Sharpen those No. 2 pencils, open your Pee-Chee folders and follow along as I read aloud.

Here is the Cliff Notes version of the first five of 10 changes the Legislature might consider to lift Oregon schools out of the nation’s basement in school performance. None will be easy. The status quo is a formidable opponent. So, armor up, you warriors of change, and watch for Part 2 next week.

1. EXPAND THE NUMBER OF INSTRUCTIONAL DAYS

Oregon is on the bottom rung when it comes to providing instructional days to students. Most states require 180 days. Oregon has no minimum days requirement, and it shows, as schools average about 165 days a school year, almost three weeks less of educational opportunity for every student. Teacher pay now is ranked 10^th nationally according to the National Teachers Union (NEA), so having teachers put in three more weeks of instruction for that pay would be appropriate. The state should also clearly define “instructional days.” Teacher prep days or parent-teacher conferences are not instructional days and should not be counted as such. Kudos to Gov. Kotek for issuing an executive order this Spring to stop this practice. The Legislature should codify it next session.

2. ADDRESS CHRONIC ABSENTEEISM

Research is clear that having students in class with their regular teacher is a key component to learning.  Yet in Oregon chronic absenteeism is a major obstacle, not just for students but for teachers as well. The state is next to last behind only Alaska for the highest rate of student absenteeism. Roughly 33% of students are chronically absent from school, which is generally defined as missing between 17-18 days a year, compared to the national average of 22%. Shockingly, at least in some districts, teachers have a rate of absenteeism far higher than the student’s statewide average. In some schools, teachers that are chronically absent can top 50%.

One example: Data the Political Center obtained from one mid-size Oregon school district with about 400 licensed staff showed half the staff were chronically absent during the year, missing an average of 17 days each.

Combine students missing 17 days or more and their regular teachers missing 17 days as well, and that 165-day school year is even worse than it appears.

How can this happen? One reason is that Oregon’s Legislature has now passed multiple tiers of laws that allow teachers to receive both paid and unpaid absences. To start, schools generally allow teachers 10-12 days per year for illness. Secondly, there are personal days. Thirdly, there is now the Oregon Family Leave Act. And fourth, Paid Leave Oregon. Rather than designing them to run concurrently, they operate consecutively, stacking one atop another.

When someone is sick or a family member is ill or has an unexpected need, it is right and proper to give that employee the right to stay home and address those issues. But the limited data available suggests it has been viewed by some as an entitlement for a day off whether needed or not. Absenteeism has taken a sharp trajectory upward in the last few years as The Oregonian’s Julia Silverman reported last year.

Why aren’t parents upset and asking questions? Because the information is hidden from state reports. While school districts are required to report student absenteeism records to the state, they are not required to report teacher absenteeism, so they don’t.  But they all have the data, along with the extra dollars that are expended to pay for substitutes, further draining their already tight budgets.

The Legislature should require all districts to file both student and teacher aggregate absenteeism data. They should tighten — not loosen, as the Department of Education just did — penalties for chronic absenteeism as well as other intervention strategies to get students back in the classroom. The collective bargaining process and the legislative process should be used to address chronic teacher absenteeism. Which leads us to lesson plan number 3.

3. ENACT STATEWIDE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

Oregon has 197 school districts and all bargain contracts individually with their own staff. School board members are volunteers, sitting across the table from seasoned professional negotiators from the unions. The state now pays the lion’s share of school funding so it makes sense that the one doing the paying should also be the one bargaining with those they are going to pay.

The cries of ‘local control’ are little more than a red herring since the passage of Ballot Measure 5  turned school funding from local taxpayers to state coffers. But there is a model that can achieve both concerns. AFSCME, the union that represents state workers from about 19 different agencies, has a two-tiered bargaining system with the state. One is known as the Central Table and the other as the Local Table.

All fiscal issues, salary, benefits, etc., are negotiated for all those state employees from Klamath Falls to Pendleton and Portland to Jordan Valley at the Central Table. One negotiation, one agreement. Non- financial issues, such as those impacting the work environment or work schedules, are negotiated by the Local Table in each corner of the state separately by the local union members and supervisors. The state could do the same with teachers and classified staff, leaving school boards and teachers to focus on the primary objective of education.

4. OPT OUT OF THE OPT OUT

Ten years ago, the Oregon legislature allowed students to opt out of statewide standardized tests anytime they wished. The end result is that the evidence needed to address failing schools or target resources to those students who need it the most is woefully lacking. Without such evidence to show students need more help, schools can simply usher students out the door to the next grade level whether they are prepared or not and shun responsibility to meet those student’s needs.

Education advocates from former Gov. John Kitzhaber, former Sen. Mark Hass, and former School Boards Association CEO Jim Green all agree the legislature must reverse course and require all students to take state-wide exams except in very limited circumstances and end the opt-out that hides the evidence needed to effectively target resources.

5. REDIRECT STATE SCHOOL FUNDS

With a few exceptions, Oregon’s School Funding Formula distributes money to schools equally on a per-student basis. Students who have strong family support, are not facing food insecurity, and are living in stable housing pretty much get the same amount of money for their education as those facing those challenges and more. Equality is not equity. Too often people use the terms interchangeably and they are demonstrably different. To achieve education equity for some students requires more investment to achieve the same level of success than someone else with less social and economic barriers.

The school funding formula is one of the sacred cows in Oregon state spending. Even when some additional formula dollars are allotted, requirements are not sufficiently enforced to guarantee that districts direct those dollars on additional resources for the students most in need. It’s all trust but don’t verify.

The legislature should re-evaluate what tools are used to determine high need students and rework the formula to better target those needs while enacting strict provisions that require districts to report on a regular basis how those dollars are being spent.

 

In the next installment, we round out the top ten with a focus on the agencies and commissions that might benefit from redevelopment.