then where is the improvement? And please don't answer that it is in the progress of our 3rd graders. Since we started saying that, 12 cohorts of 3rd graders have become fully bearded without having met the 10th grade standards in any significant numbers.
O.K. This isn't about Corbett. At any rate it's not just about Corbett. Or maybe it is, but it's also about education in general and about Oregon education in particular.
Nearly two decades after the passage of the Oregon Educational Act for the 21st Century, education statewide is experiencing a peculiar malaise. I say peculiar, because it is characterized by an almost hyper-activity regarding initiatives, programs, trainings, policies and promises all aimed at improving student achievement. Never have so many adults been so busy at 'improving' schools. But student achievement isn't budging. The achievement gap isn't appreciably narrower than it was five years ago. Where passing rates appear to have improved, most of the change is due to the State of Oregon having lowered 10th grade standards in Reading and Math, garnering what appeared to be a 10 point bump in passing rates in both of those subjects in 2007. That same year, the State increased the cutoff score for Science (the subject that doesn't count for AYP calculations) by 1 point, and passing rates have remained stable. Overall, 10th grade passing rates might be creeping upward at a rate of 1-2% per year. With the State assessments in a continual state of flux, I don't put a lot of stock in even that meager 'gain'.
So what do we, as a state, intend to do differently next year? Well, nothing at all. That doesn't mean that we won't see new initiatives, new grants, new buildings, new funding proposals, and new promises. We will. In droves. And each new idea, regardless of its merits, will be subjected to a process that has, to date, prevented any really good idea from being implemented to any significant effect. What is this amazing 'sterilizer' through which every promising idea must pass lest a good idea might survive intact? It is the ironically-named Continuous Improvement Planning Process. What does it do? It limits vision, sets parameters on 'acceptable' goals, and virtually guarantees a very safe mediocrity.
What is the alternative? What ought we to do?
What Oregon needs, and what the education establishment in Oregon will never tolerate, is outrageous aspirations. We need impossible goals, audacious undertakings. Because getting even partway to something really worthwhile represents far more progress than meeting an utterly pedestrian 'SMART' (yes, it's a real acronym, but I've never cared to know what the letters stand for) goal. What I do know about SMART goals is that they are small, cheap, easy, achievable in no time at all, and the total result of 10 years of Oregon schools meeting annual SMART goals is virtually no improvement at the high school level. We are stalled out, with plans in place to repeat this process until the federal grant money runs out.
I believe that Charter Schools represent the only possibility for rapid, meaningful school improvement. Although Oregon law goes a long way toward trying to tame the wild energy that Charters often possess, there is enough breathing room for charters to aspire to greatness. Greatness, not compliance. Inspiration, not bureaucracy. Achievement, not excuses. That's the path that Oregon needs to take, and I don't see anyone at the state level breaking trail. We need to decentralize. Scattered outbreaks of inspiration would be a vast improvement over standardized mediocrity. And today mediocrity is the only SMART goal that ever makes it through the Continuous Improvement Planning Proccess.
This cannot continue.
