Oregon’s Comeback: An 18

Point Plan - Educating for

Our Economic Future
From Pre
Pre-School through College,
A Focus
ocus on Student Success

Friends of Chris Dudley

5863 Lakeview Blvd.
Lake Oswego, Oregon 97035
(503) 616-5350
www.chrisdudley.com
 Educating for Our Economic Future
From Pre-School through College, A Focus on Student Success
OVERVIEW

Good work is going on in classrooms across Oregon. We have pockets of true excellence in
our school districts, and so many of our state’s educators are conducting small daily miracles
in challenging circumstances. They’re making a difference in the lives of Oregon’s children
every day. You don’t have to be the son or brother of a teacher, as I am, to feel the need to
thank them. Nor do I think you need be the parents of three students at Oregon’s public
schools, as my wife and I are, to acknowledge the debt we owe particular teachers or schools.

But it is just as important that we candidly

assess the state of education in Oregon, “[W]hile Obama and [Secretary of Education
from pre-school to college. Oregon’s Arne] Duncan are calling for states to expand
students and the future of our state’s charter schools and adopt new ways of
economy depend on it. An honest evaluating and paying teachers, the powerful
assessment reveals that the state of Oregon Education Association has pretty much
education in Oregon is not good. We stifled all progress on such reforms in Oregon.
must change – quickly and in a big way Never mind the president's clear belief that
over a sustained period of time. The nimble charter schools are the best laboratories
education of today is the economy of to test the best reform ideas, including new
tomorrow. teaching practices, individualized instruction and
extended school years. Oregon simply isn't all
The future of Oregon’s economy and its that interested.”
ability to overcome what Governor - Rick Attig, The Oregonian, August 8, 2009
Kulongoski’s Reset Cabinet called a
looming “decade of deficits” are directly tied to our ability to prepare the children of Oregon to
compete and win in the global marketplace. Oregon is not just competing with other states for
jobs and investment – it’s competing against other countries, particularly Pacific Rim countries
that routinely out-score Oregon students in education.

Nothing points to the lack of leadership on education more than Oregon’s humiliating failure in
the Obama Administration’s “Race to the Top” and the reasons for that self-inflicted failure.
Our state failed to make the funding list after the first round. We were 35th out of 40 and thus
withdrew from the race.1

We talk a lot about school funding problems, and those problems are all too real. Yet, other
states have their own funding issues, and the “Race to the Top” was not about funding. The
U.S. Department of Education was looking at proposals that did not require additional funding.
Oregon dropped out of the “Race” because of a massive failure of leadership, commitment and
imagination. We were worse than losers in this. We were quitters. The forces of the status quo
and the interests of adults prevailed over the urgency of change and the immediate best
interests of Oregon children.

1
Race to the Top, Phase 1 Final Results

Oregon’s Comeback: An 18 Point Plan - Educating for Our Economic Future 2

Here’s what Oregon’s “Race to the Top” made plain. We talk a good game, but our plans and
strategies are fragmented and disconnected. We’ve had a dysfunctional approach to
attempting full-scale reform and have lacked the leadership to establish an aligned system. As
a state, Oregon has no strategy for ensuring that effective teachers are assigned to the lowest
performing schools. Our state has no accountability system or coherent strategy for turning
around our lowest performing schools. We have no true alternative pathways for potential
teachers to enter the profession from anything other than a higher-ed track.

Again, it’s not that we haven’t had plans – we have. Some have been good, and some
misconceived. Some have borne fruit at the local level, and the results are impressive. At the
state level, however, the plans have often amounted to endless talk, a diversion of valuable
resources and, in the end, a waste of time and missed opportunities.

The prime example is Oregon’s Educational Act for the 21st Century passed in 1991, with its
Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM) and Certificate of Advanced Mastery (CAM). After two
decades of meetings, paperwork, debate, deadlines set and delayed, and goals established
and defined down, Oregon’s Department of Education finally recognized the obvious and
declared the CIM and CAM dead letters. It’s unfortunate that Oregonians had to give so much
to achieve so little.

In the meantime, Oregon’s failure to keep pace economically and change the way we deliver
state and school services has hurt our schools and universities. The current recession has only
exacerbated a drop in per-student funding over the past decades. Districts have responded by
reducing school days and course offerings, increasing class sizes, and cutting summer school
or drop-out prevention programs. New curriculum adoptions and efforts to boost student
achievement have been put off. The graduation rate for all students is 84 percent, but for
Hispanic students it is even lower at 70.5 percent. More alarming is the rate for African-
American students, currently at 68.5 percent.2 As the Reset Cabinet reported, “Oregon's
statewide drop-out rate is significant and many individual schools simply are not achieving the
robust graduation rates we should expect.”

“Oregon's K-12 education system is on a path to becoming unable to provide a minimal 180-
day calendar, a comprehensive program, and the necessary support structures for teachers to
teach and students to learn,” the Governor’s Reset Cabinet noted, pointing out that the main
problem was that costs are increasing at 13 to 17 percent while annual increases in funding
have been running at 6 to 9 percent.3 Key parts of these rising costs are increases in labor
costs forced by the Public Employee Retirement System and health care benefit packages,
which together are eroding dollars otherwise available for classroom instruction.

In 1990, state support totaled 30 percent of local schools’ operating budgets. Today, 67
percent of our schools’ operating budgets come from Salem.4 In terms of both governance and
accountability, we continue to act as if it’s still 1990.

2
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Oregon Statewide Report card 2008-2009
3
Final Report – Governor’s Reset Cabinet, June 2010, p. 43
4
Final Report – Governor’s Reset Cabinet, June 2010, p. 43

Oregon’s Comeback: An 18 Point Plan - Educating for Our Economic Future 3

A more pronounced disinvestment has occurred in higher education over the last two decades.
The Governor’s Reset Cabinet found that per-student state support fell faster in Oregon from
1991 to 2007 than in any other state. After adjusting for inflation, Oregon’s per-student funding
is just over half what it was in 1991.5 The last 20 years have been a story of tuition increases
to make up for cuts in state support.

According to the Reset Cabinet, for the first time in Oregon’s 151-year history, younger
generations of Oregonians lack the complete education that the retiring generation received.
This is sobering.

(Report to the Reset Cabinet Submitted by Subcommittee on Education Beyond High School, June 2010, p. 11)

Oregon doesn’t measure up against other states or its own past. According to “Measuring Up
2008: The State Report Card for Higher Education,” a small proportion of high school students
score well on Advanced Placement tests and college entrance exams, and college
opportunities for young, working age adults are poor. Oregon’s investment in need-based
financial aid is exceedingly low compared to the top-performing states. This isn’t just an
education issue. This is a jobs and incomes problem. “Oregon’s fairly low performance in
5
Report to the Reset Cabinet Submitted by Subcommittee on Education Beyond High School, June 2010, p.3

Oregon’s Comeback: An 18 Point Plan - Educating for Our Economic Future 4

educating its young population,” the higher education report card warned, “could limit the
state’s access to a competitive workforce and weaken its economy.”6

Oregon has done some things right. The needs-based Oregon Opportunity Grant has
increased affordability for our students, but our struggling economy and the attendant loss of
tax revenues has taken its toll on the program, leaving thousands on waiting lists. And, again,
there has been much talk about restructuring the Oregon University System. But talk is cheap.
The fact is that Oregon has failed to make fundamental change over the last two decades.

THE KITZHABER RECORD

Oregon’s failure to keep pace with the
nation on education funding results in no
small measure from its failure to keep pace
with the nation economically. The steady
erosion in Oregonians’ earning power and
job growth began at the end of John
Kitzhaber’s first term in office. It has left us
without sufficient tax revenues to fund our
schools and universities.
“In the late 1960s, young Oregonians (25-34
years of age) were among the best educated
people in the world. Now, Oregon lags the
nation and many countries of the world in
terms of the education level of Oregonians in
that age category.”
- Oregon University System, Governance
Proposal, p. 2

Governor Kitzhaber’s inaction on behalf of the status quo included his failure to do anything to
address the state’s mushrooming PERS crisis. He left this massive problem for his successor.
His lack of leadership over eight years meant PERS financial liabilities grew bigger and the
state’s ability to change PERS grew narrower. Our current budget deficit would be much lower
if Kitzhaber had taken action when he had the chance. Districts and their students paid for this
in higher PERS premiums that took dollars out of Oregon classrooms; money for increased
premiums was money that couldn’t go to hire new teachers, textbooks and support services for
struggling students.

Governor Kitzhaber demonstrated no leadership and less interest as education officials,

legislators and educators across the state struggled to implement the Oregon Educational Act
for the 21st Century. The result was a colossal waste of talent, time and resources. Nor did he
step forward to ensure that Oregon school districts meet measurable performance goals, share
support services to save money for the classroom and create systems to nurture new
teachers. He also never pushed to reform the costly way Oregon funds school bus
transportation or the archaic teacher certification process that discourages career-change
professionals from teaching in Oregon schools. When it came to K-12 policy, the old and tired
ways of business were not threatened during Governor Kitzhaber’s eight-year tenure.

State support for higher education declined during Kitzhaber’s time in office, but he never
pushed the kind of dramatic restructuring that would have allowed the Oregon University
System to operate more nimbly in this more challenging environment. The result of his
inaction: OUS was saddled with all of the regulation but little of the funding it had enjoyed in an

6
Measuring Up 2008: The State Report Card for Higher Education, National Center for Public Policy and Higher
Education

Oregon’s Comeback: An 18 Point Plan - Educating for Our Economic Future 5

earlier era. And Oregon students paid for all this inaction in the form of higher tuitions bills and
lower aid packages – if they even could afford to attend our state’s colleges and universities.

Kitzhaber himself appears to have no illusions about his unsatisfactory performance on

education issues over his eight years in office. Asked in April 2009 if Oregon’s children are
better educated today than they were before he was governor, John Kitzhaber responded, “In
general, probably not.”7

CHRIS DUDLEY’S EDUCATION TRANSFORMATION

The first thing an Oregon governor can do to help our schools and universities is to get Oregon
moving again. More jobs and higher incomes – getting our state back to where we were in
1996 – will generate more tax revenues to fund our kids’ education at all levels. But there’s so
much more that needs to be done to change the way Oregon does education, and it should
have been done decades ago.

I haven’t spent the last decades in Salem “reforming” or failing to “reform” education in Oregon.
John Kitzhaber went before the Oregon Education Association and said, “I know you, and you
know me.” I can’t say as much. I’m not an insider. But I think Oregonians who are worried
about our kids’ schooling might as well ask where all this insider activity has gotten us?

Below I’ve set forth specific policy proposals to transform Oregon education from pre-
kindergarten to college. Here, I want to flesh out my vision of how our schools and universities
would be governed and what life would be like for Oregon’s young people under those
proposals.

Parents should have the choice of where they send their children: the neighborhood school, a
school in another district, a charter school, virtual school or alternative learning environment.
Parents would be able to choose the learning environment that meets their child’s needs. And
state education dollars should follow the child, provided the school meets established
performance and accountability measures.

We need to change our thinking about teaching and learning and call a truce in our wasteful
education wars that pit one school of thought against another. Just as hybrid vehicles are an
important solution for our environmental challenges, hybrid thinking – taking the best of
differing approaches and giving parents and kids real choices – will improve our schools. We
live in an age of ever-expanding technologies – laptops, handheld devices, wikis, interactive
classroom tools, open source curricula, teacher-parent communication platforms, video-
sharing, "serious games," social media, and GPS devices – that can be deployed in new
learning venues that match an individual student’s learning style. Full funding of alternative
learning environments, charter and virtual schools is not something we should fight over.
Outcomes, not inputs, should be what matters.

7
Willamette Week editorial board meeting, April 9, 2009

Oregon’s Comeback: An 18 Point Plan - Educating for Our Economic Future 6

Furthermore, the performance of our schools should be transparent and easily understood by
every Oregon taxpayer. The current system is a confusing mix of compliance reports that go
largely ignored because of their complexity. Grading should be something as simple as A-F,
reflecting student progress.

I want all of our kids ready for school upon entering kindergarten. For disadvantaged
youngsters, this would mean access to a preschool or pre-kindergarten program such as
Oregon Head Start Pre-Kindergarten whose goals line up with the state’s K-12 expectations.
Primary prevention through programs such as Healthy Start and local Relief Nurseries are
critical to maintain. Ideally, all these programs will work in sync with local districts and be co-
located at schools, within easy reach of parents.

In Oregon, no child should reach the end of the third grade without being able to read. One-on-
one reading tutoring programs based on Oregon’s SMART program would be available at all
schools with disadvantaged populations. Our schools should become “full time learning”
centers or so-called Community Schools where education continues after school and through
the summer (the “third semester”), especially for children of low-income parents who cannot
afford the enrichment activities other parents can. Vibrant partnerships with community
organizations, businesses, volunteers and retirees are cost-effective ways to support students
without adding costs to taxpayers.

Our kids should go to schools where teachers are treated like true professionals. Schools that
feature meaningful professional development, peer mentoring and teacher collaboration should
be rewarded by the state. Contractual barriers to effective teaching should be a thing of the
past. We can learn so much about how to best support teaching and learning from Oregon’s
best teachers and should rely on them to lead the way forward.

We must graduate more students ready for advanced training and college. This requires taking
a serious look at the performance of Oregon high schools. We need to re-constitute robust
dropout prevention efforts and summer youth employment programs. Many Oregon high
schools are focusing attention on the true proficiency of students (knowledge and skills) rather
than just course credits or passing grades. This allows students to move at their own pace
toward Advanced Placement classes, dual-credit opportunities and advanced career/technical
training with state funding following the student. This would blur the bright line between high
school, college and businesses that need high-skilled workers for high-wage technical jobs. In
addition, we should examine the merits of a high school exit exam that guarantees entrance
into either a community college or university.

Our overall goal should be to end a K-12 system that produces too many drop-outs
(particularly among our disadvantaged students) and “graduates” too many students
unprepared for college or the work world. That system is not fair to the students or taxpayers,
and it hurts Oregon’s economy. Our high school graduates need to be ready for college, work
and the world.

I would like the state of Oregon to provide its high school graduates who have achieved a
certain grade point average with an Oregon Future Fund Scholarship to attend our state’s

Oregon’s Comeback: An 18 Point Plan - Educating for Our Economic Future 7

colleges and universities. The Oregon Future Fund Scholarship Program would phase in over
time as we get our state’s economy moving again and straighten out state government. This
kind of scholarship program would both boost student performance in our high schools and
contribute to our state’s economic development – all while encouraging our kids to stay in
Oregon.

All this will require a change in the governance of our K-12, community college and university
systems. Salem will have to change the way our schools do business. It will have to change
the state funding formula to reward schools that achieve specific measurable results in the
classroom, share support services among districts and establish peer mentoring systems for
new teachers. It will have to add non-negotiable performance goals to the State School Fund
formula and benchmark state funds to results.

Oregon elected leaders will have to ensure that local school districts no longer negotiate salary
and compensation increases that will exceed projected state revenue. This may take a new
system of statewide or regional collective bargaining for teachers. Finally, Salem will need to
rewrite state laws that now restrict charter and virtual schools and revamp our state’s teacher
certification standards to encourage career-change professionals to become teachers.

We must also restructure the Oregon University System to ensure our public universities can
attract Oregon’s best and brightest high school graduates and become turbo-charged engines
of economic growth across the state. This will require OUS and its member institutions to meet
precisely defined performance goals (boosting college graduation rates for Oregonians, job-
focused research projects) in exchange for freeing them from legislative and administrative
micromanagement and providing them with predictable long-term funding. The restructuring of
Oregon’s higher-ed system should proceed largely along the lines outlined by the state board
of higher education. “Free to succeed” should become OUS’ new watchword – with the
governor and legislature defining and rewarding success for Oregon’s students and taxpayers.

Oregon’s Comeback: An 18 Point Plan - Educating for Our Economic Future 8

THE DUDLEY EDUCATION TRANSFORMATION IN DETAIL

Better Outcomes for Students

1. Ready for School – Chris Dudley will make access to quality prekindergarten programs
such as Head Start and Healthy Start a priority so that all our kids are ready to learn by
the time they enter kindergarten.

In Oregon, our early childhood system is a disjointed collection of programs regulated

and governed by a variety of agencies. If you asked most K-12 superintendents “what is
the best Oregon investment we could make for our children?” the answer would most
often be early childhood programs. If this is truly the case, we must do much better. Our
task will be to connect all our early childhood efforts in clear, concrete ways to Oregon’s
K-12 enterprise. As governor, Chris Dudley will work with state agencies, schools and
community and business groups to create a true, coordinated and coherent system for
our state’s early childhood efforts. It’s critical to Oregon’s educational and economic
success.

Priority funding would go to programs whose goals line up with the state’s K-12
performance goals and meet accountability measures. Programs that coordinate or co-
locate with local elementary school would be rewarded. The goal would be to create a
continuum of care and a learning foundation for disadvantaged pre-schoolers.

An integrated approach to supporting families at the community level is long overdue.

Such integrated solutions should include social service providers, workforce investment
boards, school boards, city councils and county commissions. In an era of stressed
budgets, Chris Dudley will strive to maintain investments in Oregon Pre-kindergarten
Head Start, Healthy Start, Relief Nurseries and early literacy initiatives that benefit
children, birth to school age, but he’ll work to supplement these funds when new
revenues from an improved Oregon economy permit an additional investment. In
exchange, the state must mandate clear outcomes, coordinate governance, integrate
finance approaches, data systems and provide quality guarantees.

2. Early Readers: Tested and Tutored – Chris Dudley will ensure Oregon’s kids are
proficient in reading by the end of the third grade. Early reading skills are critical to a
child’s success in school, and we’re not doing our students any favors by allowing them
to move on to the fourth grade without a clear plan to achieve reading proficiency. This
will require testing well before the end of the third grade as well as school-based
interventions to support struggling readers. We know that tutored students are 75
percent more proficient than untutored students, and Oregon has a model private
program for helping early readers in the Start Making a Reader Today (SMART)
program.8

It’s time that all elementary schools have a plan to provide paid or volunteer reading
tutors and one-on-one support for students who are reading below grade level. The
8
Chalkboard Project 2008-09 Report to Oregonians

Oregon’s Comeback: An 18 Point Plan - Educating for Our Economic Future 9

 short-term costs of doing so would produce long-term savings, since low-achieving
readers are unlikely to meet state standards later in school. As a result, Chris Dudley
believes it’s now time to rewrite the state funding formula to reward districts with
SMART or SMART-like programs in their elementary schools.

3. College and Career Ready: Re-focus High School – Chris Dudley will push the State
Board of Education to demand better outcomes and redirect a portion of the state
school fund to provide incentives to teachers and faculty to ensure that students
complete demanding coursework and demonstrate proficiency rather than earn credits
for just sitting in class. He will also ask the Chancellor of Higher Education, the
Community College Commissioner and the Superintendent of Public Instruction to craft
a blueprint for Oregon that identifies a student-focused roadmap to success and
emphasize multiple educational routes to economic prosperity.

If you look closely at Oregon’s student achievement data you will see most of our
elementary and middle schools are more successful each year. It is Oregon high
schools that struggle to reduce dropout rates, increase graduation rates and prepare
students for the rigor of the global workplace, advanced training and college. To turn
this around, we must set higher expectations for student performance in the high school
years. Our state needs to embrace standards and assessments that align with
international expectations. We should, at a minimum, embrace the new national
Common Core Standards and aligned assessments for learning so Oregon can
measure success in a global context. At the end of high school, we must provide
meaningful exit exams that establish that students are ready for the rigor of college and
advanced training.

If all Oregon high school students were ready at graduation for the rigor of college
coursework, the state would save more than $60 million a year in community college
remediation costs and lost earnings.9 The state should set performance expectations to
increase participation in dual credit (community colleges, universities) and advanced
placement courses. It should also help students accelerate completion of their
requirements through greater access to virtual learning.

4. Drop-out Prevention, Job Preparation – Chris Dudley believes Oregon students must
be able to apply their knowledge in a real world setting. Our schools can do no less.
Chris Dudley will launch a major dropout prevention initiative to energize Oregon
business leaders, city mayors, county commissioners and others to breathe new energy
into efforts to support struggling students.

Chris Dudley’s drop-out prevention initiative will include expanding opportunities for
work-based learning, apprenticeships and summer youth employment. It will also
include increasing the number of research-based options for dropout recovery such as
early college and credit recovery programs such as Portland Community College’s

9
Oregon: The Case to Adopt Common College- and Career-Ready Standards and Assessments, Alliance for
Excellent Education, April 2010

Oregon’s Comeback: An 18 Point Plan - Educating for Our Economic Future 10

 Gateway to College program.10 Our goal must be to increase the number of students
moving on to college or career opportunities by reducing achievement gaps and tackling
the reality that poor, minority, and non-English-speaking students are disproportionately
represented at Oregon's low-achieving schools.

The graduation rate for all Oregon students is 84 percent, but for Hispanic students it is
even lower (70.5 percent) and lower still for African-American students (68.5 percent).11
That’s unacceptable. It directly harms Oregon’s economy. Dropouts are twice as likely
as graduates to be incarcerated and the average working dropout earns $10,000 less
per year than those who graduate.12

Communities across the country are bringing together education, workforce and
business leaders to support new or expanded options that move struggling students and
out-of-school youth through high school to postsecondary experiences and career
pathways. These highly effective learning environments integrate technology,
academics, career and technical education. New schools such as the Architecture
Construction and Engineering (ACE) Academy13 represent creative a partnership
between high schools, business and industry.

5. Getting Our Kids Moving and Healthy – As a father, former professional athlete and
someone who’s lived with diabetes from the age of 16, Chris Dudley is committed to
ensuring the health and physical fitness of our young people. Physical education and
wellness instruction are essential educational investments that have huge long-term
payoffs. Disinvesting in these school programs is simply short sighted.

It is a painful reality that many children in this country are obese. Right now, about 32
percent of children and adolescents today (25 million young people) are obese or
overweight. The direct medical expenses attributable to obesity are estimated in the
billions, to say nothing of the related deaths in adults from heart disease and cancer.
Childhood Type 2 Diabetes is on the rise across the country. First Lady Michelle Obama
is leading “Let’s Move” initiative, with the goal of reducing the childhood obesity rate to 5
percent by 2030.

Chris Dudley and his wife Chris will lead an effort to engage mayors, school and
community leaders, health care professionals, youth and recreation leaders to get kids
moving and making better nutritional choices. He will engage Oregon’s college and
professional athletes to raise awareness among parents and kids of the importance of
physical activity both in school and at home. This epidemic will require creative
solutions. They’ll be guided by the excellent recommendations in "Solving the Problem
of Childhood Obesity in a Generation: The White House Task Force on Childhood
Obesity."

10
www.pcc.edu/prepare/head-start/prep/gatewa
11
NCES formula 2009 ODE Annual Report Card
12
Oregon’s High School Dropouts: Examining the economic and social costs, Foundation for Educational Choice,
March 3, 2010
13
www.acecharterschool.org

Oregon’s Comeback: An 18 Point Plan - Educating for Our Economic Future 11

 Chris Dudley knows that many school districts have had to cut back on specialists
teaching physical education. Adequate levels of school funding and new ways of
managing education costs will be needed so these programs are not on the chopping
block. As our economy and revenue picture improves, Chris Dudley will push adequate
exercise and nutritional instruction as a key component of our kids’ education. We’ll
have to be creative. Schools will have to create partnerships with health agencies, parks
and recreation districts, 4-H, Boys and Girls Clubs and many other organizations
committed to youth development. We’ll have to explore giving school physical education
credits to kids who participate in extracurricular and afterschool sports programs. It
won’t be easy, but it is essential to our kids’ well being – when they’re young and when
they’re adults.

6. The Oregon Future Fund Scholarship – Chris Dudley will phase in, over time, a
scholarship program that will provide Oregon high school graduates who have achieved
a certain grade point average with a four-year scholarship to attend our state’s colleges
and universities. The Oregon Future Fund Scholarship program would be both merit-
and need-based. Oregon high school graduates with a 2.75 to 3.49 grade point average
would be eligible to receive a full scholarship to one of our public universities or an
annual $3,000 scholarship to one of our state’s private colleges, universities
technical/professional programs, based on need. Oregon high school graduates with a
3.5 grade point or higher would be eligible for similar scholarships without regard to
need.

The Oregon Future Fund Scholarship Program will complement the restructuring of our
university system, which ties eliminating state micromanagement to OUS’ meeting
performance goals related to such things as affordability and accessibility. The program
would phase in over time as we get our state’s economy moving again and our state
finances in order. In addition to the state funds now devoted to four-year scholarships to
the Oregon Opportunity Grant program, some of the funds for this program would come
from lottery funds that now go to, among other things, K-12 and economic development.
Private giving to the Future Fund Scholarship by individuals and business could be
encouraged through tax incentives. The scholarships will boost student performance in
our high schools, improve post-secondary affordability and access for Oregon’s high
school graduates and contribute to our state’s economic development – all while
keeping our kids in Oregon.

Invest in Our Educators’ Professionalism

7. Recruiting Great Teachers from All Walks of Life – Chris Dudley will change teacher
certification laws in Oregon to attract the best and brightest individuals from all walks of
life to its classrooms, particularly in mathematics, science and engineering.

He knows first-hand that gifted classroom teachers make the difference between
success and failure for our kids. He also knows that in an increasingly complex world,
individuals with different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives will become ever
critical to the success of our students.

Oregon’s Comeback: An 18 Point Plan - Educating for Our Economic Future 12

 Although Oregon has alternate routes for talented individuals to enter teaching, it is one
of only a few states in the nation that requires mid-career professionals to enroll in an
approved teacher preparation program at a university. Most states have found that
having an alternate pathway into the classroom is an effective way to bring talented and
motivated people into high-needs areas of teaching. In response they have initiated
aggressive programs to attract mid-career professionals and young people into the
nation's most challenging learning environments.

Chris Dudley will use the legislative process and his appointments to the Teacher
Standards and Practices Commission to open up the path to Oregon’s classrooms,
acknowledging important requirements that define Highly Qualified Teachers.14 He will
also work with the state’s businesses and national programs such as Teach for America
and The New Teacher Project to achieve this goal.

8. Investing in Effective Educators – Chris Dudley will support dedicated investments

from existing funds to provide mentoring and quality professional development for
teachers and education leaders. At a time when we must scrutinize every tax dollar, one
of the smartest investments we can make is to keep highly effective teachers in Oregon
classrooms led by effective administrators. Chalkboard Project research reveals that
nearly 40 percent of Oregon teachers leave the profession within the first five years.
This costs $45 million a year,15 not including the harm it does to student learning.

If we want to improve the performance of our students, we need to invest in our

education workforce. Teachers need dedicated time to work together to review student
performance data and consider ways to improve classroom instruction.

Oregon districts invested an estimated $130 million in professional development in the

2005-06 school year. This is no small sum, and we need to know that it directly benefits
Oregon students. Chris Dudley will create an incentive for districts to end professional
development activities that many teachers themselves find wasteful and useless.
Twelve Oregon school districts have proven in pilot projects that this is possible, and
Chris Dudley will rely on them to lead the way.

9. Test for Student Progress, Pay for Professionalism – Chris Dudley will ask districts
to design systems that work best for them, with teachers providing leadership at the
table. Schools have proven that working in a collaborative team approach improves
student outcomes.

Research has proven that great teachers make all the difference in student success.
We know from the Chalkboard Project’s 12-district CLASS initiative that an emphasis on
teacher professionalism gets results. Teacher leaders are designing more effective
strategies for professional development, evaluation, compensation and career

14
Oregon Teachers’ Standards and Practices Commission, Highly Qualified Teachers FAQ
15
CLASS Project, Chalkboard Project, www.chalkboard.org/what-we-do/class

Oregon’s Comeback: An 18 Point Plan - Educating for Our Economic Future 13

 pathways. Union leaders in these local districts are helping drive reform and setting an
example for their colleagues across the state.

Recruiting and retaining the best teachers will require systems that recognize and
reward professional excellence. Such systems need to include opportunities to earn
more pay for effective teaching, but will also need to provide teachers with the feedback
and tools to be their best.

10. Bonus “Pay” for Turnaround Teachers in Oregon’s Lowest Performing Schools –
Chris Dudley wants to encourage Oregon’s best teachers to take positions in our state’s
lowest performing schools by eliminating all state income taxes on talented teachers
who are selected as part of a school turnaround initiative. Top educators who teach at
these turnaround schools for five years will not have to pay state taxes over that period.

We all know what a difference a teacher can make in the life of a child and a whole
class. Yet seniority rules keep our highest-performing teachers from working in our
lowest-performing schools. This tax cut for turnaround teachers will create an incentive
for top educators who are willing to take their proven talents where they’re needed
most. Chris Dudley will work with education leaders in the field to define effective
teachers and measure their performance so these top-rank professionals are eligible for
this program.

Better Choices

11. Expand Public School Choice – Chris Dudley supports open enrollment so that
Oregon students can choose the learning environment best suited to their needs. This
would allow students to attend schools with available space in other districts. No longer
would the student’s home district have the only word on where that child can go to
school. This would empower parents to send their child to a school that meets the
student’s individual needs or a school that has a curriculum or an instructional approach
that the parents prefer.

12. Expand Charter and Virtual Schools – Chris Dudley supports charter and virtual
schools as important educational options for Oregon students. He will oppose further
attempts to limit virtual and charter school options across the state, and will work to
ensure accountability measures that improve student outcomes. He will work to allow
other governmental jurisdictions, such as community colleges, to establish charter
schools within a school district.

Unlike other states, Oregon does not provide full funding for charter students. Our law
provides that districts pay charter schools “at least 80 percent” of the State School
Fund’s General Purpose Grant for K-8 and “at least 95 percent” for high school
students. But a study by the Northwest Center for Educational Options found that
charter school students receive only 55 percent of the public funds that students in

Oregon’s Comeback: An 18 Point Plan - Educating for Our Economic Future 14

 district public schools receive and that funding levels vary dramatically by district.16 At
the very least, students in Oregon charter schools should receive no less than current
law stipulates.

Accountability That Makes Dollars and Sense

13. An Appointed Superintendent of Public Instruction – Chris Dudley believes that it is

time to make the superintendent accountable to the governor. He will work to make
Oregon’s Superintendent of Public Instruction an appointed rather than elected office.
He will lead a broad coalition of education interest groups that are frustrated with the
lack of accountability in the current system. Oregon’s governor and superintendent of
public instruction need to be on the same page. If not, our state’s schools will continue
to be without clear direction and leadership.

14. Making the Grade – Chris Dudley will revamp the current grading system for Oregon
schools so that parents can understand how their local school – and any state-funded
school – measures up. The new system will be a simple as A through F.

Oregon’s current evaluation system is confusing in the extreme. It’s pointless to give
parents the right to choose their child’s school if they don’t have a clear and
understandable way to evaluate schools. It is currently possible to designate a school
as ‘exceptional’ under the Oregon accountability system, yet that same school could be
identified as ‘failing’ according to No Child Left Behind.

15. Shared Service Dollars for Classrooms – Chris Dudley will create incentives under
the state funding formula for Oregon’s smaller districts to share services (technology
services, fiscal services and overall administrative functions) and use those savings to
bolster classroom services. In our wired world, geography is no longer destiny when it
comes to contracting or consolidating some services. A more efficient provider might be
a mouse click away when it comes to, say, doing payroll.

A recent Chalkboard/High Desert ESD study by ECONorthwest identified savings of

$275,000 that could be achieved within 18 to 24 months by the regionalization of the
Redmond, Sisters and Crook County Districts’ fiscal services alone. The savings would
come through reduced staffing levels, combined systems and expenses as well as
economies of scale.

Oregon should also follow other states (Florida, Texas, Virginia) that have established
formal processes to help districts identify cost savings, management improvements and
“best practices” from across their state and the nation. This “constant improvement”
process will see that of our tax dollars make it to the classroom where they can do the
most good.

16
New Charter School Funding Studies, Northwest Center for Educational Options,
http://www.nwceo.org/data.php

Oregon’s Comeback: An 18 Point Plan - Educating for Our Economic Future 15

 Finally, other states – Maine, Vermont, Arkansas, Indiana and New Jersey – have
conducted statewide reviews of optimal district size. Chris Dudley will commission such
a review so that any discussion of consolidation is based more on facts than fears.

16. Transportation Dollars for Classrooms – Chris Dudley will overhaul the way we fund
school transportation in Oregon. The current matching-grant system for school
transportation creates a disincentive to control transportation costs. Why worry about
your costs when Salem is going to match 70 to 90 percent of your total transportation
costs? Giving districts a block grant predicated on greater efficiencies – a fixed
appropriation – would end this disincentive to save on school transportation. Creating
an even greater incentive to save could be achieved by allowing the district to put
additional savings over the biennium into classroom enhancement projects.

17. Control Total Compensation Costs: Statewide or Regional Collective Bargaining –

Chris Dudley will bring our public schools’ total compensation costs in line with growth in
our state’s revenues and the general labor market’s total compensation costs.

The Reset Cabinet recently projected that public-sector compensation costs will rise 13
percent, twice the private-sector increase, and concluded, “The payroll costs of school
employees’ account for more than twice the payroll costs of the state’s own workforce in
the state’s general fund budget. Controlling the labor costs of the state workforce while
ignoring the labor costs of the schools’ workforce will not achieve the savings needed to
overcome future deficits nor will it meet any reasonable test of fairness for balancing
resources between the two groups.” 17

This is all the more reason to look at a workforce’s total compensation costs. Doing so
will require a change in the state school funding formula, stipulations in school funding
appropriations bills, the establishment of a statewide salary schedule in the allocation
process or a move to statewide or regional collective bargaining of teacher contracts.

Oregon can no longer leave local school boards and superintendents at the mercy of
union pressure to provide increases in wages and benefits when state revenues cannot
keep up. If school districts are pressured to commit more than the state general fund
can support, the only choices they have are to lay off employees, cut programs and
days or increase class sizes. In early 2008, for example, many districts locked
themselves into significant cost-of-living and step increases, and then the economy
deteriorated.

Governor Kulongoski’s Reset Cabinet couldn’t be clearer about this: “Future increases
in the costs of pay and benefits for state and school employees should be aligned with
the rate of increase in the total compensation of employees in the statewide (public and
private) labor market. This alignment will reduce the cost increases that are now
expected to be a major contributor to the decade of deficits ahead of us.”

17
Final Report – Governor’s Reset Cabinet, June 2010, p. 71

Oregon’s Comeback: An 18 Point Plan - Educating for Our Economic Future 16

 18. Fewer Mandates, Greater Results: Restructuring the Oregon University System –
Chris Dudley will implement a restructuring of the Oregon University System. Our public
universities need to be given both predictability of funding and freedom from excessive
regulation and legislative micromanagement in exchange for delivering measurable
outcomes such as graduation rates, access and affordability and research tied to
Oregon jobs and economic development.

While our community colleges receive about half of their funding and our state
universities receive a little less than a third of their funding from Salem, our community
colleges are not hobbled by the same administrative requirements and legislative
budget notes that hamstring OUS and its member institutions. The legislature does not
limit community colleges’ tuitions, grab the interest community colleges earn from
student tuition collections, require them to receive its blessing to spend these earnings
or risk having these monies spent on other state programs or require them to come hat
in hand to the legislature for permission to spend non-state funds on their projects. But
our public universities must endure all this and more, and it ends up costing them, their
students and, ultimately, Oregon taxpayers.

The Oregon University System spends more than other state systems for such things as
employee benefits plans as well as property and liability insurance – even other states’
higher-ed systems that receive more taxpayer support.18 One state-commissioned study
concluded that OUS ended up spending $12 million a year to insure other state
agencies’ workers. It was also estimated that OUS’ inability to purchase its own property
and liability insurance cost the system an extra $2 million a year – and this does not
include the costs racked up in layers of state bureaucracy and paperwork that the
current arrangement imposes on OUS and its institutions. Those are costs that students
and their families inevitably pay in higher tuition bills. The current system’s bureaucratic
and legislative maze has also prevented our universities from responding quickly to
opportunities to purchase properties and make other sound investments.19

We must end Salem’s administrative and legislative micromanagement of our

universities in exchange for OUS and its member institutions meeting clearly defined
performance objectives. The state would provide our public universities predictable
funding and the freedom to succeed. OUS would produce the agreed-upon number of
Oregon-bred college graduates and innovative research that will help the state thrive
educationally and economically. It’s a good deal for Oregon, and Chris Dudley will
support it through appointments and the budget process.

18
OUS Governance Proposal, Oregon University System board, July 2010
19
OUS Governance Proposal, Oregon University System board, July 2010

Oregon’s Comeback: An 18 Point Plan - Educating for Our Economic Future 17