Portland Public Schools graduate another successful class

I just read the comments on a BlueOregon post by Russell Sadler on billionaires pushing their agenda on public education via philanthropic grants and political action for “school reform”. As often happens, I wonder if I’m living in the same city (or on the same planet) as some of those commenting. “Public schools suck, private schools are better” is their theme. My experience has been that Portland’s public schools are excellent, and could be even better if people stopped knocking them and instead concentrated on building on their strengths. Here are just a few examples why/how:

My daughter, a junior at Wilson High School, is spending the weekend finishing up her Junior Language Arts Paper, on Tennessee Williams and his works. It’s a year-long project in which students learn not only how to choose, research and provide original analysis on a particular topic, but also how to organize their time and preliminary drafts before producing the final paper to be graded. It’s excellent preparation for college. This past week, Ali took Advanced Placement exams on micro- and macro- economics; if history repeats, she and other students at Oregon’s public schools will earn college credit for classes taken in high school. Wilson’s AP Economics class squashes two years of curriculum into half a year. In a couple of weeks, Ali will be taking the SAT again – not because she needs to in order to get into her chosen college, but because she wants to see if she can improve on her previous score. Portland’s public school students outscore both most of the rest of the state and most of the rest of the country on standardized tests. Equally important to me as a parent, our schools educate students to challenge themselves.

I don’t have a child graduating this year, so I can brag about the Wilson Class of 2007 without restraint. Bear in mind that every other high school in Portland has similar successes to report – I know Wilson’s best because I read their national award-winning student newspaper. Graduates won admission to Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn (Congratulations, ChelseaFan!), Northwestern, Chicago, Southern California, George Washington, Carnegie-Mellon, Oberlin, Scripps, and a host of other highly competitive colleges – many with huge merit scholarships. Forty-seven are headed to the University of Oregon, thirty-three to Oregon State. A couple have chosen to serve our country in the military. Others are going on to performing arts programs, trades schools, community colleges. Several are returning home to other countries after a year at Wilson as foreign exchange students – an amazing enrichment experience for both the exchange students and those raised here. There are only a handful of “undecided” graduates in the Class of 2007 – plus one who lists “Whatever he wants” as his intended path. Ah, the optimism of youth.

My point is this: Portland’s public schools are amazing places where children can grow into excelllent scholars. Our son Maxwell has done just fine in his freshman year at Princeton, matching and sometimes outperforming students educated at elite private schools. And that’s thanks to Portland Public Schools (I stopped being able to help with his math homework in 9th grade – and I took math electives in college). People may say that he and the students going to the colleges I listed in the paragraph above would succeed in any school. The point is, they have succeeded in public schools, where not only have their parents been able to save tuition money for college and graduate school, but also they have learned how to work with others who are less fortunate in genes or environment, or both.

No one school works for all students/families, and has all possible virtues. Private schools have some advantages, public schools have other, sometimes different ones. Magnet schools provide some good things, neighborhood schools address a different set of values. All parents home school, whether full time, part time, or by being absent – each teaches a child something for better or worse. Kids learn many things in many different ways. No one school size works for everyone and every community, no one curriculum, no one educational philosophy. Some things don’t work well, universally. Discrimination. Lack of support, of many types. Relying only on one year’s test scores compared with the previous year’s scores of a different set of kids, to gauge school achievement. It would be helpful if we could find ways to improve education for all children without disparaging one way or another, recognizing that “one size fits all” often doesn’t.