Statesman Journal: Oregon students soon could face tougher math, English standards

Oregon students could face tougher math and English standards as soon as next year if the State Board of Education adopts Common Core State Standards at its meeting this week.

Already, 37 states have adopted the new standards that combine best practices, the latest education research and include international benchmarks in an effort to make students more competitive in a global economy.

They also make it easier to collaborate and compare results across state lines. Currently, states develop their own benchmarks, which makes it difficult to evaluate how they're doing nationally or internationally.

"I see benefit in going with the common core standards,"said Salem-Keizer assistant superintendent Salam Noor, "The content is really rich."

If adopted, the standards would take effect in 2014, but the transition takes as long as three years, so teachers would start preparing as soon as next year.

A small survey of Oregon teachers and administrators shows strong support for adopting the core English Language Arts standard. English is past due for new standards based on the state's seven-year cycle, and the new ones would be an easy fit and come highly recommended. They were developed by the same group that helped build Oregon's current standards.

But they boast six years of additional research and experience on ways to improve reading in grades 4-12 and writing in K-12.

The standards encourage writing routinely with an emphasis on writing on demand, using technology, honing summarization skills, researching and writing about sources and practicing argument and informative writing in all high school classes, according to a Department of Education topic summary for the board.

The new standards would cost money in terms of training, textbooks and support material, but it's an expense that many districts, including Salem-Keizer, were preparing to pay for English anyway.

Math standards, on the other hand, are a tougher sell.

Oregon developed new standards in 2007 for middle school and 2009 for high school, which cost about $2.46 million to implement in Salem-Keizer. If the new state standards are adopted, districts would then need to possibly buy new materials and retrain teachers again.

"We're hoping the content standards in mathematics will be closely aligned to national standards, which means we wouldn't have to buy a lot more materials," Noor said.

Right now the state is looking at a "crosswalk" between the two standards to help show the similarities and differences.

The biggest difference in math is a shift in content that means students will take algebra and geometry in middle school instead of the high school, and high schoolers will focus on advanced algebra and statistics. The elementary math also emphasizes formulas and arithmetic more than the process, said Lesli Ficker, Salem-Keizer elementary math specialist.

For example, Oregon's standards might have students work on place values and a sense of numbers so they better understand multiplication tables versus focusing on the tables and the answers, Ficker said. The new standards also ask more of students at a younger age, she said, which isn't always developmentally appropriate.

The real test will be how the state implements the standards, she said. Overall she supports the idea of national standards.

Next week, Oregon Department of Education will share a timeline for the new standards as well as state support if they're adopted, but much of the responsibility will fall to districts to train their teachers and purchase materials.

But the benefits of adopting the standards far outweigh the short-term costs, said Susanne Smith with the Oregon Department of Education.

"Oregon will not need to spend money to revise and update standards on its own anymore," she said.

The savings will allow Oregon to spend more of its K-12 budget on vital efforts to support teaching and learning in the classroom, she said.

Already some of the collaborative benefits are shining through.

A group of public school teachers, with money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, designed English curriculum maps including units that use the standards as well as objectives, texts, activities and more. Also a joint task force of math educators will establish a website that includes a variety of tools and resources for K-12 teachers.

Oregon also is a part of one of two consortiums to develop national assessments for core standards in order to compare results throughout the country.

The Salem-Keizer School Board, which urged the state to adopt the standards, hopes the move will help make Oregon more competitive for federal grants to help schools excel.

sknowlto@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6735

Statesman Journal: Documentary about public schools fuels discussion

Parents, teachers, school officials and community members packed High Street Cinema to watch and weigh in on the controversial documentary "Waiting for Superman," which explores America's public education.

The Salem-Keizer chapter of Stand for Children invited about 150 people to the private showing to start a conversation about education in the Salem-Keizer School District.

"We feel it's important to get the entire community involved because learning doesn't happen just in the classroom," said Ellen Keithley with Stand for Children, a grass-roots child advocacy group.

The film's director, Davis Guggenheim, who also directed "An Inconvenient Truth," focused on students in some of the nation's worst public schools as the students and parents pinned their hopes on winning the lottery for local charter schools.

The film strives to generate the same outcry for school reform that Guggenheim's last film created for climate change.

It already has elicited strong opinions from all sides for its depiction of teachers' unions and school administrators as well as its portrayal of charter schools.

Stand for Children held a panel discussion after the movie's emotional climax in which kids find out their fate as the charter school lotteries are drawn.

Houck Middle School Principal and panelist Susan Rieke-Smith was struck by one thought as she watched the movie: "This is not my school, that's not my feeder and that's not my district."

As Houck Middle School's student population went from 20 percent to 80 percent poverty during the past five years, its test scores actually improved, she said receiving applause from the audience.

Although Salem-Keizer doesn't resemble what the film called "drop-out factories," or schools that fail to graduate more than 40 percent of its students, Salem-Keizer still can take away the film's central message, said Four Corners Elementary principal Phil Decker, who was in the audience.

Poverty should not be a barrier to success, he said.

"We need to be relentless in serving all of our kids and hold everyone to high expectations in helping all kids succeed."

Jane Killefer, the Salem-Keizer Education Association president and a panelist, said teachers support education reform that's research-based, collaborative and sustainable, but she disagreed with the film's depiction of teachers' unions as bad and pointed out that Oregon teachers don't get tenure, a criticism of some states in the movie.

She also said the film tried too hard to find a silver bullet.

"In most cases," she said, "there's not a quick and easy solution."

sknowlto@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6735

Oregonian: Portland State University launches initiative to recruit and retain more Latino students

Frederick D. Joe/The Oregonian
Portland State University President Wim Wiewel: "It really shocked me how few Latino students we had."

Latino students seeking college degrees often face isolation on campus, the demands of a full-time job and no financial support from home, says Letisia Ayala, a Mexican American senior at Portland State University.

Those are some of the reasons why President Wim Wiewel announced today that Portland State will launch a $350,000 initiative to recruit and support Latino students.

The initiative -- called Exito!, which is Spanish for success -- is based on recommendations from a task force that included Ayala, the daughter of immigrants and on track to be first in her family to earn a college degree. The university's foundation will raise $100,000 for the project; the rest will come from the school's general fund.

The university this year will provide Latino students financial aid, more internships, a new La Casa Latina cultural center, mentors and graduate and post-graduation support.

"When I came to Portland two years ago, it really shocked me how few Latino and Latina students we had in the population," Wiewel said. "There were really no special programs."

While Portland State has 1,236 Latino students, more than any of the other six public Oregon campuses, they account for only 5 percent of the student body. Latinos, the state's fastest growing population, make up 20 percent of public school students.

Portland State has not set specific student goals with its initiative, but Wiewel said it would be reasonable to expect the university to double its Latino faculty and students within six years.

The La Casa Latina cultural center will give Latino students a place to gather in the Smith Memorial Student Union so they don't feel so isolated.

The university also will provide full tuition support to 100 undergraduate and 25 graduate students, double the Latino faculty from about 20 professors to 40 over five years, and hire a bilingual admissions counselor and a bilingual adviser to recruit students, starting in middle school.

"This program is cutting edge," said Portland Mayor Sam Adams, at a news conference at the university this morning. "It is exactly what we need right now."

Latino students drop out of Oregon schools at 2.5 times the rate of their non-Latino white peers, and they are more likely to be tracked into low-level courses and counseled against college, says a report by the task force that advised Wiewel.

Because they hit more obstacles in schools, Latino students need more support, said Perla Rodriguez, principal of Forest Grove's Cornelius Elementary, which is 80 percent Latino.

"Equality doesn't mean everything's equal," she said. "We have to realize we have underrepresented groups that might need something extra."

Wiewel said he'd like to see Congress pass the Dream Act, which would establish temporary residency to undocumented college students, now charged expensive out-of-state tuition and barred from federal loans.

Portland State has a responsibility to better serve Oregon's Latino population, he said. "This is an important part of the community that we have not been paying enough attention to."

– Bill Graves