What will the candidates of 2022 do for the class of 2025?
How about starting with a post-pandemic learning recovery plan?
The next governor of Oregon as well as the legislators and school board members we elect in 2022 will face deadlines and deliverables for our K-12 schools that now seem nearly impossible to meet – getting all or nearly all high school students across the graduation finish line after years of stumbling through the pandemic.
Money is no longer the problem or the excuse. In a report to the legislature last month, we learned that Oregon has finally reached and exceeded the K-12 funding level envisioned by the decades-old Quality Education Model (QEM). If recent revenue forecasts hold, we should be able to easily meet or exceed the QEM target in the state’s next budget period as well.
But the QEM came with a deliverable that many school funding advocates had forgotten. When adopted by the legislature in 2001, it promised a high school graduation rate of 90%. Then, not to be outdone in aspiration, the 2011 legislature set our sights even higher: By 2025, we were told, we’d get 100% of our high school students across the graduation finish line.
This declaration of what became Oregon’s version of No Child Left Behind put the future class of 2025 in a rosy spotlight, cheered on by politicians and eagerly tracked in a long-running OPB series. But, when the pandemic hit, the cheering stopped.
We’ve heard little since about the class of 2025, who began high school as freshmen this fall after more than a year of disrupted learning. All indications suggest they have fallen off course to achieve even a 90% graduation rate, much less the aspirational 100%.
Prior to the pandemic, we had seen steady progress toward our graduation goals, reaching a best-ever rate of 83% with the class of 2020. But the leading indicators for students coming after them have gone in the other direction. One key measure, known as 9th Grade on Track, declined from 85% to 74% for the class of 2024.
So what can we expect from the candidates who prevail in next year’s elections and take office in 2023, when many in the class of 2025 will be struggling through their sophomore year? Will they blame the pandemic and say we need to set back our goals? Or will they get behind these students and lead the cheering again with a new post-pandemic education plan?
Our long march to adequate funding for our schools taught us that more money, better spent, can move the needle on student success. The last decade proved that. Thanks to a stronger economy, we committed more funding to K-12 and early childhood programs. And, thanks to Measure 98, we directed extra resources to our high schools, focused on improving our graduation rate, and provided more opportunities for students to access career-technical programs and early college courses. These investments put us on an upward trajectory, until we hit the turbulence of an unforeseeable pandemic.
Overcoming the learning losses that we’ve experienced during the last two years is the biggest challenge of the moment for all of our K-12 students, from the class of 2022 to the class of 2025 and in the grades below them. Regaining our momentum won’t be easy. Legislators will have to fix problems in our school funding model, which continues to produce vastly unequal graduation rates across our 197 school districts, for students of color and those from low-income families.
But we also know that targeted investments and a laser focus on student success at key points in the K-12 system (e.g. 3rd grade reading (see this Jenn Schuberth piece), middle school math and 9th grade course completions) can leverage impressive results. And, if we get serious about addressing pandemic- related learning losses, we’ll have to develop targeted “learning recovery” programs that include one-on-one tutoring, counseling and summer school schedules.
We know what works. We have the money to make it work. But, the most important ingredient for success is the will to get it done. Will we turn our back on the class of 2025? Or will we put them back in the spotlight, redouble our efforts on their behalf and inspire new confidence, both ours and theirs, in their long-promised success?
Let’s hope these questions will be front and center in the upcoming election year. Whether we deliver on the promises made to the class of 2025 will be up to the candidates we support in 2022.
Tim served as Chief of Staff for Gov. Kulongoski. A former union leader, he lives near Independence and oversees a specialty apple orchard.
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photo credit: "Fenton Classroom" by Wolfram Burner is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
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Thank you for spotlighting this issue. Camille Farrington's work about the importance of 9th grade for high school graduation shows that we have an emergency. The recent fall data from PPS about 8th grade reading and math proficiency tell us we are in crisis. Black, Native, and EL students are on average 1-2.5 years behind in reading(PPS data). This is where we need the Department of Education to stop making suggestions about what districts could do with their ESSER/COVID funds and direct them to spend it on high dosage tutoring and teacher training in the science of reading. Other states are doing this because that's what the research says works. North Carolina is taking this opportunity to change how higher ed trains teachers to teach reading because they know reading is the basis for all other learning. We have an opportunity, now we need leadership in the governor's office, the Department of Education, and the legislature.