Bill and his beautiful wife Cindy are raising five children, 19-year-old Ryan, 13-year-old Jeffrey, 12-year-old Rebekah, 10-year-old Kristin, and 8-year-old Ashley. They live just outside Beavercreek, Oregon. His children attend Colton Public Schools.

Like every Oregon parent he wants his children to have the best education possible. Oregon schools are mediocore at best. Bill offers common sense solutions to improve our children's education in Oregon.

Eight Common Sense Solutions to Improve
Our Children's Education

1. Return control of the classroom to our teachers - Bring order and civility back to our schools

Disruptive or abusive children should not return to the classroom without the teacher's consent. Teachers currently have absolutely no say in whether a child who has been disruptive is returned to the classroom. Our policy leaves teachers and students at the mercy of misbehaving children.

Allow districts to create an alternative education system that adheres to a stricter code of conduct for kids who don't behave in the regular school setting.

Texas calls its highly successful program "tough love academies," and it's working.

Encourage school districts to adopt zero tolerance policies for crimes such as bringing a gun or drugs on school premises.

When such a policy was put into effect at Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia student suspensions initially went up; however, suspensions in the second year were down 40% once students realized the adults were serious.

2. Clearly define expectation and hold students and schools accountable for them

Ensure that a student is performing at grade level before being passed to the next grade.

Social promotion must stop. If a child is not academically ready to go on to the next grade, he or she shouldn't go on. We can start with early intervention in the primary grades so no child passes out of the third grade who can't read.

We also need to:

• use reading and math test, and possibly other test of basic knowledge, in order to advance in every grade level
• require early intervention in the primary grades so that no students are left behind

Establish an easy-to-understand statewide, school rating system and use the results to hold schools and students accountable.

Testing can determine everything from the success of a school, or a particular curriculum, to whether a student is ready for the next grade. The standards must be nationally recognized and testing should take place at every grade level so that we know how much a child has learned throughout the year. We need to let the community, schools and teachers evaluate their own weaknesses and strengths and eventually hold them accountable for results. Much of the success in the Texas reform movement has been attributed to its strong rating system.

Make school attendance mandatory to obtain and keep a driver's license so that there are consequences to dropping out that teenagers can understand.

A primary reason kids drop out of school is to take a job so they can buy a car and pay for insurance. Oregon needs to follow the lead of states like West Virginia, which saw a 30% decrease in the dropout rate after passing such a law.

Evaluate teachers by the rate of progress of their students, not whether the teacher is using the latest educational fads.

Teachers whose students fail to progress, will be given help; and if they continue to fail to teach their students, under-performing teacher will be replaced.

Raise the minimum standard for high school sports team eligibility in Oregon.

Raise the minimum standard for high school sports team eligibility from the current paltry .71 GPA, the current standard in many states. Oregon is sending the wrong message to all students when it emphasizes sports over academic achievement.

3. Keep the eye on the ball: academic achievement

Require our public school to use teaching methods and curriculum that are proven to work.

Too many schools use trendy programs like Whole Language for reading and Visual Whole Math, which have been proven to fail 40% of the time. These fads are being abandoned in other states like California and Texas after years of frustration, falling test scores and wasted money. Despite this overwhelming evidence of the effectiveness of phonics, Governor John Kitzhaber vetoed a 1997 bill that simply would have made phonics materials available for teachers who wanted to use them.

Make academic achievement the primary goal of our schools and the focus of the curriculum. For many years, academic achievement has taken a back seat to a misguided social agenda in our schools.

We have one of the nation's top schools of education at the University of Oregon, where the most highly successful instructional methods in the country in reading and math have been developed. However, under the current administration, our schools are not taking advantage of this valuable resource.

4. Implement a one-year, English immersion program for non-English speaking students

We must create and carry out a proven, one-year English immersion program that hastens non-English speaking children's integration into the regular classroom.

Academic achievement and quick integration into the community must be the primary goal of any program for non English speaking children. These children currently spend years in separate bilingual and "English as a second language" programs that do not teach grade level content and English fast enough. After as much as seven years or more in one of these failed programs, these children are so far behind that they will probably never catch up.

5. Allow competitive bidding for services not related to teaching

Tap the private sector for specialized services. Services such as transportation, maintenance, janitorial, printing, and payroll preparation, can be out-sourced. Schools will be able then to dedicate more time and resources to their education mission. Winning contracts must be performance-based and provide cost savings to the district. Private contracts will not be approved if cost savings comes from cutting service quality. School employees should be allowed to submit bids along with the private sector.

6. Offer parents, no matter their economic status, real choices for their child's education

Allow independent, locally-run public schools that are given autonomy and a waiver for regulations in exchange for demonstrable results.

These "charter schools" will be given the freedom to innovate as long as they can demonstrate success. A strong charter school law increases choices for all students, and allows competition to drive innovation and accountability. These schools will be free and open to all children. The experience of the 28 states that have such a law shows that many of these schools will serve struggling and poor students.

Give parents a choice in choosing the best school possible for their children by offering a tax credit for any private Oregon elementary or secondary school. This tax credit may be used by anybody for anybody; for example, a wealthy benefactor or business could take a credit for low-income children, or grandparent could use it for a grandchild. Larger tax credits could be available for special needs children. Because the maximum credit would be about half of what our public schools currently spend, public schools would benefit financially by having more dollars per student available to them, and public school enrollment would remain stable as the overall number of students increases due to population growth. Due to population growth, everybody wins: the public schools, parents, kids and the community.

7. Limit Administration

Place a limit on the percentage of education dollars that can be spent on administration.

If an expenditure is not resulting in an increase in student achievement, we need to take a hard look at it. Far too few education dollars end up in the classroom. Too much is spent maintaining and education bureaucracy, not just at the school level, but at the district level, education service district level, and the State Department of Education. No matter how much money taxpayers provide for education, it will never be enough if we don't put controls on bureaucratic and administrative costs.

8. Grant more local control

Give broad leeway to communities in meeting state guidelines and academic standards.

Although there needs to be nationally recognized achievement standards, decisions about how to achieve those standards are often best made at the local level.

Allow continued development of site-based decision making that empowers educators and families. Give schools and parents the ability to control the operation, expenditures, and decisions of their local schools.

Make schools more responsive to parents by creating complaint procedures at the school level. Parents need consumer protection when their school is failing their children.

Allow waivers for any statewide mandate for any district that is presently doing an adequate job or can demonstrate success. As long as a district or a school is not found to be substandard, waivers should be an option. This could apply to any component of the Oregon Education Act for the 21st Century.