It’s time for a paradigm shift in Oregon education

After a 70-year wait, Open Enrollment and School Choice are our best opportunity to achieve what Brown v. Board of Education was hoping to achieve in 1954: true education equality. But like in 1954, these groundbreaking measures face vocal opposition. 

We must ask ourselves this central question. Is opposition to school choice motivated by a desire to protect funding or by the best interests of children?

Public school funding is a complex formula, but it is tied to enrollment numbers. Higher enrollment equals more dollars. Understandably, no one wants to let go of dollars. The question we need to answer is “are Oregon students well served by the current education system? If not, why are those in the system fighting so hard to protect it?”

Seventy years after Brown v. Board of Education, our public schools continue to be segregated. When our children are tied to their zip codes – as they are here in Oregon – academic redlining is alive and well. 

I spoke with a mother in our district whose child was traumatized by the overdose of their friend. Each day at school, the trauma was revisited. But this mother had no option to choose a different school in a new neighborhood for her child. In desperation, the family picked up and moved to a higher rent area, their only hope of choosing a new school. Their child is recovering in the new environment, but the family is suffering financially as a result. Why should our children be tied to their zip codes and be burdened by neighborhood crime, gang violence, and social trauma, which necessarily spills into the local schools? How can we expect them to focus on their education and excel in the midst of that trauma? Community trauma is harmful for the health and education of our children. 

What about outcomes? It is well-documented that Oregon students have been among the last in the country to recover from COVID-19 learning losses. Oregon students ranked last in math and reading progress in a study of 30 states. Then, in the fall of 2023, the State Board of Education voted unanimously to suspend graduation requirements for reading, writing, and math until at least 2029.

Does this sound like a system that is serving our children? If we’re honest, we’ll acknowledge that we can, and must, do better. 

So what is the path forward for our children and our public schools? Open Enrollment and School Choice. Children and families need real choice to pick any school or any program anywhere so that they have the best possible outcome. Choice and healthy competition will result in positive outcomes for both our students and our public schools. School choice has existed in other states for decades, and as a result, we have a significant body of data to prove this. In a 2016 review of empirical research, fourteen out of eighteen studies on school choice participant outcomes found academic improvement, thirty-one out of thirty-three found school choice raised outcomes for public school students, and nine out of ten studies found that school choice resulted in less segregated schools.

This kind of competition has the potential to make Oregon’s public schools so attractive and top notch that people will stand in line to attend, similar to the charter school effect. Oregon charter schools only get 80% of the funding of a public district school, but they’ve learned to run creatively and efficiently. Parents regularly wait in a lottery for a spot for their child in one of these schools! When our students from different high schools in Salem Keizer are given real choice to choose the CTEC program, and come from different zip codes to attend this program, we have excellent outcomes with nearly 99% graduation and no behavioral problems.. 

Children and parents can’t wait until public schools can become safer and return to a focus on high quality education. We need a paradigm shift that places the interests of our children squarely in the center of education solutions.

Open Enrollment and School Choice offer real equity. It’s time to stop tying our children to their zip code. It’s time to stop dividing our schools into the “haves” and “have nots.” It’s time to ensure personalized education and strong outcomes so our next generation has the best chance at becoming productive and contributing citizens. Our children can’t wait until we get our act together. Let’s put Open Enrollment and School Choice on November’s ballot.

Satya Chandragiri MD is a Salem-Keizer School Board Director for Zone 4, a board-certified psychiatrist, an immigrant, and father of Oregon public school graduates. He resides in Salem with his family.