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For relocation parents, there is a wealth
of information on the
Oregon Department of
Education (ODE) site and most of the reports are in Adobe's PDF.
To read PDF files, you must have Acrobat Reader© (free)
installed on your computer. To download the reader, go to the
Adobe Web site.
". . . and where all the children are above
average." is the words that Garrison Keillor, the host of NPR's Prairie
Home Companion Show, uses to end his dialogue about the week's events in
his fictitious hometown of Lake Wobegon. Unlike Lake Wobegon's students,
Oregonians can prove that Oregon's children are above average!
In 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005, 2006 Oregon SAT scores were the second highest
in the nation. In 2007 and 2008, they were third. Oregon ranked
first in the nation in
SAT scores in 1997 and 1998 among the twenty-three states where more
than 40% of students take the SAT. Oregon ranked in the top five in
1999 and 2000 on SAT scores. Ranking are determined among states where more
than 50 percent of students took the test. Washington State finished
number one in those years. The SAT is the college entrance exam of choice
on the West Coast whereas the ACT is used more in the east and Midwest.
See the metro area high schools SAT scores
by click here.
Oregon Class Sizes: 4th Largest in Nation
New figures released in July 2010 from the
National Center for Education Statistics peg Oregon's public school
class sizes as fourth-largest in the country. Only Utah, California and
Nevada packed more students per class during 2008-09, the figures suggest.
Oregon had 19.2 students for every teacher −
22 percent more students than the national average of 15.8 students per
teacher. And as The Oregonian reported July 4, 2010, the state's
high schools classrooms are even more crammed, with 19.9 students for every
high school teacher on staff, including special education teachers and other
specialists who work with a small number of students.
Portland School District
Portland Schools have some innovative high
school programs such as the International Baccalaureate programs at Cleveland
High School, Lincoln High School, Tigard and Tualatin High Schools, a Young
Scholars program at Wilson, high tech at Benson, and college prep at Riverdale.
High School Reorganization In June, 2009,
the Portland School District announced a major reorganization of its high
schools. The new design will feature six to seven neighborhood schools
and several district wide magnet schools possibly focusing on subjects such
as the performing arts, languages or the environment.
That means the district would close two of its current
high schools and likely reopen them as magnets. The district will have more
information about the changes in the fall of 2009, but the overhaul is on
a five- to six-year timeline. The plan also would end the city's 30-year
tradition of letting students transfer to a more appealing school in another
part of town. The practice was designed to give families choice but ended
up segregating students by race, family income, disability status and first
language.
This means that students would have to attend their neighborhood
school or one of the few magnet schools. The model also includes alternative
and charter school options in the design.
Transfer Policy 2010-2011 The Portland School
District will limit the number of eighth graders hoping to transfer into
one of the district's four most popular schools to 19. Cleveland, Lincoln,
Grant and Wilson are each accepting only 19 freshmen who live outside those
schools' boundaries. That's about half as many
slots as were available last year. Portland Public Schools officials
say they are beginning to limit transfers into larger high schools in preparation
for more decisions around the two-year-old high school redesign process.
There is also a possibility that the Portland school district
could dismantle its signature practice of allowing high school students
to transfer among neighborhood high schools. Over the past 30 years,
the transfer policy has remained a constant. The state's largest school
district built its schools around the idea that you could pick wherever
you wanted to go to provide a mix of classes, faces and experiences. But
in 2010, district leaders admit that the transfers have hurt their high
schools, creating and perpetuating inequities in enrollment, course offerings
and money. The potential changes wouldn't affect parents' ability to choose
schools for their elementary and middle school students.
Finding the Right School For Your Children
With another mom, Northeast Portlander Katy Mayo-Hudson,
Rothenberg started
Scoop On Schoools,
which walks parents through the potentially bewildering process of finding
the right school for their kids and includes a growing list of insider portraits
of different Portland-area schools. Their Web site is organized chronologically,
with features such as a calendar, ideas for questions to ask during school
tours, and tips about the lottery. Those interested in a particular school,
as opposed to general tips, can check to see if their school has been profiled
in the site's blog. The blog features assessments of each school's strengths
and weaknesses.
There are other popular online forums in Portland for discussing
individual schools, including the long-running Web site
Urban Mamas.
Oregon Graduation Requirements
Starting with the senior class of 2012, it will get tougher
to graduate from high school in Oregon, under a plan passed in 2008, by
members of the Oregon state Board of Education.
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Oregon students will have to pass state reading, math
and writing tests, or prove they have the equivalent skills, to get
a high school diploma, beginning with the 2008 incoming freshmen.
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The unanimous decision by the Oregon Board of Education
also requires students to give three speeches that meet state standards.
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The state also needs to design a way for students
to show they read well enough to meet state reading standards without
passing the state reading. The Oregon Department of Education
will establish a system to do that.
One-third of Oregon sophomores failed the state reading
and writing exams in 2007, and 45 percent failed the state math test.
Oregon will be the 27th state to require students to pass
a state high school graduation exam. California began requiring students
to pass state reading and math exams in 2006. Washington graduated
its first class of students in 2008 who had to pass state reading and writing
exams to get a diploma. Oregon will be one of just two states (the other
one is New Jersey) to allow students to substitute a locally graded essay
or work sample if they can't pass the state graduation test.
December 2008: Delay in Math Test The Oregon
Board of Education members said in mid-December that they plan to push back
a mandatory math test to get a diploma. That means that this year's high
school freshmen won't have to prove they have mastered introductory algebra,
geometry and statistics to graduate. Board members said that since almost
half of sophomores fail the math test on their first try, it would be too
difficult for schools to get all students proficient in math by 2012 without
a large infusion of money − money the state
doesn't have in this recession. The board agreed to postpone the math test
requirement until 2014.
Oregon Schools Initiative
Standardized Tests
for Oregon Students
In 1991, the Oregon State Legislature passed
the Oregon Educational Act for the 21st Century (the Oregon Schools Initiative).
The act gave birth to the Oregon Statewide Assessment Test (OAT), an effort
to hold students accountable for high academic standards as measured by
a series of annual tests conducted at benchmark grade levels. Students achieving
minimum standards receive certificates recognizing their abilities.
The assessment is made up of multiple-choice
and performance assessments in the areas of reading and literature, writing,
mathematics and science and is given several times throughout the school
year at grades 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, and 12. For further information go
to these two links on the Oregon Department of Education Web site:
School Report Cards
Each year in early January, the Oregon Department
of Education produces annual performance report cards for schools
and districts beginning in the year 2000. Oregon law mandates this
system and the state legislatures set the rules and measurement criteria.
You will want to view the
report card for the school(s) of your choice.
Educational performance and improvement are
the focus of the Oregon School Report Card rating system. Schools
are rated on several measures - student performance, student behavior, and
school characteristics - these measures are combined to yield an Overall
School Performance Rating of exceptional, strong, satisfactory, low,
or unacceptable. A full explanation of this performance system
is found at the
Oregon Department of Education Web site.
Technology Education - Oregon at Bottom
The national newspaper
Education Week, in connection
with the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, released its rankings
in March, 2008 of technology education in all 50 states and the District
of Columbia. States were assessed on how well schools provide access to
computers, how adept schools are at using technology, and whether the state
requires teachers to show technology proficiency.
Oregon scored in the bottom five states. You can
read the full report by click
here.
The Nation's Report Card
Every state has
their own reporting and testing system so it is impossible to compare scores
between states. However, beginning in 2003, the No Child
Left Behind Act requires state assessments to be administered in reading
and mathematics at grades 4 and 8 every two years. Therefore, limited
comparisons can be made between states.
The
Nation’s Report CardTM
informs the public about the academic achievement of elementary and secondary
students in the United States. Report cards communicate the findings of
the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a continuing and
nationally representative measure of achievement in various subjects over
time. The Nation’s Report Card compares performance among states, urban
districts, public and private schools, and student demographic groups.
NAEP does not provide individual scores for the students,
schools, or school districts.
The two Web sites are full of information and allows comparisons
between the average scores for public school students in a particular state
or jurisdiction and the average score of the nation or another state. To
access reports, visit the
NAEP Web site or the
Nation's Report Card
Web site.
Magnets, Language Immersion, Talented and Gifted
Some Portland metro area schools have special
programs such as the Richmond Elementary Japanese immersion program (K-5)
or the Ainsworth Elementary Spanish immersion program.
Wilson High School in the Portland district has a Young Scholars program.
The Portland School District lists special
programs on their
School Facts
page. For example, Portland Public Schools'
Talented and
Gifted (TAG) program has some special instruction programs for talented/gifted
students. Each school district is required to have a contact for their TAG
program. The ODE's Web site offers numerous resources for
TAG programs to include a FAQ.
A good place to find out about Oregon programs
for special education is to visit the ODE
Office of Student Learning and Partnerships Web pages. They are responsible
to ensure that students with disabilities and those who are talented and
gifted benefit from an enhanced education system.
International Baccalaureate (IB)
Four Oregon middle schools and 18 high schools
participate in a International Baccalaureate (IB) program. Ridgewood
Elementary in the Beaverton Schools is a candidate for the IB Primary Years
Program and if approved, it will be the first elementary school in the state
to become a member of the program.
Twelve IB programs are offered in the metro
area high schools. In the Portland school district,
Lincoln High School and
Cleveland High School have IB programs.
Tigard High
School and
Tualatin High School offer IB programs. Beaverton has four schools
in the program: Beaverton, International School, Southridge, and Sunset.
South Meadows Middle School in the Hillsboro schools kicked
off the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program in 2009.
Beaverton School District also offers the IB program at Cedar Park Middle
School and Bonny Slope Elementary.
Beginning with the 2010 school year, Lincoln High School
will begin offering Arabic. The Portland School Board approved a $70,000
grant from Qatar Foundation
International, a Washington, D.C., group that promotes cross-cultural
understanding through education. The money is enough to pay a full-time
teacher for one year and kick-start development of a four-year curriculum.
The foundation chose Lincoln because of its international studies program
and long interest in Arabic. The school has offered after-school Arabic
classes for more than a decade with help from Portland State University's
Middle East Studies Center.
Language Immersion
According to the Oregon Department of Education,
30 schools in the state offer an immersion program of some type.
Only Louisiana and Hawaii offer more immersion programs than Oregon.
The Portland School District currently offer
Russian, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese immersion programs.
These programs are spread among nine of the district's 50 elementary and
K-8 schools. Students from anywhere in the school district can apply
for each of these programs. The annual period in which applications must
be made opens January 23 and closes March 12.
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Arabic: Lincoln High School
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Chinese Mandarin: Woodstock Elementary
(SE Portland).
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Japanese: Richmond Elementary (SE
Portland).
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Russian: Kelly Elementary.
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Spanish: Ainsworth Elementary (SW Portland),
Atkinson Elementary (SE Portland), Beach Elementary (North Portland),
Bridger Elementary (SE Portland), Clarendon (North Portland), Lent Elementary
(SE Portland, Rigler (Northeast Portland).
Chinese Mandarin In Oregon, 10 high
schools offer classes Mandarin Chinese, including Cleveland High in southeast
Portland, which serves as the capstone in a kindergarten-trough-senior-year
Mandarin immersion program that begins at Woodstock Elementary. Demand
to enter the program has grown so 60 students a year are admitted to the
program as kindergartners. In 2010, the oldest students in Portland's
Mandarin immersion program are juniors and sophomores in high school, and
many of them have reached advanced or near-advanced status on a national
proficiency scale, meaning they can speak connected paragraphs in Mandarin
and can talk about academic subjects in the language.
The other Portland metro high schools where Mandarin is
taught are Lake Oswego, Tualatin, Southridge in Beaverton, International
High of Beaverton, and Franklin in Portland.
Portland's efforts to produce students who are near-fluent
in Mandarin, rather than merely prepared to converse informally with native
Chinese speakers, won it a grant from the National Security Education Program.
The grant, won in a partnership with the University of Oregon, allows students
to study Mandarin from kindergarten through four years of college.
Source for above information about
Mandarin: The Oregonian, "Chinese instruction thrives in U.S."
January 24, 2010, by Betsy Hammond.
Portland Area Public School Web Sites
Many schools have their own Web sites.
Within such sites, there's often information about individual schools, including
service boundaries, after-school activities, class sizes, program strengths,
mission statements and even examples of student work.
 Which
School Will Your Child Attend
Many of the Portland area school districts have address
locator. On some sites you enter a street address and the elementary,
middle, and high schools associated with this address will be displayed.
Other districts will display a map of the district showing school boundaries,
usually in PDF format, and you zoom in on school and/or your residence address.
Below are the known links where you can determine which school your child
will attend.
Beaverton School District Beaverton
Hillsboro School District 1J Hillsboro
North Clackamas Schools Milwaukie
Portland Public
Schools Portland
Reynolds School
District Troutdale
Charter Schools
Oregon's charter law, passed in 1999, allows
start-up charter schools, as well as public school and alternative education
program conversions. A charter school in Oregon is a public school operated
by a group of parents, teachers and/or community members as a semi-autonomous
school of choice within a school district. It is given the authority to
operate under a contract or “charter” between the members of the charter
school community and the local board of education. The school must be nonsectarian.
A public charter school is a school of choice. Students may choose to attend
the charter school even if the school is not in their attendance area. Applications
may not be submitted to convert an existing private school into a charter
school. Charters are excluded from many statutes and rules guiding traditional
public schools.
We have created a Web page about charters
that has extensive information about the history, evaluation, and links
to various charter school resources. Just click
here to access.
Home Schooling in Oregon
According to ODE, about 12,000-13,000 students
are home-schooled in Oregon. The Web has proved to be a powerful tool
for home-schooling parents, giving them access to math, science, and other
lesson plans and offering their children a world of research opportunities.
Most of all, it has brought home-schoolers together as never before, creating
an electronic bulleting board to list home-school events, ask questions
and exchange ideas.
Most home schoolers in Oregon use the discussion
group called
ORSig
and Portlanders use the
Greater Portland Homeschoolers
site as well as OHEN (Oregon
Home Education Network). The Beaverton-based
Village Home Education
Resource Center is another source for families who home educate.
Zoning Rules Mingles Haves and Have-nots
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that those
schools with the highest SES index (most affluent) happened to be located
in those areas with the highest-priced homes. It's the same all over
the country, not just in Oregon.
But Portland has something that few others metro areas
have to offer. A chance for kids to attend a school in some of the
better school districts.
Bucking national trends, Portland and its suburbs became
more economically integrated during the 1990s, 2000 census figures show.
Low-income families are less concentrated in the city of Portland and more
likely to live in the suburbs -- nearly all the suburbs -- than a decade
ago. Upper-income, middle-income and working-class people remain more likely
to live near each other than in separate enclaves.
The residential mingling of haves and have-nots can be
traced to a state land-use rule put in place nearly a quarter-century ago,
local developers and planners say. Called the Metropolitan Housing Rule,
it required every suburban city and county to zone for a large number of
apartments.
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Safe Routes to Schools
Safe Routes to Schools is a partnership of the
City of Portland, schools, neighborhoods, community organizations and agencies
that advocates for and implements programs that make walking and biking
around our neighborhoods and schools fun, easy, safe and healthy for all
students and families while reducing our reliance on cars.
Which School Will Your Child Attend if You Live in Portland
Select a school year and enter a street address. The neighborhood
schools associated with this address, that are within the Portland Public
School boundaries, will be displayed.
Scoop On Schools
walks parents through the potentially bewildering process of finding the
right school for their kids and includes a growing list of insider portraits
of different Portland-area schools.
Mrs. P is
a website for children started by two Portland residents and actress Kathy
Kinney, who plays the title character in a wig and a friendly, off-kilter
Irish accent. It's about as low-tech and low-key as anything on the Web,
which is the key to its appeal. There's no advertising, no distractions
and no special effects other than a magic library with some highlighted
items such as a magic dictionary and a dog that responds to simple commands.
In their December issue each year, the Portland Monthly
magazine reports on over 600 schools in the metro area and make what they
referred to as a "crib sheet." The sheet gives school rankings, test
scores, and statistics that will help you evaluate the schools without the
need for in-depth study. Click
here to download the document (PDF format).
Community and Parents
for Public Schools (CPPS) – the Portland chapter of
Parents for
Public Schools – is part of a nationwide network of grassroots
organizations focused on increasing parent, family and community involvement
in public education. CPPS actively recruits parents to public schools,
and advocates for parents taking a role in decision-making, school improvement,
and accountability.
How Education is Funded
in Oregon
Scott Bailey, co-founder of
CPPS (see above), wrote up the history of how education in Oregon is funded
in 2005. Click
here
to download the document.
School Funding
Income taxes now pay for more than half of school operating
expenses. About 6% comes from the state lottery. Local revenues
(mostly property taxes) provide about 30% of school funding.
58% of state income taxes are spent for education, including
K-12, community colleges and universities.
Sources: US Census Bureau, National Education Association,
Quality Education Commission, and 2005 NAEP test data.
Open Book$$
tracks the total operations spending of Oregon's 198 school districts and
shows the spending in charts. Visitors can compare their district with the
statewide average and other districts of similar size.
The
Chalkboard Project
is a collaborative effort led by five Oregon charitable foundations, which
banded together in 2003, to study ways to improve Oregon schools.
Education Week's "Diplomas Count" report provides a first-of-its-kind
look at every U.S. school district's graduation rates and state policies
that either support or detract from improving graduation rates. The
report was released in June 2006. View the
Oregon Report.
Standard & Poor
The site presents detailed test scores,
spending records and other information about nearly every school and school
district in the nation.
www.schoolmatters.com
SAT Scores
Portland Metro Area
Public Schools
SAT Scores
Portland Maps
will tell you the schools (elementary, middle, and high school) your children
will attend by keying in an address. It's easy to use!
Portland Metro Schools Report
Cards
Oregon law (ORS 329.105) requires that the Oregon Department
of Education issue performance reports for public schools. These performance
reports shall include school ratings for: overall school performance, student
performance, student behavior, and school characteristics.
View the Report Cards for the Portland metro
area schools at
Report Cards.
School Enrollment
Public and Private Schools
In 2002, 83.5 percent of Portland students
attended a Portland public schools according to a report released by Portland
State University's
Population Research
Center in February 2002. This number declined in schools across
the Portland school district, from 85.8 percent in 1990.
Private School Directory
Directory of Oregon
Private Schools
Oregon
Charter Schools
The
Center for Education Reform
has a page about
Oregon charter schools at their Web site. Visit the
US Charter Schools
Web site to learn more - the site has information about
Oregon
charter schools. The Oregon Department of Education also has information
about
Oregon charter schools at their Web site.
Saturday Academy’s (SA)
innovative programs are open to all students in grades 4 through 12.
SA offers enrichment programs in locations through out the Portland metro
area.
SA emphasizes math, science, engineering,
technology, and healthcare because these disciplines are integral to the
future children will live and work in.
SMART (Start
Making A Reader Today) began harnessing volunteers in 1992 to help develop
literacy skills in all of Oregon's children from kindergarten through third
grade. Focusing especially on youngsters in danger of falling behind, volunteers
read with two children for a half-hour each, one hour a week during the
school year. Students also are given two new books a month to keep and read
with their families.
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