Oregon State Board of Education

October 21, 2009

Oregon State Board of Education

Public Service Building

255 Capitol Street NE

Salem, OR 97310

Dear Board Members,

I am superintendentin two Douglas County school districts, Oakland and North Douglas. I have served as a public school superintendent in Oregon for the past 14 years. In addition, my professional experience includes several years of full-time professional-technicalteaching experience at Lane Community College and regional program coordination experience for Douglas Education Service District, as well as, several years of private sector work experience in the petrochemical and defense industries. I’m writing to you concerning the proposed Oregon Diploma requirements outlined in draft OARs 581-022-1130, -1133, -1134, and -1135. Although I will never argue against setting high standards for our students, I have concerns regarding the assessment requirements and short implementation period, full implementation by 2014, because I believe we have not adequately funded our K-12 public school system and currently lack the resources needed to achieve the State Board’s goal.

Historically, in Oregon and nationally, we’ve gotten close to having our lower elementary students meet benchmark standards for local and state requirements. I attribute our success in the lower grade levels to the concentrated use of federal program entitlement funding and strategic use of limited State School Funds at these grade levels. Unfortunately, with few exceptions, our efforts to increase student achievement at the middle and high school levels have been less successful. In my opinion, we are unlikely to achieve the new Oregon Diploma requirements without increasing our investment in professional development,instructional support staffing, andimproved instructional engagement strategies that motivate students to achieve at their highest potential. Currently, short of fully funding the Quality Education Model, we simply haven’t invested enough in our public school system to meet the needs of our students and staff, which would, in turn, have us in a better positionto begin meeting the new Oregon Diploma requirements.

The current diploma offerings in both Oakland and North Douglas, as defined by local school board policy,includes awarding an Honors Diploma, Regular Diploma, Modified Diploma, and Certificates of Attendance and Achievement for different levels of student success. As Oregon educators and lawmakers have also recognized, students achieve varying levels of academic and social success in our public school system because of their unique differences. Each individual’s achievement growth should be recognized for the level of success obtained upon exiting our system. I believe our certified teaching staff does a wonderful job of planning, teaching, and evaluating student competence. Our current diplomas are awarded based on a combination of classroom work, attendance, behavior, effort, and other measureable expectations for students, which includeformative and summative assessments. Each student’s transcript indicates the level of performance achieved in each content area. In my opinion, a diploma certificate should always be viewed simultaneously with a high school transcript. Every employer should ask to view a student’s transcript when considering Oregon graduates for employment.

We are doing well, but we can do better. We can gradually raise the standard for earning a high school diploma, but we should not mandate this new Oregon Diploma standard until we have first invested in a K-16 public education system designed to train educators to deliver higher levels of reading, writing,and mathematic instructional strategies. We simply haven’t had the level of K-16 system investment, with strategic system development, required to achieve the proposed Oregon Diploma standards. I don’t believe our public school system, including teacher education licensure programs, is currently prepared to support the expected student outcomes for 2012, 2013 and 2014 regular or modified diploma graduates.

At this time, I urge the Oregon Legislature, State Board of Education, and Oregon Department of Education to rethink the Oregon Diploma implementation timeline. I don’t believe our system is prepared to support the increased performance and assessment requirements, especially in the area of mathematics, and we are setting students and staff up for a 40% student failure rate. Our current students, teacher preparation institutions, and licensed educators don’t deserve to be evaluated at a higher level of expectation without the state and federal government first investing in an improved K-16 educational system. We need to design an improved public education system, especially our teacher preparation and continuing professional development component,if we expect to achieve the results currently being recommended for our future Oregon graduates.

Professionally,

Dan Forbess

Superintendent

Copy:Susan Castillo, ODE

Jackie Burr, ODE

Theresa Levy

Michelle Hooper

Shelby Campos

Sen. Floyd Prozanski

Rep. Bruce Hanna