Oregon Public Broadcasting

More than half of Oregon’s school districts are on board a joint effort to land $100 million or more from the new federal “Race to the Top” program.

Federal officials have said that states with strong local support will win. But as Rob Manning reports, Oregon teachers’ unions are balking.

Oregon’s Race to the Top application won support from more than half the state’s chief administrators, like Pat Evenson-Brady with the Hood River County schools. She says her district was committed to the application, item-by-item.

Pat Evenson-Brady: “Measure student growth? Yup. Design and implement evaluation systems? Yup. Conduct annual evaluations of teachers? Yup. Use evaluations to inform professional development? Yup.”

But Evenson-Brady was not able to get the Hood River union to support the application. Same went for two-thirds of the school districts that signed up.

The potential of up to $175 million is not lost on teachers. But union leaders have said that the quick timeline and the vague, or even questionable, language in the application gave them pause.

David Wilkinson is the head of the Beaverton Education Association, a union that didn’t sign on.

David Wilkinson: “There are aspects of the grant application and what the federal government is really looking for that don’t make a lot of sense to me, as a teacher. Much of the things, a lot of the research would show aren’t particularly good ideas.”

Issues like tying teacher pay to evaluations – and possibly to student performance – concerned some union leaders. So did aggressive house-cleaning that could happen at the state’s lowest-performing schools.

Still a few have signed on, the largest being the Salem-Keizer Education Association. President Jane Killefer says her members wanted to send a signal to Washington D.C. that teachers would rather be rewarded than punished.

Jane Killefer: “So this was an opportunity to have a carrot, and our association was feeling – while we are a bit nervous about it – it’s better to go after the carrot than continue to get hammered.”

The teachers’ state-level organization, the Oregon Education Association, mostly steered clear of the debates at local union halls.

President, Gail Rasmussen supports trying for Race to the Top funds, but she didn’t dictate to locals.

Gail Rasmussen: “What we did do for our locals is to offer them the opportunity to be involved, to certainly ask questions, and certainly to consider the relationships in the school districts and how effectively and fairly they might be able to collaborate on these local proposals.”

Some union leaders suggested that winning a small grant might not pencil out once you factor in costs of testing and other changes the grant could require.

Carole Smith signed the application as the Portland superintendent. She says leaders will weigh that.

Carole Smith: “You always have the conversation – that you don’t chase money for chasing money. You always look at ‘what is the work it’s going to allow you to do?’.”

Oregon should learn if it was selected for a grant by spring. If it wasn’t selected, it can apply in a second round in June.