Guest Comment: Will Oregon school goals be too easy, hard or just right?

Published 10:13 am Friday, January 9, 2026

By the Bulletin Editorial Board

School funding can’t be a blank check.

Gov. Tina Kotek led on legislation last year to inject more accountability into K-12 schools.

This month, the goals that districts will have to meet will likely become clearer after a meeting of the state school board. The accountability comes with some teeth.

The Oregon Department of Education is going to watch district progress toward those goals. If districts aren’t meeting targets after two years, the state starts getting involved with what the state calls “coaching” districts. State intervention ramps up considerably if a district doesn’t meet targets after four or more years. The Oregon Department of Education would then have the authority to direct up to 25% of the district’s state school fund allocation toward programs it believes will improve outcomes.

Districts have to monitor the goals beginning in the 2026-2027 school year. Districts may first be required to accept coaching and support under the policy for the 2028-2029 school year. So the targets the state picks will be no small matter.

Goals will be based on attendance, graduation rates, proficiency testing on English language arts in third grade and math proficiency in eighth grade, among others.

Districts across the state are not going to have to meet identical standards. The state has divided districts into clusters based on student population, poverty, percent of students that need help learning English and students that historically experienced disparity.

Each local district will also have to select one metric of their own from a list.

There are many questions, of course. Is this just another layer of burden for schools to deal with? It’s not supposed to be. We’ll see. Is it going to mean more standardized tests? It’s not supposed to do that, either. It’s based on testing that is already required.

But the big question is really if the targets the state picks will be too difficult, too easy or just right to help foster improvement and accountability. We’ll be better able to answer that after the next state school board meeting on Jan. 15.