CONTINUED

     Because scoring guides help teachers measure not only the quantity of facts memorized but the quality with which they’re put to use, passing courses has ceased to be a matter of performing adequately on multiple choice tests. In history and social studies, as well as English, students must now be able to write essays demonstrating cogent ideas, masterful organization, varied sentence structure, and competent grammatical conventions. In math and the sciences they must show an understanding of concepts, devise and carry out strategies for solving complex problems, explain their reasoning at each step using diagrams, symbols, and/or appropriate vocabulary; and then, after solving a problem, review their work and show why the solution is reasonable in relation to the task.

     As they advance through elementary and middle school, students are held to increasingly higher standards. Social promotion has been strongly discouraged, even eliminated in some schools. Students now must meet certain "benchmarks," achievement toward which is assessed at grades three, five and eight. Because kids are less likely to arrive in their classes unable to read or write at expected levels, instructors are freed to engage them at a higher level overall, and at an accelerated rate compared to years past.

Potential Problems

     Students no longer are allowed to slide past the system in Oregon: they now must demonstrate knowledge and prove skills, and so must go about their classroom work with greater diligence than before. But Oregon's approach—raising the bar, rather than lowering it to accommodate kids whose backgrounds seems to predispose them to poor academic performance—strikes some as counterintuitive. It's often argued that there's an overwhelming need to establish students' self esteem before they can be expected to learn the basics, let alone aspire to great competency. High standards are feared to be daunting to young and fragile egos. And state-mandated, standardized tests are met with suspicion by disadvantaged groups, who worry such instruments are inherently unfair—that they embody racism or classism, or simply demand too much from youngsters, while schools and teachers are allowed to get by without putting out much effort at all.

     Oregon is struggling now with these concerns. Studies are under way to gauge whether schools in higher socioeconomic strata perform better under the new standards than schools in the lower strata. New tests and standards have been developed for special education students. But in the meantime, schools across Oregon are forging ahead with the task of helping students meet higher expectations. Site councils are directing their schools’ efforts in standards-based instruction and assessment. Teachers are weaving together curricula with instruction and assessment practices. After-school study halls, evening study, and summer school programs are being established to provide struggling students with additional help. Inservice days are devoted to helping teachers design step-by-step instruction plans to make sure each aspect of the state’s standards is addressed.

     Moreover, there’s little chance that, in all this, educators will somehow be let off easy. A new program put forth by the Teachers Standards and Practices Commission, the body responsible for liscensure of teachers in Oregon, now requires that teachers continually participate in professional development activities. The program^[8], which will be implemented state-wide as of 2006, requires that teachers earn a specified number of "professional development units"—by attending classes, conferences, workshops, and seminars, or doing active research, publishing articles, etc.—in order to maintain their teaching licenses. The TSPC’s intent with the PDU program is to empower local school districts to focus on professional development tied into the new state standards, and to compel reluctant, obstinate, or recalcitrant teachers to get behind the state mandate or be moved out of the system.

     In line with the PDU program, some school districts are changing the way teachers and administrators' job performance is assessed. Instead of the old way, in which teachers set a few goals to work toward each year and then met with principals to review their achievement (always a rather nebulous process), teachers’ success now is graded on a scoring guide tailored specifically to standards implementation. The TSPC is trying to work this method of assessing teacher and administrator job performance into districts system-wide, as a fulcrum to force educators to be accountable to standards themselves.

     Of course, it remains to be seen whether high expectations, and the flexible and often innovative instructional strategies Oregon schools have adopted in response to them, will really benefit kids on the low end of the socioeconomic scale. But Oregon has adopted the position that clearly spelled-out standards can’t help but be beneficial, and that the detailed scoring guides used in standards-based instruction and assessment let students know in no uncertain terms what it takes to be successful. It’s hoped that students and parents both will recognize that the state’s education criteria are not local aberrations but universal requirements, and that this will enlarge their perspectives and prod them to develop their abilities in ways that transcend earlier expectations.

The Big Catch

     But one very serious obstacle could still undermine the implementation of high standards in Oregon: money. In the 1950s and ’60s, more than half of all voters had children in school. Now, only about 20 percent of voters do. In 1990, the primary source of revenue for schools was shifted from local property taxes to the state general fund^[9], as a property tax limitation known as Measure 5 was voted into law. Schools now are desperately competing with other political interests for money—and the other interests have been winning. The majority of voters, not having school-age children, are less personally interested in public education and more inclined to support other initiatives that may affect them more directly—from tax rebates, to aid to seniors and the disabled, to the building of additional prisons, to the funding of welfare programs. As a result, although Oregon's economy has been booming and its population growing, fewer new classrooms are being built. Class sizes are now the fourth largest in the nation.^[10]   And school districts are facing another budget cut—on the order of eight percent—which means either not replacing staff as needed, or else eliminating programs not immediately related to standards implementation: music, art, and athletics. These programs are some students' only real connection to schools.

     Oregon’s governor and legislature are currently struggling to come up with a budget that will properly fund all its education priorities. Until they do, and despite government efforts to equalize funding between rich districts and poorer ones, the state faces real difficulty making a reality of its new, potentially transformative legislation.

     The line Oregon has marked out for itself will undoubtedly be an extremely tough row to hoe: the standards are high, and budget issues eventually must be addressed in order for schools to meet their obligations under law. But at least as far as those obligations themselves are concerned, the expectations are clear for everyone. Many bemoan the state of education in America. High standards in themselves may not be a panacea. But Oregon believes that through hard work the highest goals can be attained, and that standards are an essential tool for reaching them.

Phillip David is a regular contributor to The Sun's Eye and a public school teacher in western Oregon. He maintains a website with pages devoted to religion, history, sociopolitical topics, and to the interdisciplinary 8th grade class he teaches, U.S. History/Language Arts/Literature/Speech.