Nation Will Be Watching Oregon’s ‘Pioneering Step’ : Under new program, high school ends at 10th grade, followed by 2 years of specialized training. It could become model for future.

With the school year now in full swing, more than just Oregon’s nearly 500,000 public school students are being called to attention. Teachers and administrators from all parts of the country are calling--and some are visiting--the Oregon State Department of Education, alerted by a statewide blueprint for change which may become an educational model for the future.

U.S. Education Secretary Lamar Alexander, who visited the state in August, said: “Oregon has taken a pioneering step, and America will be watching and learning.”

Under the new program, which will be hammered into shape within the next two years, high school will end at 10th grade with students earning a certificate of initial mastery based on new standards of education. Sixteen-year-old students then will decide whether to pursue college prep or vocational training to earn the certificate of advanced mastery 24 months later.

By the 1992 school year, the state Education Department will provide models for nongraded kindergarten through the third grade. Emphasis in those primary years of education will be on team teaching, individual skill development and family participation. Head Start will be available to all eligible children by 1998.

The designer of the Education 2000 plan is state Rep. Vera Katz, a Democrat who has served on three national commissions on teaching and education.

“All of these design changes have a proven track record,” says Katz, who is also a fund-raiser and development director for the Portland Community College system.

“There have been lots of model programs around the country,” she says, “but many come and go as administrators or teachers come and go. This is different because it is being implemented statewide.”

Although some people are calling the changes revolutionary, others call them a return to the tracking system of the past.

Psychologist J. Ira Klusky, who has worked in self-enhancement programs within the Portland school system, says: “I know of few academics who like it. This is tracking.”

Klusky is referring to the career decision students will make at the end of 10th grade. “This steers poor and minority kids to vocational training. This does not prepare kids for the future. Many vocational jobs are leaving the country.”

Supporters of the plan say students will be able to move between vocational or college prep classes if they change their minds.

“I disagree this is a return to tracking,” says Black United Front leader Ron Herdon, who also directs Portland’s Head Start program. “We have tracking now. Teachers are the only ones raising that issue out of their own selfish interests. They are worried about losing jobs if teachers have to learn new skills.”

The program, mandated by state law, calls for lengthening the school year from 175 to 220 days by the year 2010, a concern for teachers because, so far, no increase in teacher pay has been mentioned.

Bigger battles loom in the future, when funding will have to be raised for the program’s changes beyond the $2 million that has been allocated for 1992-1993.

Katz insists that change, not money, is the main issue now.

“For the first two years, we will concentrate on teacher training in the primary grades,” she said. “We will develop programs so that, when teachers talk of music, they also talk of math. When teachers read poems, they also talk of the historical context in which the work was written.”

Katz also says an important component of the law mandates early intervention from social service agencies for troubled students. Some social service offices will move to school sites.

“Don’t permit the young to fall through the cracks,” Katz says. “Teachers tell us they can identify at-risk kids at the first-grade level.”

Joyce Reinke, a former primary grade teacher, is the state administrator in charge of implementing the program over the next decade. She envisions the primary grades returning to the “one-room schoolhouse,” which she experienced during her childhood in Minnesota.

“We want to avoid having children experiencing failure at an early age,” Reinke says. “Not all 6-year-olds are alike. Not all are born on the same day. We want to fit the program to the child instead of forcing the child to fit into a program.”