Switcheroo
The mailman brought us an interesting flyer a short while ago.
Buried in a lot of noise was the real punchline.
I was going to write a big long thing about it, but one of the new kids at Willamette Weed got to the heart of the matter with a cover story here last week. The gist of it is that Portland has one too many high schools, and the logical one to close would be Jefferson, with by far the lowest enrollment and apparently some of the lowest student achievement. But because Jefferson is "historically Black," the school board can't bring itself to close it. And so the solution is to upgrade it at enormous expense and force kids to attend. Not missed by the Weed is the irony that if the plan were to succeed (which seems unlikely), eventually the Black students and their parents will be complaining about gentrification and losses of character and tradition.
If you're interested in this and haven't read the Weed story, I commend it to you. Here I will just append my own family's history with this sort of thing.
We opted out of the Portland public schools for our children. Too crowded, too much uncertainty, too much drama. Private schools were expensive, and they required many sacrifices and onerous commuting, but we've never regretted our decision.
The high school boundary changes that are being forced on students and parents are a perfect example of the drama we avoided. When we bought our home, the public grammar school for our kids was a highly regarded one 4½ blocks away, and the high school was Grant, a little over a mile from here. These were both major selling points by the realtors. But the grammar school changed a while back to a lesser-regarded one, 13 blocks away. And now the high school is going to be switched to Jefferson, about 2½ miles away. All for "equity," I guess.
As a homeowner, I'm not happy when these notices arrive. I figure they knock tens of thousands off the value of our house. Then as a taxpayer, I'm aghast that they're going to platinum-plate yet another high school facility when it's clear that one of them needs to close.
And as a veteran of Portland education, I'll tell you one thing: If forced to choose between a drive to Jefferson and a drive to, say, Central Catholic or Catlin Gabel, many parents are going to bite the bullet and choose the latter. Given what house prices and rents are in Portland these days, they can afford it.
In 1970, when I graduated from a Portland high school, admission to an Oregon state college or university required a minimum of three years of high school math and four years of English. I happened to look at the curriculum for Jefferson and noticed that it didn't even offer those minimums. The Portland School Board had pre-decided that blacks weren't going to college and so wouldn't need those courses.
ReplyDeleteLater, Jefferson became a "magnet arts" school with a focus on dancing. After all, everyone knows that blacks have rhythm. As far as I could tell, it still didn't offer the minimum courses required for college admission as late as the mid-2000s.
The high school I went to, Jackson, was more-or-less a college prep school. Lincoln and Wilson probably also fit that description. Most recently, Jefferson has become a sort of a community college prep school. I guess that's better than no college prep at all.
Don’t fret. They’ll close McDaniel in about 10 years and bolster Grant’s enrollment. Maybe they’ll sell it for $20 million to a nonprofit after spending $200 million renovating it.
ReplyDeleteI live in the McDaniel district, and am there frequently to officiate sports. The sad thing is, McDaniel appears to have upped their game and is becoming a decent educational choice. (Though I have not seen recent test scores to affirm this.)
DeleteGood lord! The PPS board keeps coming up with the most insane and expensive plans that do nothing to help kids learn. The 3Rs are the least prioritized subjects and the kids keep getting dumber. The amount of folks at the top management level is beyond excessive, but hey pensions!
ReplyDeleteDoes anybody remember what MLK Jr said about what is most important? I guess not, cause the "color of your skin" is much more important than "the content of their character" to these clowns. MLK JR has been reduced to a prop you drag out once a year.
Like you Jack, we saw what was happening in the already under-performing schools when ballot measure 5 passed. We had sent the oldest to private school, and he was headed for Grant, with its two-tier system (those who learn, and those who don't have to). But the cost for the other kids made us to decide to move out of the city to where the people demanded that schools educate all their kids. We poured over the available reading and math scores that the state published, and settled in a school district in northern Clackistan. Even though some of the neighbors were a bit snooty, our children all received a great education. And the taxes were lower, even with bonds to rebuild the schools there. And the school board closed a school when enrollment declined. People used to call that stewardship of the public interest.
ReplyDeleteI will say, I've been pleasantly surprised by PPS in our six years as parents in the district. We're at a poorer school but I feel like they've done a great job both educating kids and making sure nobody's being left too far behind. Is it perfect? Hell no. But it's good, which is more than I expected for the price.
ReplyDeleteWe'll see what middle school brings next year…
Less white woman made burritos, project solved!
ReplyDelete