Friday, February 24, 2012
PUBLIC EDUCATION: Oregon's Commitment To Learning and Equal Opportunity
For Oregon to thrive, it needs a knowledgeable and skilled citizenry. Knowledge and skills most often are acquired through quality, formal education. Public schools were established to ensure such an education is available to everyone and, in doing so, advance the cause of equal opportunity.
Are public schools doing what they were established to do? How does one determine that? If public schools are not achieving their purpose, why are they not? And, what should be done to get them back on track? Further, what resources and organization are needed for this effort to be successful?
In 2011, Governor Kitzhaber and the Oregon Legislature addressed these questions, found a need to improve the performance of our public schools, and developed a plan to make that improvement happen. The plan aims to ensure that by 2025, 40 percent of adult Oregonians have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher, 40 percent have earned an associate’s degree or post-secondary credential, and the remaining 20 percent or less have earned a high school diploma or its equivalent.
These targets are called the “40/40/20” goal. The year 2025 is when children who start kindergarten in September 2012 are scheduled to graduate from high school. In addition, the plan includes a restructuring of Oregon’s public education system from preschool through graduate school. The new system will be governed by a 13 member Oregon Education Investment Board (OEIB), appointed by the Governor, and led by a Chief Education Officer, appointed by the OEIB.
Ben Cannon, is Governor Kitzhaber’s education advisor. He will discuss why the improvement plan is needed, what our public education system will look like when the plan has been fully implemented, what progress has been made to date, how the plan will be funded, and what roles, if any, the Superintendent of Public Instruction and local school boards ultimately will have.
Ben became the Governor’s education advisor in 2011 when he resigned his seat in the Oregon House of Representatives. His was the 46th District which covers portions of southeast and northeast Portland. He is a graduate of West Linn High School and Washington University in St. Louis, MO. In 1999, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University where he took a graduate degree from Corpus Christi College in Comparative and International Education. Upon returning to Oregon, he entered the teaching profession and taught middle school at Arbor School of Arts and Sciences in Tualatin.
