Education
Oregon Arts Commission awards $230,000 for school arts projects
Children in Tillamook will make a quilt-like board game and learn about the history of quilting as part of an art program recently funded through the Oregon Arts Commission. The program, by the Bay City Arts Center, is among 23 awarded a total of $230,000 in grants from the commission, which is part of Business […]
New study highlights why so many of Oregon’s superintendents of color are leaving
Despite an increasingly diverse student population, leaders in Oregon’s school districts remain overwhelmingly white. A new study set out to understand the challenges of school superintendents of color, why there are so few superintendents of color in Oregon, and why they quit their jobs. It was done by the non-profit Education Northwest and commissioned by […]
Alsea superintendent, board will defy mask mandate, forgo school funding
Despite losing some federal relief money, Alsea School District leaders say they will disregard Covid mandates and allow students and staff to forgo masks when they return to school buildings on Monday, Jan. 31. Superintendent Marc Thielman, who is also a Republican gubernatorial candidate, oversees the 838 students enrolled in the district about 30 miles […]
USDA appoints longtime energy consultant to lead powerful Rural Development office in Oregon
Margaret Hoffmann advised the U.S. Department of Agriculture soon after Joe Biden became president that she wanted to lead its Rural Development office in Oregon. A longtime energy consultant and adviser, Hoffmann hoped to run an office that helps direct hundreds of millions of dollars a year for rural energy conservation, broadband, job creation and […]
Graduation rate news may disguise what’s really happened to Oregon students
We learned last week that Oregon’s high school graduation rate for the class of 2021 was not as bad as many had feared. It declined by just two percentage points, from a high of 83%, after a full year of shuttered classrooms and disrupted learning. Was this good news or bad for our pandemic-forced experiment […]
Oregon secretary of state rejects petition to get school choice on ballot
Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan rejected a petition Wednesday to get a school choice measure on the November 2024 ballot because it was not specific enough to one issue. The proposed measure included changes to the Oregon Constitution that would allow parents to choose any school for their child and provide state funding for […]
Despite challenging school year, Oregon graduation rates dropped only slightly
The state’s average four-year high school graduation rate fell just two percentage points during the last school year despite major hurdles to instruction from the pandemic, according to data released Thursday by the Oregon Department of Education. The average four-year graduation rate in the state went from 83% for the class of 2020 to 81% […]
DeFazio will try a last time to ease debt burden on college borrowers, expand Pell
Each year since 2016, U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, Democrat from Oregon, has proposed lowering student debt and expanding the federal Pell grant for low-income students. His legislation has yet to pass. In his last year representing the state’s 4th Congressional District before retiring after 36 years, DeFazio will try one last time. He announced Wednesday […]
Large Oregon districts skipped ‘emergency’ teachers even as staff shortages grew
Last October, the state came to the rescue of school districts by opening the way to get people into classrooms who weren’t necessarily teachers by degree or training. But data from the state Teacher Standards and Practices Commission show that the state’s largest districts didn’t grab the lifeline even as they closed down in recent […]
Oregon scholarship for community college disproportionately going to wealthier students
Money to help Oregon high school seniors pay for community college has been disproportionately flowing to students with the least financial need. At a Senate Education Committee meeting Jan. 12, Juan Baez-Arevalo, the director of the Office of Student Access and Completion at the Higher Education Coordinating Commission, told lawmakers that the Oregon Promise grant […]
New recommendations limit contact tracing in schools to exposure in cafeterias, band, sports
New guidance from the Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Department of Education could end contract tracing when a student tests positive and was in close proximity to other students as long as all were wearing masks. In an email sent Friday, the director of the state Education Department, Colt Gill, advised schools that they […]
State will add nearly 2,000 new contract professionals to ease overburdened hospitals
Oregon officials are working to discharge hundreds of hospital patients who have been languishing and taking up critically-needed beds because the care they need in the community isn’t available. The move is expected to free up hospital beds for the still-growing influx of Oregonians so ill with coronavirus they need hospitalization. State officials said Thursday […]