Sunday, February 13, 2011

Oregon Education Investment Board

Kimberly Melton

Gov. John Kitzhaber plans a powerful Oregon education board, connecting school funding to performance

http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/02/gov_john_kitzhaber_plans_to_cr.html

Date Retrieved: 2/13/2011

Topic: Performance based funding for schools

With ever increasing budget cuts to schools, there is a constant debate on how money should be spent and to what schools should the money go to. We obviously want our money to provide better education to students, but how do we know which schools deserve the funding? Gov. John Kitzhaber is creating an Oregon Education Investment Board that he will chair, with the purpose to use funding for education in a manner that will also push schools to produce higher performing students. The board will replace the Oregon Board of Education as well as the State Board of Higher Education. Intended Audience: Anyone involved in a school system.

Key Points:

-The Board will control 51% of the state’s general fund and place it in schools determined by performance, rather than student enrollment.


-This new board will place a lot of focus on student achievement

-The board will be established by the end of 2012

-An early learning school council will be appointed to advise the investment board on how to spend a yearly $380 million for early childhood and education programs

Relevance: This change will affect anyone who works or has a student in an Oregon school. I think it is great that this will place focus on getting students and schools to perform better, however how will these performances be measured? Will this create the same affect that standardized testing is creating now—instead of getting teachers and students to worry about learning, will this place an emphasis on better scores, regardless of how they are achieved?

4 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I read this article today too and I was also concerned by the wording of his changes. It almost appears Gov. Kitzhaber is doing a shell game by just moving the responsibility from one board to another controlled by him - as if by his leadership alone Oregon schools will improve. State testing will still be used with poor performing schools being penalized. It appears no other measurement tools will be used to judge the schools and since the current testings do not adequately measure the academic success of students, it will come down once again to teaching to the tests.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I deleted my previous comments because I was so outraged and frustrated with the Gov. K's new Oregon Education Investment Board, I may have been a tad too harsh. I honestly don't feel like teachers are holding back and waiting to have money like a carrot dangled in front of them to start teaching. For goodness sakes why get into this profession unless you want to TEACH? Plus how is this going to affect the achievement gap -I fear it will widen it! I really want to be proved wrong but I can't see it. Also I think it was Paul's article about the myth of declining schools - how does this figure in? I have a lot of unresolved questions about this and some still yet formed thoughts.

    ReplyDelete