Education

How Oregon’s Education System Can Better Support Foster Children

Foster children like Adam Sweet often move homes — and schools — more times than they can count. Adam Sweet can’t remember exactly how many times he moved growing up as a foster child, but he thinks it was at least twenty. Usually those moves meant new schools, or at least a new chance to […]

/ September 18, 2019

Fostering Her Own Future

She didn’t start school until the eighth grade. She slept in youth shelters and at the DHS office for weeks on end. She was told college “wasn’t for her.” But Aleathea St. Hilaire is now a full-time student studying criminal justice at Warner Pacific University, and she’s mentoring kids at the same camp where she […]

/ September 9, 2019

Why the Student Success Act Is Only Half the Battle

We wrote last week that rising pension costs could “gobble up” much of the Student Success Act’s new revenue, but that’s not quite right. If passed, HB 3427 will invest $1 billion a year in public education. What it won’t do is solve the bigger fiscal crisis that’s threatening all public services, from filling potholes […]

/ May 6, 2019

PDXplained: Here’s What Makes the Sunnyside School Special, And Controversial

📸: Whitney Gomes “What makes the Sunnyside Environmental School different? Is it still a PPS magnet school?” Reader Olivia Dwinell asked us that question for our Sunnyside edition of PDXplained. Here’s what we found out: THE SCHOOL The Sunnyside Environmental School opened in 1994 as a magnet school (or “focus school”) that specializes in giving […]

/ January 15, 2019

Want to Improve Graduation Rates? Focus on the Little Ones.

We’ve been talking this month about Oregon’s lowly high school graduation rate — and mostly focusing on what happens after kids start ninth grade. But Mark Holloway, CEO of Social Venture Partners Portland, says what happens before kindergarten might be just as important. Here’s what Mark told us about SVP’s goal to help all children in the […]

/ September 19, 2018