With clear hesitation, the eight members of the State Board of Education signed off Tuesday on a plan, championed by Gov. Tina Kotek, that sets a host of far-reaching new academic performance targets for Oregon’s 550,000 public school students. The state board’s action starts the clock ticki ng towards the 2029-2030 school year, by which point state education leaders are hoping that students will have made significant gains on a number of key metrics, including how many third graders are reading adeptly, how many eighth graders are mastering core math skills, whether high schoolers are graduating on time and whether students of all ages are regularly attending school. Under the terms of Senate Bill 141, a law passed in the 2025 session, districts where students haven’t made measurable progress in those areas will face an escalating series of interventions, culminating in the state having the authority to make decisions about how up to 25% of their budgets should be spent. School districts across the state already track and report these and other key metrics. But save for the shared goal of getting 100% of students to graduate from high school ready for college or career within four years by the class of 2025 — a target toward which the state made progress but did not reach — there are currently no defined statewide goals against which parents and community members can measure their students and local school districts. The State Board of Education is a bridge between the Legislature and school districts; its members sign off on how school districts must implement the laws passed by lawmakers. But before their unanimous vote in support of the plan, which Kotek has cited as evidence of her commitment to improving the state’s school system as she runs for a second term as governor, state board of education members sounded highly skeptical notes, particularly around the aggressive improvement goal set for growth in eighth grade math achievement. Currently, only 29% of eighth graders are earning the equivalent of an A or a B on statewide standardized math tests. Under Senate Bill 141’s goals, the idea is for 52% of this year’s fourth graders statewide to hit that proficiency level by the time they are in eighth grade, in spring 2030. Statistically, that’s a huge leap in a relatively short period of time. La Grande Superintendent George Mendoza, who serves as an adviser to the state board, pointedly rattled off a host of questions for staff from the Oregon Department of Education, most of which remained unanswered by the end of the meeting. “What is the plan? What is the framework? How much support are students and staff going to get?” Mendoza asked. “Who is partnering with our school districts to create this framework? Are they getting feedback from our teachers? How is our instruction going to change? What will our professional development look like? How will you help us with schedules for instruction?” Until there were clear answers, he suggested, the board should be cautious about moving forward, particularly given a statewide law that allows families to opt out of standardized testing, further skewing data. At least some voting board members seemed to concur. “Targets without strategy are just pressure,” said board member Libra Forde, a former North Clackamas School District board member. “With the shrinking funding conditions and the existing constraints of our system, it will be very hard to move forward towards these aggressive numbers.” In response, Charlene Williams, director of the Oregon Department of Education, said staff at her agency were still working on developing a timeline to unveil a new “math framework” intended to guide instructional decisions. Williams fielded a barrage of queries about how schools were to make big improvements without additional funds to invest in the small-group tutoring and interventions that research suggests is the most impactful way to catch up struggling students, particularly given widespread budget cuts and staff layoffs taking place this spring. Meeting the new targets “does not require new dollars,” she said in response. Instead, Williams said, “it’s about how do districts have the opportunity to use their existing resources or redirect existing resources to focus on student achievement?” Becky Tymchuk, a longtime member of the Beaverton School Board who serves as an adviser to the state board, said she was deeply skeptical of that contention, particularly given that the state has tried similar accountability measures before, only to see them fall by the wayside or be watered down to oblivion. “We’ve had targets in the past. This is not new to school districts,” Tymchuk said. “So are we saying that with the funds we have now, we are not trying hard enough or we don’t have the right curriculum? How are we going to establish these performance growth targets without any additional funds?” Under the plan, falling short of the statewide goals won’t automatically trigger state interventions, which will include instructional coaching. Instead, the idea is that each school district will set its own growth goals, taking the demographic make-up of its student body into account. And to check that such goals are not set artificially low or high, districts will be put in “clusters” with others that educate similar populations, including how many students are learning to speak English and how many come from low-income families. In order to ensure that a district’s overall results aren’t masking poor results for some demographic groups of students — like special education students or those from racial backgrounds that have been historically marginalized — they will also have to set and report “gap-closing” targets. In their final vote, state school board members also signaled that they planned future rule-making to incorporate statewide “gap-closing” targets as well, for maximum data transparency, equity and accountability. This article was originally published by The Oregonian/OregonLive and is reprinted with permission. Contact reporter Julia Silverman: [email protected]. STORY TIP OR IDEA? Send an email to Salem Reporter’s news team: [email protected]. The post Gov. Tina Kotek’s plan for ambitious academic goals gets scrutiny, then hesitant support, from Board of Education appeared first on Salem Reporter. ...read more read less