Duplication
Tables: the Portland dropout rate is soaring
Ben Canada's honeymoon ends next week.
The new schools superintendent has pleased many skeptics
in his first nine months on the job, but when he unveils
his first budget April 14, Canada is virtually guaranteed
to make enemies. "I'm looking for a connection between
different programs and results," he told the school
board last week, his ever-present smile noticeably absent.
"We're going to look at everything."
If Canada is truly committed to reform, he'll take
on the school's desegregation program, which has cruised
along for decades with little oversight.
Last year the district spent $6.3 million on desegregation.
As usual, nobody bothered to evaluate how effective
the program was or whether the money was being spent
properly.
"We've got a desegregation program in place that hasn't
been examined in 25 years," says school board member
Sue Hagmeier.
If district administrators do take a look, many observers
think they'll find a troubling picture.
"We spend about $7 million on the desegregation program,
and everybody knows it's a bust," says Richard Garrett,
president of the Portland Association of Teachers.
The district spends its desegregation money in two
primary areas: Early Childhood Education Centers at
nine elementary and middle schools, and the Jefferson
High School performing arts magnet.
The early childhood program targets schools with high
minority enrollments, providing funds for prekindergarten,
full-day kindergarten and additional teachers to reduce
student-teacher ratios. The intent is to improve the
education available to existing students and entice
white parents to enroll their children in these schools.
The problem is a lack of accountability. According
to administrators who wish to remain anonymous, there
is no criteria for how money is spent, who should get
it and whether the money is achieving its intended result.
For instance, Irvington Elementary School received
$541,000 in desegregation funding this year. The school,
located at 1320 NE Brazee St., once served a poor, predominantly
minority population. Today, the neighborhood is affluent
and mostly white. Irvington students are far better
off than the district average when measured by the number
of children receiving subsidized lunches and federal
funding for educationally disadvantaged students. The
school appears much less in need of help than kids at
struggling schools such as Applegate.
Still, Irvington has continued to get money year after
year, and nobody in Canada's administration will explain
why. Patrick Burk, the district's assistant superintendent
in charge of desegregation, did not return repeated
phone calls from WW.
Irvington's principal defends her school's receipt
of the funds, which she says primarily go to making
class sizes smaller and employing teachers who work
with special-needs students. "The student body has changed,"
says Gloria Gostnell, "but the need is still great."
Still, Gostnell admits that there is no process for
evaluating the effectiveness of desegregation spending.
Schools that are demonstrably needy, such as Humboldt
Elementary, also get their desegregation money with
no strings attached. Last year, Humboldt, which was
reconstituted in 1997, got $436,000 in desegregation
funding for its restructuring--in addition to more than
$200,000 it was already receiving. Yet there were no
criteria for judging how the money was spent.
Questions also surround desegregation efforts at Jefferson
High School. The Jefferson performing arts magnet, which
includes the school's nationally recognized dance program,
was established in 1970 as a way to attract white students.
The magnet received $1.25 million in desegregation money
this year, about $1,400 for every student who attends
Jefferson.
Critics say there's little evidence that the magnet
has equaled the district's racial balance or improved
overall academic results.
"The performing arts program certainly hasn't furthered
the goals of desegregation," says A. Halim Rahsaan,
who chaired the Desegregation Monitoring and Advisory
Committee for seven years.
Most of the students in the dance program are indeed
white, but African-American enrollment at Jefferson
has actually increased sharply in the past two decades.
According to district figures, African-American enrollment
rose from 39 percent in 1979-80 to 62 percent in 1998-99.
Critics say that many students who attend the arts magnet
take their regular classes at other schools and come
to Jefferson only to dance.
Rahsaan, who is now co-head of the Citizen's Monitoring
Advisory Commission, a multiethnic watch-dog group,
says it's past time for the district to evaluate all
its program spending. "Whether you're talking about
desegregation or English as a second language," he says,
"it comes back to one word--accountability."
Duplication
Tables
Portland's school desegregation plan lacks
of measurable results, but the district's effort to
curb dropouts suffers from the opposite problem: The
numbers are dismally clear.
Dropout-prevention programs are the fastest-growing
part of the district's budget, and yet the Portland
dropout rate has continued to soar--four out of 10 high-school
freshmen will quit school before graduation.
Although Ben Canada hasn't specifically targeted dropout
programs for scrutiny, he has told school board members
that he'll look at programs that dupicate services.
There's no better example of duplication than the community-based
alternative education programs. Currently, the schools
pay for 24 programs run by contractors such as Portland
Community College and the Salvation Army. The programs
serve 1,500 students, usually at the contractors' facilities.
PPS's Chief Financial Officer Jim Scherzinger says
dropout prevention has grown faster than any other district
expenditure. In 1990, he says, the district didn't spend
a dime on such programs. This year, according to budget
figures, the tab for the district's 24 different programs
may run as high as $8.6 million.
The increased attention to dropouts is understandable.
After the passage of Measure 5 in 1990, school funding
switched to a per-student basis, which created a direct
correlation between enrollment and money. Still, the
multiplicity of efforts puzzles many observers.
"It's hard to believe that 24 programs are necessary,"
says Ron Saxton, chairman of the school board.
Nobody is minimizing the dropout problem. From 1992-93
to 1997-98, Portland's four-year dropout rate has climbed
from 24.8 percent to 40.3 percent.
The problem is that district officials have no numbers
to measure whether the money spent on its 24 programs
is effective. "It's difficult to define success in alternative
programs," says Chet Edwards, who oversees the district's
dropout programs. He says the profusion of programs
reflects the belief that smaller groups work better
for troubled students. He adds that many of the kids
served would otherwise not be in school at all.
Marc Abrams, vice-chairman of the school board, doesn't
dispute the need to help troubled kids. But he questions
whether paying private groups that don't have the same
standards as the district does is appropriate. He also
questions paying off-campus sites when the district
has a glut of unused space.
--NJ
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 7,
1999
