Education Improvement in Oregon
1983 - A Nation At Risk report
(U.S. Department of
Education)
1984 - First wave of improvement
State Board of Education adopted Oregon Action Plan for Excellence. The plan included:
- State Curriculum Goals and Essential Learning Skills. Curriculum goals included:
- Learning skills: reading, writing, speaking, listening, math, critical thinking, scientific method and study skills;
- Knowledge in: art, health, language arts, math, science, music, physical education, social studies, career development, personal finance, economics and computer literacy.
- Increased high school graduation requirements from 21 to 22 credits and measures for student performance.
- Required districts to assess students’ academic performance in grades 3, 5, 8 and 11 through locally developed tests or state-approved commercial tests.
- State required to assess, on a sample basis, one grade level in one content area on a biennial basis.
- State also required to monitor schools on standards set by statute and by the State Board of Education. Standards included desk audits and some on-site visits.
- Adjusted instructional time.
- Introduced time management/organizational strategies.
- Established 175 days as minimum school year.
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1987 - Safety Net: voters approved Constitutional amendment to guarantee funding at prior year’s level.
Governor’s 30-member Commission on School Funding Reform issued its report.
Short-Term proposals called for:
- Updated tax bases for all school districts.
- Increased state financial support for all districts with increase equal to consumer price index.
- Provisions for funding equity.
- Increased state aid for handicapped students.
- Increased state role in student assessment and program evaluation.
- State tests for all students in grades 3, 5, 8, 11 in required content.
- On-site monitoring visits to each district every six years and district self-evaluations every two years.
Long-Term proposals called for:
- Establishing a new school funding program with increased state support to reduce local property taxes (sales tax).
- Defining basic education in statute and funding it by the state.
- Updating all property assessments.
- Unifying districts into K-12 systems.
- Merging small districts and ESDs (regional service centers).
- Requiring districts to do long-range planning (3-5 years).
- Reporting annually to the public by districts.
Second wave of improvement established:
- Grant programs for school improvement and staff development.
- Beginning teacher support program.
- School-based decision making (site councils).
- Teacher corps (student loans).
- Professional development centers (three staff development centers for the state).
- Oregon ED-NET
Planning Commission proposal for a statewide telecommunications delivery system for two-way live instruction.
- Two + two cooperative programs between high schools and community colleges.
- No dollars allocated to monitor state standards.
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1989 - Third wave of improvement
- Districts allowed to secure waivers from law and rules to accomplish local district goals.
- School improvement, staff development grants continued.
- State funded assessment for all students in grades 3, 5, 8 and 11 in required content.
- Standardization visits to all schools every six years.
- Oregon ED-NET funded and implemented (more than 100 sites established).
- Oregon Progress Board established by legislature. A nine-person board appointed by the governor established a strategic vision for Oregon. The Benchmarks (160 indicators) offered a tangible system to measure achievement in three basic categories:
- Exceptional people
- Outstanding quality of life
- Diverse, robust economy
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1991 - Fourth wave of improvement
- Oregon’s Educational Act for the 21st Century established a systemic strategy to produce the best educated citizens in the nation by the year 2000 and a workforce equal to any in the world by the year 2010.
- Workforce 2000 bill connected high schools and community colleges.
- Workforce Quality Act established Workforce Quality Councils to coordinate various sectors related to education, training and human services.
- Young Apprenticeship Training Act brought education, business and labor together.
- Unification of union high schools with their component elementary schools and districts not offering high school with districts offering K-12 is required.
- Eliminated State Textbook Commission.
- Allocated $4 million for research and development to begin implementation of educational act.
Oregon’s Educational Act for the 21st Century
Established a blueprint for change. Major goals were to have:
- Best educated citizens in the nation by 2000,
- A workforce equal to any in the world by 2010.
Major provisions included:
- Early Childhood Development
- Head Start (50 percent of eligible children by 1996; 100 percent by 1998)
- Non-graded Primary (pilot)
- Curriculum Improvement
- Curriculum framework
- Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM)
- Certificate of Advanced Mastery (CAM)
- World Class Standards
- Curriculum content (knowledge and skills)
- Student achievement
- Student assessment (testing)
- Grades 3, 5, 8, 10 (essential curriculum and skill areas)
- Performance methods (problem solving, portfolios)
- On-site assistance for schools (teams of distinguished Oregon educators)
- Alternative learning environments including learning centers (special assistance for at-risk and dropout students, but available for all students)
- Public School Choice
- For students who are not successful in resident school
- For students who have completed their CIM and are working toward CAM
- Transition from school to work
- Internships
- Work Study
- Structured work experience
- School-based decision making (school councils at all buildings by 1995)
- Delivery of some social services at or near schools, e.g., Health Services, Children Services Division, Aid for Dependent Children
- Longer school year — 220 days by 2010 (if funding is available)
- Oregon Report Card — An annual report to the public by the state Superintendent of Public Instruction on the condition of education in Oregon and progress on Oregon’s Educational Act for the 21st Century
- Indicated changes which involve significant additional dollars will not be mandated without “adequate funding.” Did not define “adequate funding.”
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1993 - Improvement Continued
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1995 - Oregon’s Educational Act for the 21st Century revised
Major goals were to:
- Have best educated citizens in the nation and the world.
- Achieve highest standards of academic content and performance.
- Provide lifelong academic skills that prepare students for ever-changing world.
Other major changes included:
- Public Accountability
- Annual statewide Report Card
- Local district and school self-evaluations every two years
- Increased parent involvement
- Alternative programs for students either not meeting or exceeding the academic standards
- Diplomas issued
- Students given grades
- Academic content and performance tested statewide at grades 3, 5, 8, 10
- Certificates of Initial Mastery (CIM)
- K-10 program by 1998-99
- Content and performance assessments
- Portfolios optional
- State academic standards in content areas
- Local standards in all other areas
- Certificates of Advanced Mastery (CAM)
- To begin two years after standards adopted by state
- Included two years of study with rigorous academic standards
- Prepared students for post-high school
- Provided combination of work-related learning and study
- Extended school year goals repealed
- Serve all Head Start eligible children by 2004 if funding available
- School site social services at local district’s discretion
- More local control of:
- Curriculum
- Course content, format, materials
- Teaching methods
- Academic standards in many areas
- Student second language proficiency
- 21st Century School Councils
- One in every building
- Composition locally decided
- School board’s role defined
- Timeline extensions made available for districts showing need.
- Clarified education service district merger procedures and reduced number of ESDs from 29 to 20. (See section on
Education Service
Districts.)
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1997
Oregon’s Educational Act for the 21st Century amended to modify timelines for implementation of the Certificate of Advanced Mastery (CAM).
- Directed the State Board of Education to adopt final standards and rules for the CAM with endorsements prior to March 1, 2000.
- Clarified that school districts are not required to award the CAM prior to Sept. 1, 2004 (the 2004-05 school year).
- Directed the State Board of Education to establish incentive programs to encourage schools to implement the CAM programs prior to Sept. 1, 2004.
- Required school districts to demonstrate continued progress toward the development and implementation of CAM programs prior to statewide implementation.
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1997-2000
Oregon House Speaker Lynn Lundquist (R-Powell Butte) forms Legislative Council on the
Quality Education
Model, aimed at helping determine the appropriate level of funding needed to help students reach state educational standards. The Council’s 1999 report becomes model used by the Quality Education Commission, appointed in 1999 by the Governor and state Superintendent of Public Instruction. The resulting report provides a framework for analyzing funding decisions. The prototypes also enable schools to forecast reasonable educational outcomes based on the resources received.
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1999
Oregon’s Educational Act for the 21st Century amended as follows:
- Delayed from the end of the 2001-02 school year to the end of the 2004-05 school year the requirement that, prior to high school graduation, all students complete instruction in a second language.
- Directed the state Department of Education to develop academic content standards in Oregon Studies by the 2001-02 school year. “Oregon Studies” means the history, geography, economics and civics of Oregon including municipal, county, tribal and state governments as well as the electoral and legislative processes.
- Directed the state Department of Education to develop content standards in physical education by the 2001-02 school year and required school districts to administer assessments in physical education by the 2003-04 school year.
Other major changes:
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November 2000
Voters approve a constitutional amendment requiring the Legislature to provide adequate and equitable funding for schools (Section 8):
- The Legislative Assembly shall appropriate in each biennium a sum of money sufficient to ensure that the state’s system of public education meets quality goals established by law, and publish a report that either demonstrates the appropriation is sufficient, or identifies the reasons for the insufficiency, its extent, and its impact on the ability of the state’s system of public education to meet those goals.
- Consistent with such legal obligation as it may have to maintain substantial equity in state funding, the Legislative Assembly shall establish a system of Equalization Grants to eligible districts for each year in which the voters of such districts approve local option taxes as described in Article XI, section 11 (4)(a)(B) of this
Constitution. The Legislative Assembly is responsible for determining grant amounts and eligibility criteria.
State funding for schools in 1999-2000 is 70% of operating costs. However, constitutional amendment does not define sufficient and has no teeth for forcing increased spending for schools. [In fact, per student spending in 2002-03 dropped Oregon to 31st highest among the states, nearly $1,000 per student below the national average, according to
U.S. Census data.]
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2001
- Requirement that students take a minimum of two years of second language instruction prior to graduation from high school eliminated. However, requirement that students must demonstrate proficiency in a second language for a Certificate of Initial Mastery is retained.
(ORS
329.487)
- Period for which a school district may request to waive implementation of provisions of the
Educational Act for the 21st Century extended from two years to five years.
(ORS 329.077 and
329.575)
- New provisions to encourage school districts to implement programs focused on improving student performance and school personnel satisfaction created and
ORS 329.105 amended to modify the information included in state’s school district and school performance report cards.
- ORS 329.485 amended to require that statewide assessments for math problem-solving and writing be given on or after March 1. The act allows the
State Board of Education to grant waivers to districts who want earlier testing dates.
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2002
President George W. Bush signs into law the revised Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also called the
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of
2001. This law represents the most significant change in federal education policy since the first ESEA was enacted in 1965. The 1,180-page NCLB Act impacts the way public education is conducted in every state and school that receives federal ESEA funding.
Specifically, the act requires:
- Annual testing in reading and math for all students grades 3-8 and 10;
- Regular reporting of test results to parents and the public;
- Fully qualified teachers in every classroom; and
- Greater choice for students in chronically failing schools.
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2003
ORS Chapter 329 is amended to modify
Oregon Educational Act for the 21st Century requirements as follows:
- Implementation of the Certificate of Advanced Mastery (CAM) is delayed from Sept. 1, 2004, to Sept. 1, 2008.
- Number of academic subjects in which students must demonstrate proficiency to receive a Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM) is reduced to English, mathematics and science – the same academic subjects for which the federal No Child Left Behind Act requires statewide assessment. (The subjects eliminated are: the arts, physical education, history, geography, economics, civics and second languages.)
- The requirement that the Oregon Department of Education establish standards for English, mathematics, science, history, geography, economics, civics, physical education, the arts and second languages is maintained.
- ODE is directed to develop academic content standards for health.
- ODE must adopt standards and requirements for the CIM and the CAM.
- ODE must develop assessments for history, geography, economics and civics in addition to the existing assessments in English, mathematics and science.
- School districts are required to offer instruction in English, mathematics, science, history, geography, economics, civics, physical education, health, the arts and second languages.
- School districts are allowed to offer CIM endorsements in the arts, physical education, health, history, geography, economics, civics and second languages.
- School districts are allowed to use state assessments in history, geography, economics and civics for CIM endorsements and local assessments based on state standards for endorsements in the arts, physical education, health and second languages.
- ODE and school districts are prohibited from requiring student portfolios as evidence of proficiency for the CIM.
- The State Board of Education must establish a minimum number of work samples that a student must complete in each subject to receive CIM or CAM endorsements.
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2005
See OSBA's Legislative
News and Action Network for
information regarding education legislation
being considered or passed by the 2005 Legislature.
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School Curriculum
