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For relocation parents, there is a wealth of information on the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) site and most of the reports are in Adobe's PDF. To read PDF files, you must have Acrobat Reader© (free) installed on your computer. To download the reader, go to the Adobe Web site.
". . . and where all the children are above average." is the words that Garrison Keillor, the host of NPR's Prairie Home Companion Show, uses to end his dialogue about the week's events in his fictitious hometown of Lake Wobegon. Unlike Lake Wobegon's students, Oregonians can prove that Oregon's children are above average! In 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005, 2006 Oregon SAT scores were the second highest in the nation. In 2007 and 2008, they were third. Oregon ranked first in the nation in SAT scores in 1997 and 1998 among the twenty-three states where more than 40% of students take the SAT. Oregon ranked in the top five in 1999 and 2000 on SAT scores. Ranking are determined among states where more than 50 percent of students took the test. Washington State finished number one in those years. The SAT is the college entrance exam of choice on the West Coast whereas the ACT is used more in the east and Midwest.
See the metro area high schools SAT scores by click here.
Oregon Class Sizes: 4th Largest in Nation
New figures released in July 2010 from the National Center for Education Statistics peg Oregon's public school class sizes as fourth-largest in the country. Only Utah, California and Nevada packed more students per class during 2008-09, the figures suggest. Oregon had 19.2 students for every teacher − 22 percent more students than the national average of 15.8 students per teacher. And as The Oregonian reported July 4, 2010, the state's high schools classrooms are even more crammed, with 19.9 students for every high school teacher on staff, including special education teachers and other specialists who work with a small number of students.
Portland School District
Portland Schools have some innovative high school programs such as the International Baccalaureate programs at Cleveland High School, Lincoln High School, Tigard and Tualatin High Schools, a Young Scholars program at Wilson, high tech at Benson, and college prep at Riverdale.
High School Reorganization In June, 2009, the Portland School District announced a major reorganization of its high schools. The new design will feature six to seven neighborhood schools and several district wide magnet schools possibly focusing on subjects such as the performing arts, languages or the environment.
That means the district would close two of its current high schools and likely reopen them as magnets. The district will have more information about the changes in the fall of 2009, but the overhaul is on a five- to six-year timeline. The plan also would end the city's 30-year tradition of letting students transfer to a more appealing school in another part of town. The practice was designed to give families choice but ended up segregating students by race, family income, disability status and first language.
This means that students would have to attend their neighborhood school or one of the few magnet schools. The model also includes alternative and charter school options in the design.
Transfer Policy 2010-2011 The Portland School District will limit the number of eighth graders hoping to transfer into one of the district's four most popular schools to 19. Cleveland, Lincoln, Grant and Wilson are each accepting only 19 freshmen who live outside those schools' boundaries. That's about half as many slots as were available last year. Portland Public Schools officials say they are beginning to limit transfers into larger high schools in preparation for more decisions around the two-year-old high school redesign process.
There is also a possibility that the Portland school district could dismantle its signature practice of allowing high school students to transfer among neighborhood high schools. Over the past 30 years, the transfer policy has remained a constant. The state's largest school district built its schools around the idea that you could pick wherever you wanted to go to provide a mix of classes, faces and experiences. But in 2010, district leaders admit that the transfers have hurt their high schools, creating and perpetuating inequities in enrollment, course offerings and money. The potential changes wouldn't affect parents' ability to choose schools for their elementary and middle school students.
Finding the Right School For Your Children
With another mom, Northeast Portlander Katy Mayo-Hudson, Rothenberg started Scoop On Schoools, which walks parents through the potentially bewildering process of finding the right school for their kids and includes a growing list of insider portraits of different Portland-area schools. Their Web site is organized chronologically, with features such as a calendar, ideas for questions to ask during school tours, and tips about the lottery. Those interested in a particular school, as opposed to general tips, can check to see if their school has been profiled in the site's blog. The blog features assessments of each school's strengths and weaknesses.
There are other popular online forums in Portland for discussing individual schools, including the long-running Web site Urban Mamas.
Oregon Graduation Requirements
Starting with the senior class of 2012, it will get tougher to graduate from high school in Oregon, under a plan passed in 2008, by members of the Oregon state Board of Education.
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Oregon students will have to pass state reading, math and writing tests, or prove they have the equivalent skills, to get a high school diploma, beginning with the 2008 incoming freshmen.
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The unanimous decision by the Oregon Board of Education also requires students to give three speeches that meet state standards.
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The state also needs to design a way for students to show they read well enough to meet state reading standards without passing the state reading. The Oregon Department of Education will establish a system to do that.
One-third of Oregon sophomores failed the state reading and writing exams in 2007, and 45 percent failed the state math test.
Oregon will be the 27th state to require students to pass a state high school graduation exam. California began requiring students to pass state reading and math exams in 2006. Washington graduated its first class of students in 2008 who had to pass state reading and writing exams to get a diploma. Oregon will be one of just two states (the other one is New Jersey) to allow students to substitute a locally graded essay or work sample if they can't pass the state graduation test.
December 2008: Delay in Math Test The Oregon Board of Education members said in mid-December that they plan to push back a mandatory math test to get a diploma. That means that this year's high school freshmen won't have to prove they have mastered introductory algebra, geometry and statistics to graduate. Board members said that since almost half of sophomores fail the math test on their first try, it would be too difficult for schools to get all students proficient in math by 2012 without a large infusion of money − money the state doesn't have in this recession. The board agreed to postpone the math test requirement until 2014.
Oregon Schools Initiative
Standardized Tests for Oregon Students
In 1991, the Oregon State Legislature passed the Oregon Educational Act for the 21st Century (the Oregon Schools Initiative). The act gave birth to the Oregon Statewide Assessment Test (OAT), an effort to hold students accountable for high academic standards as measured by a series of annual tests conducted at benchmark grade levels. Students achieving minimum standards receive certificates recognizing their abilities.
The assessment is made up of multiple-choice and performance assessments in the areas of reading and literature, writing, mathematics and science and is given several times throughout the school year at grades 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, and 12. For further information go to these two links on the Oregon Department of Education Web site:
School Report Cards
Each year in early January, the Oregon Department of Education produces annual performance report cards for schools and districts beginning in the year 2000. Oregon law mandates this system and the state legislatures set the rules and measurement criteria. You will want to view the report card for the school(s) of your choice.
Educational performance and improvement are the focus of the Oregon School Report Card rating system. Schools are rated on several measures - student performance, student behavior, and school characteristics - these measures are combined to yield an Overall School Performance Rating of exceptional, strong, satisfactory, low, or unacceptable. A full explanation of this performance system is found at the Oregon Department of Education Web site.
Technology Education - Oregon at Bottom
The national newspaper Education Week, in connection with the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, released its rankings in March, 2008 of technology education in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. States were assessed on how well schools provide access to computers, how adept schools are at using technology, and whether the state requires teachers to show technology proficiency.
Oregon scored in the bottom five states. You can read the full report by click here.
The Nation's Report Card
Every state has their own reporting and testing system so it is impossible to compare scores between states. However, beginning in 2003, the No Child Left Behind Act requires state assessments to be administered in reading and mathematics at grades 4 and 8 every two years. Therefore, limited comparisons can be made between states.
The Nation’s Report CardTM informs the public about the academic achievement of elementary and secondary students in the United States. Report cards communicate the findings of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a continuing and nationally representative measure of achievement in various subjects over time. The Nation’s Report Card compares performance among states, urban districts, public and private schools, and student demographic groups.
NAEP does not provide individual scores for the students, schools, or school districts.
The two Web sites are full of information and allows comparisons between the average scores for public school students in a particular state or jurisdiction and the average score of the nation or another state. To access reports, visit the NAEP Web site or the Nation's Report Card Web site.
Magnets, Language Immersion, Talented and Gifted
Some Portland metro area schools have special programs such as the Richmond Elementary Japanese immersion program (K-5) or the Ainsworth Elementary Spanish immersion program. Wilson High School in the Portland district has a Young Scholars program.
The Portland School District lists special programs on their School Facts page. For example, Portland Public Schools' Talented and Gifted (TAG) program has some special instruction programs for talented/gifted students. Each school district is required to have a contact for their TAG program. The ODE's Web site offers numerous resources for TAG programs to include a FAQ.
A good place to find out about Oregon programs for special education is to visit the ODE Office of Student Learning and Partnerships Web pages. They are responsible to ensure that students with disabilities and those who are talented and gifted benefit from an enhanced education system.
International Baccalaureate (IB)
Four Oregon middle schools and 18 high schools participate in a International Baccalaureate (IB) program. Ridgewood Elementary in the Beaverton Schools is a candidate for the IB Primary Years Program and if approved, it will be the first elementary school in the state to become a member of the program.
Twelve IB programs are offered in the metro area high schools. In the Portland school district, Lincoln High School and Cleveland High School have IB programs. Tigard High School and Tualatin High School offer IB programs. Beaverton has four schools in the program: Beaverton, International School, Southridge, and Sunset.
South Meadows Middle School in the Hillsboro schools kicked off the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program in 2009. Beaverton School District also offers the IB program at Cedar Park Middle School and Bonny Slope Elementary.
Beginning with the 2010 school year, Lincoln High School will begin offering Arabic. The Portland School Board approved a $70,000 grant from Qatar Foundation International, a Washington, D.C., group that promotes cross-cultural understanding through education. The money is enough to pay a full-time teacher for one year and kick-start development of a four-year curriculum. The foundation chose Lincoln because of its international studies program and long interest in Arabic. The school has offered after-school Arabic classes for more than a decade with help from Portland State University's Middle East Studies Center.
Language Immersion
According to the Oregon Department of Education, 30 schools in the state offer an immersion program of some type. Only Louisiana and Hawaii offer more immersion programs than Oregon.
The Portland School District currently offer Russian, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese immersion programs. These programs are spread among nine of the district's 50 elementary and K-8 schools. Students from anywhere in the school district can apply for each of these programs. The annual period in which applications must be made opens January 23 and closes March 12.
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Arabic: Lincoln High School
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Chinese Mandarin: Woodstock Elementary (SE Portland).
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Japanese: Richmond Elementary (SE Portland).
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Russian: Kelly Elementary.
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Spanish: Ainsworth Elementary (SW Portland), Atkinson Elementary (SE Portland), Beach Elementary (North Portland), Bridger Elementary (SE Portland), Clarendon (North Portland), Lent Elementary (SE Portland, Rigler (Northeast Portland).
Chinese Mandarin In Oregon, 10 high schools offer classes Mandarin Chinese, including Cleveland High in southeast Portland, which serves as the capstone in a kindergarten-trough-senior-year Mandarin immersion program that begins at Woodstock Elementary. Demand to enter the program has grown so 60 students a year are admitted to the program as kindergartners. In 2010, the oldest students in Portland's Mandarin immersion program are juniors and sophomores in high school, and many of them have reached advanced or near-advanced status on a national proficiency scale, meaning they can speak connected paragraphs in Mandarin and can talk about academic subjects in the language.
The other Portland metro high schools where Mandarin is taught are Lake Oswego, Tualatin, Southridge in Beaverton, International High of Beaverton, and Franklin in Portland.
Portland's efforts to produce students who are near-fluent in Mandarin, rather than merely prepared to converse informally with native Chinese speakers, won it a grant from the National Security Education Program. The grant, won in a partnership with the University of Oregon, allows students to study Mandarin from kindergarten through four years of college.
Source for above information about Mandarin: The Oregonian, "Chinese instruction thrives in U.S." January 24, 2010, by Betsy Hammond.
Portland Area Public School Web Sites
Many schools have their own Web sites. Within such sites, there's often information about individual schools, including service boundaries, after-school activities, class sizes, program strengths, mission statements and even examples of student work.
 Which School Will Your Child Attend
Many of the Portland area school districts have address locator. On some sites you enter a street address and the elementary, middle, and high schools associated with this address will be displayed. Other districts will display a map of the district showing school boundaries, usually in PDF format, and you zoom in on school and/or your residence address. Below are the known links where you can determine which school your child will attend.
Beaverton School District Beaverton
Hillsboro School District 1J Hillsboro
North Clackamas Schools Milwaukie
Portland Public Schools Portland
Reynolds School District Troutdale
Charter Schools
Oregon's charter law, passed in 1999, allows start-up charter schools, as well as public school and alternative education program conversions. A charter school in Oregon is a public school operated by a group of parents, teachers and/or community members as a semi-autonomous school of choice within a school district. It is given the authority to operate under a contract or “charter” between the members of the charter school community and the local board of education. The school must be nonsectarian. A public charter school is a school of choice. Students may choose to attend the charter school even if the school is not in their attendance area. Applications may not be submitted to convert an existing private school into a charter school. Charters are excluded from many statutes and rules guiding traditional public schools.
We have created a Web page about charters that has extensive information about the history, evaluation, and links to various charter school resources. Just click here to access.
Home Schooling in Oregon
According to ODE, about 12,000-13,000 students are home-schooled in Oregon. The Web has proved to be a powerful tool for home-schooling parents, giving them access to math, science, and other lesson plans and offering their children a world of research opportunities. Most of all, it has brought home-schoolers together as never before, creating an electronic bulleting board to list home-school events, ask questions and exchange ideas.
Most home schoolers in Oregon use the discussion group called ORSig and Portlanders use the Greater Portland Homeschoolers site as well as OHEN (Oregon Home Education Network). The Beaverton-based Village Home Education Resource Center is another source for families who home educate.
Zoning Rules Mingles Haves and Have-nots
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that those schools with the highest SES index (most affluent) happened to be located in those areas with the highest-priced homes. It's the same all over the country, not just in Oregon.
But Portland has something that few others metro areas have to offer. A chance for kids to attend a school in some of the better school districts.
Bucking national trends, Portland and its suburbs became more economically integrated during the 1990s, 2000 census figures show. Low-income families are less concentrated in the city of Portland and more likely to live in the suburbs -- nearly all the suburbs -- than a decade ago. Upper-income, middle-income and working-class people remain more likely to live near each other than in separate enclaves.
The residential mingling of haves and have-nots can be traced to a state land-use rule put in place nearly a quarter-century ago, local developers and planners say. Called the Metropolitan Housing Rule, it required every suburban city and county to zone for a large number of apartments.
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Safe Routes to Schools
Safe Routes to Schools is a partnership of the City of Portland, schools, neighborhoods, community organizations and agencies that advocates for and implements programs that make walking and biking around our neighborhoods and schools fun, easy, safe and healthy for all students and families while reducing our reliance on cars.
Which School Will Your Child Attend if You Live in Portland
Select a school year and enter a street address. The neighborhood schools associated with this address, that are within the Portland Public School boundaries, will be displayed.
Scoop On Schools walks parents through the potentially bewildering process of finding the right school for their kids and includes a growing list of insider portraits of different Portland-area schools.
Mrs. P is a website for children started by two Portland residents and actress Kathy Kinney, who plays the title character in a wig and a friendly, off-kilter Irish accent. It's about as low-tech and low-key as anything on the Web, which is the key to its appeal. There's no advertising, no distractions and no special effects other than a magic library with some highlighted items such as a magic dictionary and a dog that responds to simple commands.
In their December issue each year, the Portland Monthly magazine reports on over 600 schools in the metro area and make what they referred to as a "crib sheet." The sheet gives school rankings, test scores, and statistics that will help you evaluate the schools without the need for in-depth study. Click here to download the document (PDF format).
Community and Parents for Public Schools (CPPS) – the Portland chapter of Parents for Public Schools – is part of a nationwide network of grassroots organizations focused on increasing parent, family and community involvement in public education. CPPS actively recruits parents to public schools, and advocates for parents taking a role in decision-making, school improvement, and accountability.
How Education is Funded
in Oregon
Scott Bailey, co-founder of CPPS (see above), wrote up the history of how education in Oregon is funded in 2005. Click here to download the document.
School Funding
Income taxes now pay for more than half of school operating expenses. About 6% comes from the state lottery. Local revenues (mostly property taxes) provide about 30% of school funding.
58% of state income taxes are spent for education, including K-12, community colleges and universities.
Sources: US Census Bureau, National Education Association, Quality Education Commission, and 2005 NAEP test data.
Open Book$$ tracks the total operations spending of Oregon's 198 school districts and shows the spending in charts. Visitors can compare their district with the statewide average and other districts of similar size.
The Chalkboard Project is a collaborative effort led by five Oregon charitable foundations, which banded together in 2003, to study ways to improve Oregon schools.
Education Week's "Diplomas Count" report provides a first-of-its-kind look at every U.S. school district's graduation rates and state policies that either support or detract from improving graduation rates. The report was released in June 2006. View the Oregon Report.
Standard & Poor
The site presents detailed test scores, spending records and other information about nearly every school and school district in the nation.
www.schoolmatters.com
SAT Scores
Portland Metro Area
Public Schools
SAT Scores
Portland Maps will tell you the schools (elementary, middle, and high school) your children will attend by keying in an address. It's easy to use!
Portland Metro Schools Report Cards
Oregon law (ORS 329.105) requires that the Oregon Department of Education issue performance reports for public schools. These performance reports shall include school ratings for: overall school performance, student performance, student behavior, and school characteristics.
View the Report Cards for the Portland metro area schools at Report Cards.
School Enrollment
Public and Private Schools
In 2002, 83.5 percent of Portland students attended a Portland public schools according to a report released by Portland State University's Population Research Center in February 2002. This number declined in schools across the Portland school district, from 85.8 percent in 1990.
Private School Directory
Directory of Oregon
Private Schools
Oregon
Charter Schools
The Center for Education Reform has a page about Oregon charter schools at their Web site. Visit the US Charter Schools Web site to learn more - the site has information about Oregon charter schools. The Oregon Department of Education also has information about Oregon charter schools at their Web site.
Saturday Academy’s (SA) innovative programs are open to all students in grades 4 through 12. SA offers enrichment programs in locations through out the Portland metro area.
SA emphasizes math, science, engineering, technology, and healthcare because these disciplines are integral to the future children will live and work in.
SMART (Start Making A Reader Today) began harnessing volunteers in 1992 to help develop literacy skills in all of Oregon's children from kindergarten through third grade. Focusing especially on youngsters in danger of falling behind, volunteers read with two children for a half-hour each, one hour a week during the school year. Students also are given two new books a month to keep and read with their families.
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