I am writing in response to the interview with John Tapogna that included his view of the current state of education in Oregon. From my experiences as a now retired public school teacher here in Eugene, I think he is way out of line and incorrect on why there’s been a downturn in Oregon schools.

Unlike Mr. Tapogna’s view, our school system was and still is rocked by the misguided property tax limitation measures passed decades ago. Control of school spending was completely taken away from local school districts, and well-supported districts like Eugene School District 4J and Pleasant Hill School District lost lots of money. These measures limited, or even stopped, efforts to keep our local schools adequately funded. Class sizes ballooned, in some cases almost doubling. Schools lost counselors, librarians and support personnel.

President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act further eroded instruction by using arbitrary methods to gauge school success. Teachers have long felt that standardized testing was not a good or even fair assessment of student success. And when Bush connected test results to teacher performance and even pay, weeks were spent in Oregon classrooms preparing for the tests and neglecting the curriculum that teachers should have been focusing on. The standardized tests were also often ethnocentric and biased.

The dropping of vocational studies in Oregon high schools was much more devastating to graduation rates than any other factor. And the current migratory behavior of families changing schools and school districts often has disrupted student learning and how to fairly assess it. Throw in the pandemic, where young learners missed the early years of school assimilation, and students have been arriving at schools unprepared for a social system and its expectations.

So, Mr. Tapogna, our schools need help and funding. How it is spent is crucial to future success, but you need to do your homework on how we got to where we are today. Easy answers are not often the best or real answers.

Hal Huestis
Eugene