The state's desire to impose higher standards on students
continues to create headaches for Portland Public Schools.
Not only are the state mandates upsetting parents,
teachers and students, but two developments this week
suggest they also threaten to drag the state's largest
school district into nasty legal battles.
In late March, the Portland Association of Teachers
sent Superintendent Ben Canada a letter requesting relief
for teachers overwhelmed by the time demands of the
reforms, particularly work samples required for Certificates
of Initial Mastery.
PAT President Richard Garrett says the teachers' contract
contains specific language stating that workloads should
remain roughly equivalent to those of the previous year.
He and teachers around the district say that the new
standards demand unprecedented amounts of teachers'
time.
For example, district guidelines suggest that the average
fifth-grade teacher will spend almost 100 hours grading
work samples this year, on top of other state testing
and class work.
On Tuesday, Canada told Garrett that he will not cancel
classes to allow teachers to catch up with their work
samples. In response to the superintendent's decision,
the PAT is preparing to file a formal grievance, which,
Garrett says, will seek $3.8 million in compensation.
Bruce Samson, general counsel for the district, questions
the union's position. "I don't know that the district
believes that grading work samples is different in kind
from teachers' other grading activities," he says.
Garrett still hopes that some compromise can be reached
to head off arbitration, but he sees the state-mandated
assessments as a problem that must be solved. "It's
a huge workload issue and a diversion of instructional
time," he says.
Teachers aren't the only ones angry at the district
for imposing requirements that were actually mandated
by state officials.
Earlier this year parents of Portland special-education
students filed a class-action suit in U.S. District
Court against the state and local school officials,
saying the CIM requirements discriminated against students
with learning disabilities.
Among other faults, says Jeffrey Foote, a lawyer who
represents the parents, the CIM standards make no allowances
for kids who need extra time, a special testing environment
or tools such as spell checkers to complete their work.
The prohibitions, Foote believes, defeat the whole point
of special education. "What we're seeking is for these
kids to have an equal opportunity to achieve a CIM,"
he says.
Until this week, it looked as if the district was ready
to negotiate. In fact, the agenda of Monday night's
school-board meeting included a proposed board policy
that would have addressed some of the suit's complaints.
But with no explanation, the item was scrapped before
the board could vote on it.
The aborted policy stated that Portland officials have
no authority over how the CIM tests are composed but
would agree not to use CIM test results in five specific
ways that might limit a student's progress.
In effect, the proposed policy was the district's attempt
to extricate itself from the lawsuit, leaving the State
Department of Education to deal with angry parents.
"We were planning to try to settle the case," Samson
explains. "We needed to put that document into the board
process."
After the agenda was prepared, however, it became obvious
that the concession was not sufficient to get the district
off the hook. So, Samson says, officials pulled it off
the table to maintain flexibility to negotiate with
the parents.
Still, the message was clear: Although the lawsuit
names both state and local authorities, Portland was
attempting to cut its own deal.
"The state knew we were negotiating," Samson says,
"but we weren't negotiating on their behalf."
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Willamette Week | originally
published May 12, 1999
