By SCOTT JORGENSEN
SALEM, Ore.- Key pieces of education reform legislation have passed out of committee and are on their way to the floor of the Oregon Senate.
The Senate Education and Workforce Development Committee met Wednesday and approved several bills. Among them was SB 1539, which would establish the Task Force on Virtual School Governance to recommend structures for such institutions statewide.
SB 1539 was approved unanimously by committee members. It must go through the budget-writing Ways and Means Committee before making its way to the Senate floor for a vote.
Also approved by the committee with a do-pass recommendation was SB 1581. The bill identifies the positions that will be placed under the direction and control of the state’s Chief Education Officer. It also requires educational entities to enter into achievement compacts with the Oregon Education Investment Board.
Rob Saxton, superintendent of the Tigard-Tualatin School District, testified on behalf of the bill and said it was supported by the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators and its board of directors.
The Tigard-Tualatin School District has an 83 percent rate of students graduating on time, Saxton said, which is higher than the statewide average of 66 percent. Saxton credited the success to his district’s strategic plan, which sets targets for student achievements in reading, college readiness and other areas.
Salem-Keizer School District Superintendent Sandy Husk expressed her support for SB 1581, saying it provides a statewide system enabling districts to compare their results with each other. She said that many districts have planning processes, but there is currently no way of doing so consistently across district lines.
Betsy Miller-Jones, interim director of the Oregon School Boards Association (OSBA), said her organization’s board of directors unanimously supports the concept of achievement compacts.
Miller-Jones said the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act does not meet OSBA’s needs and added that the organization supports the state’s efforts to seek a waiver from that law. She said the achievement compacts reflect what the organization has been seeking since the downsides of NCLB became apparent at the local level.
President Barack Obama has granted waivers from NCLB mandates to ten states so far. Twenty-eight others, including Oregon, plan to seek waivers.
Miller-Jones said the compacts are the best way for districts to share best practices while retaining flexibility.
Sena Norton, a teacher at Boring Middle School and a regional official with the Oregon Education Association, said the teachers union supports the goal of taking a comprehensive approach to education from kindergarten through the university level.
Norton said that teachers “welcome the accountability” promised under the compacts but cautioned that the state should address its “disinvestment” in education funding.
Supportive testimony was also offered by Robert Wagner, director of political and legislative affairs for the American Federation of Teachers-Oregon. Wagner said it is “critical” to get buy-in from parents and teachers and that student achievement is a “shared responsibility.”
“We can’t back away from the challenge of funding,” Wagner said.
The only testimony in opposition to SB 1581 was offered by Steve Buckstein, founder and senior policy analyst for Cascade Policy Institute, parent organization of Oregon Capitol News.
Buckstein said the state continues to fall into the trap of “bigger is better” with regard to education policy. He said that SB 1581 would push power further away from the local level and described it as a “top-down model.”
In 1991, Buckstein said, legislators passed the Oregon Education Act for the 21st Century, with the promise that it would produce the “best-educated citizens in the nation by the year 2000.”
However, Buckstein said, Education Week gave the state a grade of C minus in 2010 and 2011 on its Annual Education Report Card and ranked the state 43rd in the nation.
Additional testimony in support of SB 1581 was offered by Betsy Earls from Associated Oregon Industries and Jeremy Rogers from the Oregon Business Council.
Sen. Frank Morse, R-Albany, moved to send SB 1581 to the Senate floor with a prior referral to the Ways and Means Committee. That motion passed 4-1, with the sole dissenting vote cast by Sen. Larry George, R-Sherwood.
George said he was afraid that innovation at the local level would suffer under the bill. But Sen. Mark Hass, D-Beaverton, expressed his support for the bill.
“I feel good about moving this forward,” Hass said.
Committee members also passed SB 1540, an omnibus education reform bill. Morse moved to adopt amendments to the bill, and the motion passed unanimously.
Morse moved separately to suspend the rules to pass the bill, as the fiscal impact statement was not yet available. Hass said the bill will not receive a vote on the Senate floor until the statement is completed.
The motion was passed unanimously, along with a subsequent motion by Morse to move the bill to the Senate floor with a do-pass recommendation. Hass said he will carry the bill on the Senate floor.
