Earlier this week, Governor Kitzhaber held a signing ceremony for two important pieces of education legislation, House Bill 3232 and House Bill 3233. This public signing marked the official launch of four Strategic Initiatives designed to improve opportunities and outcomes for our students through a targeted investment in key leverage areas: early literacy, STEM, creating a college-going culture, and building a robust network of supports for our educators.
These Strategic Initiatives are a critical part of the larger systems work our state is engaged in around creating a seamless P-20 education system that supports students from birth through graduate school. In our rapidly changing, technology-rich world, ensuring our students have a strong educational foundation is more critical than ever before – both for the future success of our students and the economic prosperity of our state. Oregon has made a commitment to dramatically increase the number of students graduating from our high schools prepared to enter, and complete, higher education and workforce training programs. These four Strategic Initiatives are designed to fund areas with a high return on investment, kick start innovation, expand best practice, and make significant progress toward our 40-40-20 goal.
We know that one of the most significant predictors of a student’s future educational success is whether or not that student can read at grade level by the end of third grade. Our Early Reading Initiative is designed to expand existing programs with a proven track record in early literacy, provide parents and caregivers with additional literacy resources and tools, and ensure our most at-risk students have additional time and individualized support to master this critical skill. A student’s journey to gradation and beyond starts with a solid foundation in literacy and this funding will ramp up our efforts in this important area.
Getting all of our students to graduation is essential – but it is only the first step. We also need to ensure our students leave high school ready, and inspired, to go on to college and workforce training. Our efforts around guidance and support for post-secondary aspirations are designed to help more students see college as a possibility through mentoring, guidance, and opportunities to gain college credit while in high school. In addition, our initiative to connect students to the world of work focuses on increasing access to engaging, hands-on learning that can build direct pathways from high school to critical, family-wage careers – especially in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM).
The final initiative is the creation of a Network for Quality Teaching and Learning to ensure we are recruiting the best and brightest into the profession, delivering relevant, high-quality training in our teacher preparation programs, providing our new teachers and administrators with experienced mentors, and ensuring that all of our teachers have the strong, embedded professional development they need to be as effective as possible. This Network will include expansions to some proven programs as well as new and innovative approaches designed to better support the development of strong educational leaders throughout our system.
Over the coming months, we will be announcing a number of opportunities for school districts, colleges, non-profits, and education partners to apply for Strategic Investment funds through several rounds of grants and contracts. Information about these opportunities will be shared by email and will be posted to our Strategic Initiatives webpage. A draft timeline for when these various grant opportunities will be announced is also available on our website.
There are already a number of existing innovative and effective efforts in place to support student success in Oregon. The Strategic Initiatives are designed to enhance and expand the impact of these successful approaches while stimulating additional solutions and partnerships. The Initiatives will provide resources and demonstration models that can be adopted or replicated throughout the state and which can inform future strategic investments. We look forward to hearing from our district, higher education, and community partners throughout this initiative process.
Improving education in our state will take all of us – educators, parents, students, business leaders, and community partners. But it will also impact and benefit all of us. Our students deserve a rigorous, engaging, relevant education that prepares them for the opportunities and challenges they will face upon graduation. Our educators deserve a system that encourages their professional growth and development and supports their success as practitioners. And our state deserves the economic prosperity and engaged citizenry that stems from a robust, effective education system. Together we can, and will, build the system our students, educators, and state deserve.
