Portland’s High School System: Update on High School System Design Implementation Next Steps to Accelerate Progress December 12, 2012 PORTLAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS Carole Smith Office of the Superintendent 501 North Dixon Street • Portland, OR 97227 Superintendent (503) 916-3200 • Fax: (503) 916-3110
[email protected] December 12, 2012 To the Portland School Board: This report provides an update on the implementation of Portland Public Schools’ High School System Design (HSSD), a comprehensive reform of Portland’s high school system that was approved by the Portland School Board beginning in the fall of 2010, following an extensive two year public input process. HSSD changes were formally launched at the start the 2011-12 school year and will take full effect by the end of the 2014-15 school year. (High schools had already begun implementing a core program as early as 2010-11, and making other changes even earlier.) The high school reforms we instituted in 2010 were challenging, controversial and necessary steps. For the first time in nearly 30 years we closed a high school campus. We changed high school boundaries, modified transfer policies and overhauled programs at every high school. We made these difficult choices for one reason: our high school system was failing to serve too many students. Intolerable inequities across our high school system were a major cause of unacceptably poor results: in 2008-09, PPS had a 53 percent on-time graduation rate and a 30 percent achievement gap in graduation rates (between white and Hispanic students). The status quo was unacceptable.