School system, are you listening?

Text Size: A | A | A

Print this Article Email this Article

Parents want stimulating, challenging, innovative education for their children. This isn't new, nor is it a surprise.

What is new in parts of Southern Oregon are public school options that take kids outside of the usual classrooms. In Medford, Madrone Trail charter school is in its third year. In Talent, the Outdoor Discovery School, a "magnet" program of Talent Elementary, is in its first.

They and other programs like them exist because parents want something more for their children than the same old state system that's been around for so long but offers so little new or creative.

Unfair? In some cases, certainly. Great teachers and compelling programs exist today in Oregon's education system. But too often they exist in spite of the system rather than because of it.

That has led to a drain on student population not only to private schools or home schools, but more recently to publicly funded schools such as Madrone Trail, the Outdoor Discovery School and the online schools that are gaining prevalence in Oregon and elsewhere.

If parents appreciate these new options for their kids, that's not always the case with districts, which see funding diluted for their main programs when students make a break with their regular school. Each student represents about $6,000 in state funding annually to a district.

The programs also tend to rob schools of parents motivated to be involved in their children's education. In Talent, parents who wanted more hands-on environmental education for their kids pushed the school district to create the separate program and now are active in it.

Many regular public schools suffer from lack of parent involvement, especially at buildings where most parents are at work during the day.

This is not a call for education to bring the new programs back into the fold, necessarily, but for the system to acknowledge it could and should do better. Where can the education system meet innovation? And when there's opportunity, are educators doing their best to make use of it?

That question resurfaced last week when most large school districts in the area announced their schools would pass up an opportunity to offer no-cost Mandarin language instruction to elementary students.

The Education Service District-funded program would take up too much time in class given everything schools must do and given that school days in most areas have been cut back because of budget shortfalls, they said in a Mail Tribune story.

That may be true. And yet it's ridiculous that students across Medford, Eagle Point and Central Point are missing out because no one can see a way to take advantage of the opportunity. For parents who care, that kind of settling for less drives them crazy. It drives them out of schools. And it drives down the quality of education for everyone.

Reader Reaction We welcome your feedback on this story, or any follow-up story ideas you might have. Please send a letter to the editor to letters@mailtribune.com, or submit story ideas online here. When submitting a letter to the editor, please review our submissions policy.

Print this Article Email this Article