Creating a new “Equity” bureaucracy will not improve the educational outcomes in Portland Public Schools. In her guest Oregonian column titled “We must tackle inequities in Portland Public Schools,” Angela Uherbelau, unfortunately, suggests just that (here, page A15):
…. Portland Public Schools could do this by embedding a permanent change agent within the district. An equity reform team headed by a chief equity officer could provide a constant through line for transformation, ensuring that the district equity policy adopted eight years ago becomes an effective, meaningful document…..
More equity bureaucracy will not make the hard decision PPS needs to make to improve student educational outcomes.
To do so, in my opinion, PPS needs to:
- Integrate the schools. In Portland, residential neighborhoods are segregated by family income and race. This creates set of rich kid schools and poor kid schools. Research show that the educational outcomes of poor kids improve when they are integrated into school with more rich kids. PPS can do much more income integrating of its school by how it set the attendance boundaries of schools. It would mean, however, that not all students would attend their nearest school.
- Create a teacher workforce that reflects the demographics of its students. This means many more teachers of color and bilingual teachers. And, since PPS does not control the general supply of teachers, it means pushing the State of Oregon (State scholarships, TSPC, schools of education) to significantly enlarge the training of teachers of color and bilingual teachers. It means shifting some state funding from current schools to training future teachers. Research shows students do better when they have teachers that look like them.
- Expand bilingual education to all students. Research shows that dual language immersion programs are the best method for non-English native students to learn English. They are also the best way for English native students to learn a foreign language. Research shows both groups of students, non English native and English native, score about one school year ahead on eighth grade reading tests. And dual language immersion programs, especially Spanish in PPS, provide a means to integrate students by race and income.
- Create high school study abroad opportunities and other travel experience programs for all students. Give low income students some of the same opportunities more affluent students enjoy.
- Stop overbuilding high school enrollment capacities and put more funding into out of school learning opportunities like mentorships, apprentice programs, and out-of-school online learning.