OPINION
Failing Grades Our midterm assessment of the Department of Education's efforts to institute school reform Try this timely multiple-choice question: Oregon's school-reform act, also known as House Bill 3565, is: Right now, we're not sure how we'd answer. At this point in the school year, as the first battery of tests is being administered under the school-reform act, all we do know is that the State Department of Education could be doing a much better job implementing the 1991 law. Two recent events make this clear: * A few weeks ago, the State Board of Education abruptly changed the way it plans to score tests that it currently gives every high-school sophomore in Oregon. On Jan. 19 sophomores began taking tests that are required for a student to receive a CIM (Certificate of Initial Mastery). One of the exams is a writing test in which students are asked to compose an essay. This essay is graded on a number of factors, including organization, voice and what are called "conventions," or spelling, grammar and punctuation. Recently, however, the state board announced that it was doubling the weight given to these conventions. In a press release, the State Board of Education said that it now "believes that spelling, grammar, punctuation and other conventions are important characteristics of good writing and should be emphasized." Why, given that the tests have been in development for more than six years, did the board just now decide to give more weight to conventions? Said an education-program specialist for the state agency who sat in on a number of meetings, "I don't know." * In another development that has many shaking their heads, the State Department of Education is pressuring the Portland School District to fire one of its teachers because of his criticism of another of the state's tests. Bill Bigelow, a veteran teacher of social studies at Franklin High School, has been candid about his assessment of the social-studies portion of the CIM test. Although this test is still in the pilot phase--in other words, sophomores will take the test, but it won't yet count--Bigelow has said to anyone who will listen that the tests do little more than measure rote memorization. "If anything resembling these pilot tests is implemented," he wrote in an opinion piece that appeared in The Oregonian, "social studies teachers will have to dumb down our curriculum substantially to ensure students' success." As an example, Bigelow pointed to one question that asks which amendment gave women the right to vote, while asking almost nothing else about the movement that led to the passing of that amendment. Portland School Board member Sue Hagmeier says that, in response, Greg McMurdo, the No. 2 official at the Department of Education, wrote a letter to Superintendent Ben Canada encouraging him to fire Bigelow. School reform has two camps of opponents. One group is driven by its conservative politics. These people view school reform as a socialist effort to inculcate our children with the wrong values. The other group contains parents and teachers who support the idea of raising standards and instituting statewide assessments but feel that the state bureaucracy's execution has been anything but smart. Stan Bunn, recently elected to head the Department of Education, has
no more important job than to understand the differences between these
two groups. No one expects the journey toward statewide control of our
education system to be without bumps. But the trip will be far more
treacherous if Bunn and his staff aren't more careful. - - - - - - - - - - - -
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