Oregon educators are legally mandated to follow the educational reform plan Oregon Schools for the 21st Century, including administering the new CIM (Certificate of Initial Mastery) and CAM (Certificate of Advanced Mastery) testing protocols. However, current education funding does not allow increased curriculum, smaller classes, labs, and other special services necessary to prepare students for these higher standards. Likewise, money to train teachers to administer the CIM and CAM has not been allocated. The reforms require adjustments in class content and methods as well as learning complex evaluation proceedures.
In fact, continuing funding cuts are driving programs in the opposite direction. One example of this damage is the destruction of school libraries, either by closing them down or by removing the professional librarian. Lincoln County School District (LCSD) is cutting back its professional staff from 12 librarians to just four - for the entire school district.
Beginning in the fall of 1998, each librarian will supervise four or five libraries. The libraries will actually be operated by uncertified assistants. A number of these will be only part-time. Some of the LCSD "area media specialists" will have only a single day per week to spend in each of five libraries located in several towns - with significant travel time required. These librarians will have almost no contact with students, being occupied instead with training the assistants and doing the administrative chores of running the libraries. "Area" librarians will be bottom-level bureaucrats and will no longer be teachers - a waste of their professional teaching skills and probably a waste of money.
No longer will it be possible for a teacher to send a number of advanced students from the classroom to the library to work on research projects with help from the librarian - while the remainder of the class reviews work already mastered by the more advanced students. Now, with class sizes well above 30 students in some instances, the loss of the library option means a significant waste of the advanced students'time.
Most certified school librarians have an MA in Library Science and are trained to teach students the research skills needed to complete portfolios and projects required for success under the CIM and CAM protocols. Few, if any, school administrators understand that a skilled librarian is a teaching specialist who arouses a love of reading in elementary-age children, who lays the foundation for media evaluation in middle schoolers, and who directs and shapes the research skills of high school students. The best librarian is a teacher with a wide knowledge of media resources, who also is quick to perceive particular students' interests and direct their research accordingly.
The Oregonian's coverage "Do state's new standards need a little flexibility," (2/10/98) lays the groundwork for watering down the new 21st Century reform standards even before they have been tried. This approach will no doubt please those who dislike the educational reforms and who plan to resist increased school funding. The combination of higher standards and reductions in funding is sure to provide opportunity for the very same budget cutters to vigorously criticize public education for poor quality. Sadly, it is not only politicians who try to have it both ways regarding education. Many in the business community, who have a major stake in the outcome, nevertheless waffle and stall when it comes to paying for the high quality education they say we need.