge progress.

On the day her hire was announced Smith said “Jefferson’s going to be great.” Her staff solicited “proof points” from the community last fall to be implemented this fall.

I suggested a dramatic increase in funding to immediately beef up schools like Jefferson (similar to Steve Buel’s suggestion here).

I have not yet heard whether this one-time arts magnet school has a music teacher this year, or a world language other than Spanish. There was also talk of adding AP classes. (Any reports from the Jefferson community would be appreciated.)

I do know the middle and high schoolers at Jefferson’s Young Women’s Academy still do not have a staffed library. Likewise the students of the academies at the Marshall High School campus, whose principal does not think students need library staff in the Internet age (librarians, please don’t throw things at your computer while reading this).

Speaking of libraries, another huge challenge to Smith was getting the K-8 transition out of crisis mode. By early summer, many parent concerns had been addressed, and the focus of concern came down to libraries. At the district’s last accounting, nearly a third of K-8 schools completely lack library staff. I know at least one of them has hired some part-time non-certified staff, but what about the others?

Carole Smith did not explicitly set out to reform the small schools at Madison, but the issue came up and forced her hand. Were this fall’s Madison students allowed to fill out their schedules with classes across the small schools walls?

David Colton’s involuntary transfer was — kind of — rescinded, but even he calls it a “Pyrrhic victory at best.” Whether or not students are still constrained to academic silos will be the true test of what kind of victory this is for them.

And while we’re on the topic of Madison, middle grades and libraries, 88 eighth graders start at Madison High tomorrow, and the school has lost its library assistant. They’re holding a fundraiser to get the position back. Also, word is that the Madison eighth grade academy has a severe shortage of clerical staff to register new eighth grade students who start school tomorrow, many without schedules.

On the eve of the 2008-09 school year, the jury is still out on whether we’re starting with a bang or a fizzle, but some preliminary signs look troubling. Please post your experiences here, or e-mail them privately if you prefer (steve at ppsequity dot org).

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

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Defining equity

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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