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The big debate over education spending in Salem this legislative session is a chicken-egg question—which comes first, the spending or the accountability.
The governor and the superintendent of the state’s largest school district polished different sides of that coin this week.
On March 10, Gov. Tina Kotek announced two bills she’s crafted for the Legislature that would tie increased spending—$11.36 billion—to metrics like absenteeism and math performance, and build support at the Oregon Department of Education to intervene at poorly performing schools.
In a March 11 press conference at Roosevelt High School, Portland Public Schools officials embraced efforts to improve student outcomes, but stressed that schools are in crisis and need more funding.
“An accountability system without support is aspirational at best,” said PPS Superintendent Dr. Kimberlee Armstrong. Without the increased investment from the governor, she said, the district could have faced a $60 million deficit instead of a $40 million one for the upcoming year.
The district will have to make tough cuts to school-based programming and staff, she adds. “We just want the resources to continue to move the needle in ways that we’ve already planned.”
The backdrop to these public negotiations: Oregon legislators have reckoned with how their investments in education spending haven’t correlated with improved student outcomes. (Oregon students perform at the bottom nationwide, when adjusted for demographics.) Other states have shown more success utilizing scarce dollars; Oregon spends close to the middle of the pack on education.
Dr. Renard Adams, the district’s chief accountability and equity officer, says states that have seen that success have strong departments of education that provide resources and interventions to struggling students. “One of the things I would hope will come forth with the governor’s accountability bill is the state’s Department of Education really leans in,” he says.